You can build a laptop out of open source components if you want a bad laptop
theverge.com
theverge.com
Look at Android phones now. Midrange phones come with more RAM, a comparable or better screen resolution (in 5"), and frequently offer dual band WiFi. [0]
Sure, you can't upgrade anything on the phone and you're lucky if even the kernel source code is released. But the Allwinner A64 chip Olimex is using has crap support in Linux anyway: you won't have hardware accelerated 2D or 3D.
And please, arguments of "it's modular" don't hold water. You can't upgrade the EMMC because it's not socketed. Ditto for RAM and WiFi chipset. So the only "upgrade" path is to replace the entire PCB.
iFixit regularly skewer Apple for putting everything on one board. Conceivably you could upgrade a MacBook by replacing the entire logic board, but no one seriously considers this.
Why not just buy a Raspberry Pi and a laptop shell like the Motorola Atrix? You can buy new old stock for around $50, and every other month there's a kick starter to create a USB3 version for ~$100 [1]
[0] http://m.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_4_prime-8263.php
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andromium/the-superbook...
Not only is this philosophically "good" it also has practical benefits if you are looking to build on the design to say, integrate an fpga.
Okay, what prevents me from designing my own PCB to replace the one in my phone? I can measure the physical dimensions, look up the datasheet for the LCD screen and camera connector and get a new board made.
Since this isn't very practical, no one does it.
It's going to cost far more than any reasonable person would spend to manufacture a modified PCB with an FPGA for this laptop.
If you're going to tell me "well the design is open so you can kickstart it as an alternative" then I'd invite you to ask the OpenMoko guys about how many units they sold. [0]
For anyone who wants a "modular" laptop, just buy one of the above HDMI/USB "lapdocks" and Velcro the Raspberry Pi to the back of the LCD. In the long run it will be just as robust and "modular" as this Olimex product.
I previously worked on getting Debian+E17 running on the OpenMoko, so I'm not just talking out my ass on this.
However it's not really a good argument that this is a bad thing in every use case. Calling this a "bad" laptop when the only other laptop that's open to this degree that I'm aware of is bunnie's novena seems a bit silly.
Building on an established design is going to be far easier than bringing up a new PCB. I'd estimate you could get prototypes of this board (6 layer) made for <<1000USD.
If I needed embedded compute, for an instrument I was designing for low volume manufacture I'd consider these boards. If nothing else, I could probably get them fabbed myself if necessary/desirable.
I can see many use cases like this. As well as the fact that some users just philosophically prefer computers whose design is as open as possible.
Except that it's not a tightly coupled design so there's enough space to add more boards.
Somebody that only want to play with gadgets shouldn't review something he has no understanding of.
I can try to convince a rock to split itself with any attitude I believe in, but I'll still be more effective with a hammer.
* Is the OS, OS? [Y/n]
* Is all software OS? [Y/n]
* Is all firmware OS? [Y/n]
* Is all hardware OS? [Y/n]
You can easily count a percentage of open source in your laptop. If your goal is for instance avoid backdoors/surveillance, I would say this is a "very good" laptop, while a COTS laptop would be "bad". As the parent says, good or bad depends on the metric.
- Nobody "wants" a bad laptop, since that contradicts the definition of badness. A more accurate, less insulting phrasing would be "if you can put up with a bad laptop", i.e. there's an associated cost which you may or may not consider worth it.
- The laptop's clearly not "bad" in some objective sense, since nobody would have put in the effort if it were. It's probably subjectively bad to many people, in which case it's clearly not meant for them, but that's a property of the person (or person/laptop relation) rather than of the laptop.
11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, an Allwinner A64 ARM Cortex-A53 quad-core processor with Mali-400MP2 graphics, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of eMMC storage
Everything about that is objectively bad. Those are the regular specs any piece of consumer hardware would have over ten years ago. I'm sure an ancient Pentium 4 would simply crush that processor.
>It's probably subjectively bad to many people, in which case it's clearly not meant for them
What kind of a public would this laptop have? With those specs you can barely run a web browser.
