Free Software Foundation Endorses Another (Outdated) Laptop

[log0]

Hey, I still have got a Merom (T3200) here with 2GB RAM and 120GB HDD. Working just fine. The only thing that suicks is the missing h264 hw acceleration on Linux.

[Gusar]

I don't think there was more than just MPEG1/2 accelleration available via vaapi, but the cpu should be able to decode h264 with ease in the normally used bitrates.

There's a branch of libva-intel that has h264 support for 4500HD: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/vaapi/in...og/?h=g45-h264

[Kano]

I think i tried that some years ago and it did not work. Does it work now?

[aphirst]

I think one of the major goals of the FSF doing this kind of endorsement is to create a PR "incentive" for current hardware manufacturers to make a new device which fits the endorsement's requirements. It would be a really big deal if, in a year or two, we were to get a CPU, GPU and BIOS paired together in a notebook computer, none of which required either proprietary firmware or proprietary microcode to expose all of their hardware capabilities.

@blackiwid
Oh, the X220 supports coreboot now? I'll have to try that later in the year when I have some more free time. I have an X220 presently, and despite not being fully freedom-respecting, it has been a very satisfactory very-nearly-almost-free machine for many months, and performs still within acceptable bounds of modern hardware standards.

[Gusar]

I think i tried that some years ago and it did not work. Does it work now?

No personal experience as I don't have the hardware (I have Ironlake, Haswell and Baytrail; all work great with mainline libva-intel), but the commit message when the branch was last updated says "Some users still use this branch", so it seems it does work for these "some users".

[rice_nine]

dated

C2D at 2GHz and >2GB DDR2 is enough for casual home & student use even with an unoptimized Win 7 Home Premium, even with spinny rust. I installed Snow Leopard on a 13" Macbook (T7200 can't be updated, it's part of the mainboard in BGA form instead of uPGA) with 3GB and 120GB SSD and it was perfectly usable. Free software hippies can also be hippies so squeezing the last life out of functioning hardware is sometimes also desirable to them.

[blackiwid]

@blackiwid
Oh, the X220 supports coreboot now? I'll have to try that later in the year when I have some more free time. I have an X220 presently, and despite not being fully freedom-respecting, it has been a very satisfactory very-nearly-almost-free machine for many months, and performs still within acceptable bounds of modern hardware standards.

if you compare cinebench with newer versions of the x2 series they are not faster, lenovo desided to invest better production abilites to make the series thinner and more durable, but in raw speed you would not feel any difference when you update to a newer modell. the newer models do not even have dualchannel ram anymore.

to be more precise... the newer modell have most likely faster gpus but not cpus.

[Anarquista Libre]

So many people ripping on the FSF and the idea of a 100% free computer. Why? If you don't like the idea or think it's stupid to buy old hardware that is liberated, then don't do it. If software freedom isn't important to you, go use Windows 8.1 with secureboot.

[blackiwid]

So many people ripping on the FSF and the idea of a 100% free computer. Why? If you don't like the idea or think it's stupid to buy old hardware that is liberated, then don't do it. If software freedom isn't important to you, go use Windows 8.1 with secureboot.

who did rip on the fsf? did I miss a post?