Free Software Foundation Endorses Its First Laptop

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Free Software Foundation Endorses Its First Laptop

The Free Software Foundation today has come out for "the first time we've ever been able to encourage people to buy and use a laptop as-is." The Free Software Foundation now backs one laptop model as respecting the customer's freedoms, but are the hardware specs any good?..

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTU0Nzg

[brosis]

Free to the core, very nice! Congratulations FSF!! Too bad I haven't picked X60 a year ago, going instead Fujitsu-Siemens route with AMD X1800 video card, that didn't have PM and simply stoped working due to the pins unsoldering themself. Now, I got Samsung R60 laptop that has another AMD chipset this time with graphics corruption bug, known for over 5 years, making any 3d unusable.

So, if you seek for a reliable machine that is even free to the core, its a very nice offer!

[Sonadow]

7 year old hardware for 300 pounds.

WAH HA HA.

I'll stick with 300 pound modern budget notebooks with proprietary UEFI firmware and proprietary Intel / AMD microcode for the latest CPUs and GPUs that run rings around the Meroms / Yoonahs and boast superior battery uptime.

[ChrisXY]

3GB of RAM, 1024 x 768. Can you really work with that?

I wonder whether Clevo would be interested in working with the FSF. Their bios is relatively shitty, so I would assume that they'd be more than happy to ditch it for a high quality replacement like coreboot. But they have relatively good displays (1920x1080 for even their smaller models) and modern mainboards where you can put modern CPUs and lots of ram. But what do I know, I'm just a stupid consumer...

[dee.]

Damn, if they had the models that come with stylus input I'd be sold. The basic model doesn't interest me that much.

[brosis]

3GB of RAM, 1024 x 768. Can you really work with that?

I wonder whether Clevo would be interested in working with the FSF. Their bios is relatively shitty, so I would assume that they'd be more than happy to ditch it for a high quality replacement like coreboot. But they have relatively good displays (1920x1080 for even their smaller models) and modern mainboards where you can put modern CPUs and lots of ram. But what do I know, I'm just a stupid consumer...

My samsung galaxy note 10.1 2014 edition is far less efficient than that notebook, so yes, you can work with that. But sure needs SSD upgrade asap.

[Sonadow]

3GB of RAM, 1024 x 768. Can you really work with that?

3GB is sufficient for basic use; 1024 x 768 is useless for almost everything today.

I wonder whether Clevo would be interested in working with the FSF. Their bios is relatively shitty, so I would assume that they'd be more than happy to ditch it for a high quality replacement like coreboot. But they have relatively good displays (1920x1080 for even their smaller models) and modern mainboards where you can put modern CPUs and lots of ram. But what do I know, I'm just a stupid consumer...

Clevo's target market are gamers and boutique OEMs selling high-performance gaming machines that run AAA titles at 60+ fps minimum. And such gaming machines run Windows, so no Coreboot.

[mrugiero]

Clevo's target market are gamers and boutique OEMs selling high-performance gaming machines that run AAA titles at 60+ fps minimum. And such gaming machines run Windows, so no Coreboot.

Windows == no Coreboot? I beg to differ, the SeaBIOS payload is able to boot Windows up until 7, tested. However, according to the wiki some boards happen to not have a complete ACPI spec, which leads to failure, but it's as simple as taking one and testing it.

[Sonadow]

Windows == no Coreboot? I beg to differ, the SeaBIOS payload is able to boot Windows up until 7, tested. However, according to the wiki some boards happen to not have a complete ACPI spec, which leads to failure, but it's as simple as taking one and testing it.

Keyword being SeaBIOS only tested up to Windows 7.

Windows 8? Windows 8.1? And the upcoming Windows codenamed Threshold?

Clevo cannot just slap on Coreboot on one of their high end machines and say "here's a general purpose, premium notebook that is 100% compatible with Coreboot, but for the record, you are limited to running Linux and versions of Windows no later than Windows 7 But it supports Coreboot, so it's all good".

Not going to happen. Its OEM partners and customers will be out for blood.

[pgeorgi]

Keyword being SeaBIOS only tested up to Windows 7.

Windows 8 is tested. I don't expect 8.1 to fail on those machines that run Windows 8, the ACPI support is quite complete, but I didn't get around to try yet.

but for the record, you are limited to running Linux and versions of Windows no later than Windows 7

I wonder how you come to _that_ conclusion. The OP didn't state that windows 8 doesn't work, but that they didn't test it. I did, and I'd expect any vendor intending to support Windows to do so, too.