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Comment by tpearson-raptor | Hacker News Reader

Watch out for the LX2160A -- if you intend to use certain items, like any of the onboard high speed networking, you have to load blobs. This was one reason we decided (after careful consideration, which included bringing a box up and working with the firmware for a while in parallel with the POWER efforts) not to use LSI or ARM CPUs in our systems.

Your requirements probably aren't too far off of one of our Blackbird systems -- I suspect it's just the form factor (micro-ATX) that's the problem. You might even be able to do the pull plug for minutes trick with a suitably sized lithium battery tucked inside the slimline chassis. ;)

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Yep it's totally the form factor. I looked at it again when I found that NXP system (thanks to #olimex:)... half considered asking about getting rid of the ram slots, ATX connector, PCI's and various tower plugs and adding the ability to run 4+ drives while still fitting it in a laptop-ish case. Also as far as I can tell, you dont provide the design files... yet:) I'm throughly excited about your systems, but I dont need a desktop (or another 24+bay box) atm. I would expect to spend ~$4k for the board.

Yep, I figured as much. We'd love to do a laptop, we're literally just stalled on the GPU. This is where a consortium of ODMs and OEMs could possibly effect change, the combined buying power is probably enough to get custom GPU silicon sans-DRM and locking created. Only question is, does enough willpower exist from the other ostensibly open vendors at this time to actually work toward that goal with us? ;)

Provide a path to a $1300 laptop that is POWER based (and not crippled "slow 1 core SMT1" stuff from IBM's dead-bin) and you might entice System76 and Purism.

Your products target "Freedom, no matter the costs" while their products aim for "better than what the market has right now, at consumer friendly price points".

Both are important: they demonstrate that there's mass market appeal, you demonstrate that there's an achievable ultimate goal.

If you want to join forces, there needs to be a common story that works for both. Right now, their story isn't sufficiently Free-with-capital-F for you and your story isn't sufficiently consumer-compatible for them.

> Provide a path to a $1300 laptop that is POWER based (and not crippled "slow 1 core SMT1" stuff from IBM's dead-bin) and you might entice System76 and Purism.

I just gave them a path to a desktop that is POWER based, with very low up front costs (basically take their existing Thelio chassis, swap mainboards from x86 to POWER, do some software builds of Pop!_OS, and do a trial launch). I think that's a far more reasonable initial trial than going for a full laptop. It's also relatively consumer friendly, especially in today's cloud era where the proprietary apps people are using might just well be behind a web browser in the first place.

If they were a laptop-only company I'd agree with your assessment (I'm not happy with the GPU situation at all, that's the primary blocker for a libre laptop), but they're a laptop and desktop company. That means there's more ways they can test market owner controlled systems than a full up laptop design with massive design + tooling costs for an uncertain return.

If the financials of that make sense, I think it's certainly something they should make part of their portfolio: make a point, gauge interest, increase volume.

I suspect that the laptops are their mass market driver though. Note how S76 has laptops + desktops, Purism has laptops + phone stuff, and Pine64 has laptops, phones and watches.

All of them do laptops plus some excentricity that may or may not translate in good future business: desktop systems are excentric these days and apparently they're not even the most popular pick when branching out, phones are.

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