Clearly it was never meant to be as good as a MacBook Pro.
It was meant to be good as an open source laptop (which it is, as one of the few open laptop designs that exists).
Nothing about that affects what I said.
> What kind of a public would this laptop have?
Before getting my current libreboot X60, my workhorse was an OLPC XO-1: 7.5" screen @ 1200x900, 433MHz AMD Geode CPU with integrated graphics, 256MB RAM and 1GB onboard storage. That sounds like a similar sort of spec, and it served me very well for many years; the battery life and sunlight-readable screen were especially nice, as I could use it while sat in the local park.
> With those specs you can barely run a web browser.
Web browsers have been around for decades; I'm sure it's fine for accessing information (the original intent of the Web). Maybe it can't run the latest bloatware, or support spying/ad platforms like Facebook, but I'd count that as a feature ;)
I'm not sure what's going on over there but it seems that maybe they're A/B testing with these insulting headlines or something.
I thought this recent headline in particular was quite insulting: "Wine 2.0 is out, ready to disappoint you once again" [0]
edit: Just noticed both articles are by the same author.
[0]: http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/1/26/14402028/wi...
The problem is a vie this article and the concept is that negativity grabs our attention because we're wired to detect and process threats...
That means instead of neg attention grabbing us then us reading the article with an open interested intellectual mind, we are drawn to read the article and look for and perceive its information as threatening. To disarm it.
That ends up wasting everyone's time.
In general we should expect fully open systems like this to lag highly capitalized operations somewhat. And we should all, generally, use this as a reference point for improvements using our unique skills.
And that happens somewhat, except for the fact we're approach the article with our mind in the wrong state thanks to the "threateningly" headline.
So great observations on your part!
Well, it now allows me to use the same Office version (2013) that I have to produce and share documents with, so I am far from disappointed!
> ... disappoint you...
These are headlines that have a definite negative slant.
They aren't something to foster discussion, but something that tugs on the emotions of the reader.
That's a sure fire tactic for pissing people off.
But also definite true one. Wine has always been short of the promise it made (except for specific, select, apps), and the laptop is bad on any metric that matters except the "I can update it to make it have a less bad processor when that becomes available for it".
It's an Allwinner SoC. I doubt there's anything open about it, they probably won't even give you the GPL'd code you need to run it.
Are those metrics people actually care about in a laptop?
And even if they are, this would still be a bad laptop by laptop-y metrics.
You can have both good and open, this just ain't it.
Laptops have evolved a lot since my first laptop...a used ex corporate travelling salesman's Toshiba Satellite with a 386SX. At about seven pounds and two inches thick, it was still somewhat svelte by current laptop standards when I obtained in 1997. In 2001 when I purchased my first laptop, a $1000 would get you about the same...and that was the cheapest laptop you could buy and only if it was on sale. For another grand and a half or two you could knock about a pound and a half off the weight...yes three grand for a four and a half pound laptop. Laptops have evolved quite a bit since then.
But humans and the physical environment have not. Sure, side by side, it's easy to experience the phyiscal differences between a six pound box of electronics and a three pound box of electronics and to imagine how much happier the smaller box will make you. And that's most of the reason for smaller and lighter laptops, someone standing in the store imagining how much happier they'll be and opening their wallet a little wider.
I know what some of you are thinking: "carrying extra weight will be even healthier" - but also unpleasant enough that you won't actually walk much if you weigh yourself down that much.
The extra space in a bag when you're completely carry on is a huge benefit as well since everything fits under the seat in front of you a bit easier, so you can board faster and sit down quicker.
As I mentioned, in the early 1990's the magically light laptop for Simpsoning through airports was 6+ pounds and 2" thick. What's changed besides raw compute is expectations not physiology.
Also, FWIW, Minifree no longer seeks the RYF certification nor advertises it on existing products. I don't expect them to respect your freedom any less, but because of the FSF/Libreboot conflict they no longer seek the cert.