Holiday Shopping 2023: FSF Endorses 802.11n WiFi, Opteron Boards & USB To Parallel Printer Cable

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Holiday Shopping 2023: FSF Endorses 802.11n WiFi, Opteron Boards & USB To Parallel Printer Cable

The Free Software Foundation this week published their 2023 holiday shopping guide for services and products that comply with their pure free software standards, such as computer hardware devices that "respect your freedom" regardless of hardware age...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/FSF-Holiday-2023-Shopping-Guide

[autopr3z]

USB to Parallel Printer Cables are gonna be my stocking stuffers this year. My wife will love hers!!!

[timofonic]

Phoronix: Holiday Shopping 2023: FSF Endorses 802.11n WiFi, Opteron Boards & USB To Parallel Printer Cable

The sad state of the (open) hardware industry

https://www.phoronix.com/news/FSF-Ho...Shopping-Guide

I agree. It's not dead, it's not inexistent. It's stagnated with just a few exceptions thriving to survive.

There are a few extremely overpriced products most of the time and some homebrew in certain niches such as retro (I follow retro quite closely).

It's a sad precarious state.

Raspberry Pi isn't open hardware, for example.

If Open Hardware would be a lot more actively promoted instead just this cheapo propaganda, things would better for everyone.

[Adarion]

Lol, they're offering the whole Trisquel sources of ~6 GiB for a stupid NIC with a classic PCI interface and something that looks like your run-of-the-mill RTL8139 chip, whose in-kernel driver code might be some KiBs.
Indeed, this look dire. And yes, we need more good advocates for freedom drivers/firmware/hardware. But just recent Coreboot release looked to disappointing, no real boards supported, it has become a Google-only-thing.

[bachchain]

USB to parallel printer cable

Now I can rest easy knowing the government can't spy on my 90's printer

[andyprough]

The ASUS KGPE-D16 is from the AMD Opteron 6000 series days and has DDR3-1600 memory support. This outdated server motherboard flashed with Libreboot retails for €593,81 (~$650 USD).

Or you could just do what everyone else does and buy it on eBay from Asia for ~$130 and buy the pre-flashed chip for ~$10 [or flash it yourself for free].

But then for those concerned about the environment/climate, these outdated "free software" systems are terribly less power efficient than more recent CPUs/systems.

These are elitist environmental talking points that have little or nothing to do with real environmental impact analysis - you have to consider the cost to the environment of digging up the rare earth metals and the cost to the environment of the manufacturing process for the more recent CPUs/systems. Or did you think these newer computers were harvested from seeds grown in greenhouses in a 100% carbon-neutral manner?

The fact is, you cannot resolve "concern[s] about the environment/climate" through your purchasing of one manufactured item vs another. What you can do is live in tune with nature. Instead of sending another old gas-guzzling car to add to the toxic waste at a junkyard and replacing it with a new Tesla, you could just start walking or riding a bicycle that was manufactured decades ago. I do that about 6-9 months of the year - it's also exceptionally good for your health.

I have friends who use the ASUS KGPE-D16 and who get a lot of work done with it. If you can end your addiction to binge-watching Netflix and binge-watching TikTok and 24/7 online gaming and just use the computer when you need to actually do something productive, then you would certainly not putting any strain on the grid by using it. Junking a useful and capable computer into a toxic landfill and replacing it with a new system with all its rare earth metal inputs and manufacturing energy inputs is problematic.

If the thought of plugging an older computer into an electrical outlet horrifies your elitist sense of woke climate alarmism, you can move to the desert in New Mexico and build yourself an earthship to live in and cut yourself a vertical tin wind turbine for power. Voila - modern living without having to manufacture anything or use any power from the grid.

[anarki2]

Cool. And that's precisely why no one takes them seriously.

[McCarthee]

The FSF is a complete parody of itself at this point.

[mlau]

Now I can rest easy knowing the government can't spy on my 90's printer

... or your scsi-1 bus !

[lowflyer]

Or you could just do what everyone else does and buy it on eBay from Asia for ~$130 and buy the pre-flashed chip for ~$10 [or flash it yourself for free].



These are elitist environmental talking points that have little or nothing to do with real environmental impact analysis - you have to consider the cost to the environment of digging up the rare earth metals and the cost to the environment of the manufacturing process for the more recent CPUs/systems. Or did you think these newer computers were harvested from seeds grown in greenhouses in a 100% carbon-neutral manner?

The fact is, you cannot resolve "concern[s] about the environment/climate" through your purchasing of one manufactured item vs another. What you can do is live in tune with nature. Instead of sending another old gas-guzzling car to add to the toxic waste at a junkyard and replacing it with a new Tesla, you could just start walking or riding a bicycle that was manufactured decades ago. I do that about 6-9 months of the year - it's also exceptionally good for your health.

I have friends who use the ASUS KGPE-D16 and who get a lot of work done with it. If you can end your addiction to binge-watching Netflix and binge-watching TikTok and 24/7 online gaming and just use the computer when you need to actually do something productive, then you would certainly not putting any strain on the grid by using it. Junking a useful and capable computer into a toxic landfill and replacing it with a new system with all its rare earth metal inputs and manufacturing energy inputs is problematic.

If the thought of plugging an older computer into an electrical outlet horrifies your elitist sense of woke climate alarmism, you can move to the desert in New Mexico and build yourself an earthship to live in and cut yourself a vertical tin wind turbine for power. Voila - modern living without having to manufacture anything or use any power from the grid.

Why can I vote up something only once?