Acer disables BIOS for laptops sold through Amazon? (2020)
amazon.com
amazon.com
All laptops have problems, but Acer was by far the worst - More often then not, the problems stemmed from bad heat management (the most common killer of laptops IME) and quality control that was seemingly laser focused on avoiding problems for exactly as long as the warranty lasted.
PSA: Lenovo has tons of problems w/r/t how they operate as a company, but the thinkpad is far and away the best overall non-mac laptop brand you can readily buy anywhere in the world.
For some of their models we had over 50% return rates. Far from all models mind you, but still: it was ridiculous. Many came back after warranty as well with hardware issues related to the casings and hinges. Their warranty service took forever and often we had to send back the machines again because they didn't actually fix the issue (we weren't allowed to repair them ourselves too, we had to use their repair centres; other vendors tended to be more flexible about this, especially if we had a long relationship with them).
But they were cheap. So we sold many.
We didn't usually sell ThinkPads, but we did on special demand. One customer returned theirs for whatever reason (T400 IIRC). We put it in the showroom, and it was there for well over year before we managed to sell it, at quite a loss I might add. We actually had a lot of business customers as we also did office management etc., but people just don't want a €1,000 laptop.
Another aspect is that ThinkPads just don't look good to most people when put next to flashy Asus or Acer laptops. The keyboard is more "wonky" instead of the neat rectangular square; it's clearly better designed instead of the cramped 1cm Shift keys and such, but it doesn't look as good. The more matte display is better for loads of people, but it looks kinda crappy next to a bright Acer in demo mode showing off cool pictures. And the "black box" design doesn't seem to appeal to many people's tastes (although personally, I always felt it looked quite handsome; I miss the blue Enter keys btw, I always thought they added something).
Oh, and gosh, don't get me started on the Acer "laptop" they put out with a desktop Pentium CPU, regular DIMMs, and 3.5" HDD. That was truly an abomination.
One day the IT guy was making the rounds distributing new laptops. I got to chatting with him about the new hardware and he said something like “yeah, these are great compared to that old thing, 8 GB, dual core, 256 GB SSD… blah blah…”, while pointing to my brand new Thinkpad. I started telling him the specs on my Thinkpad (which are still good today, but were especially good then) — quad core i7, 64 GB RAM, RAID striped dual M.2 SSDs, … he just said something like “Oh” and walked away without continuing the conversation. Haha…
Speaking of Asus, I've had no end of issues with the Asus laptop I've been using for the last 3-4 years. Decent spec for the money, but:
* audio output no longer detects external devices
* I've had to replace the display twice due to it flickering/losing part of the image
* multiple keys (~10) fell off the keyboard[1]
* bottom case cracked when I lifted the laptop (plastic appears to have gone brittle over time)
* drive/RAM access cover is held on with electrical tape, as it's broken away from the screw that should hold it in place
* charger cable insulation broke where it meets the DC Jack; replacement charger is starting to do the same
* trackpad occasionally isn't recognised from a cold boot
* USB3 ports are flakey - the slightest nudge can cause devices to disconnect (tried with multiple devices/cables, and they're all fine on other machines)
* keyboard sometimes locks into repeating the last key until I disconnect a USB device or change my keyboard layout with the mouse (probably a software issue, but I haven't managed to track it down)
Combining the repairs (display, bottom case, keyboard, charger) with some upgrades (SSD, HDD, RAM, WiFi card), it's a real ship of Theseus at this point. There's not _that_ much of the original machine left. This is my first Asus machine, and I really can't say I recommend it.
[1] And I didn't notice until after I'd ordered the replacement keyboard that it's not really designed to be replaced without replacing the top case (it fits between the top case and a metal shield, and they're heat staked together), so that was an interesting repair
At the time needs stressing, because this is a long time ago and I haven't kept up since.
One thing I will say is that every brand can have issues. There can be a particular model that's problematic (see the exploding Samsung Galaxy Notes phone of a few years ago for a famous example), or you can just be unlucky with a particular production series that has issues.
But they're simple, elegant, and more practical than Apple.
this was exactly my experience. Bought an Acer in high school; it was cheap and did the job for me. But after a year both hinges were damaged to the point that the display was tilted. After two years the laptop split in half.
It's surprising that the thermal design can't passively cool the CPU while in this sleep mode. It feels like a design flaw.
Think the fan power management is the only downfall for these devices, mine either runs way too hot or at full blast (which was a turbo mode) back when there was still support for the drivers (some old windows version think 7).
I've never had the fans actually run while sleeping though, thats really bad.
I love the 2020 HP Spectre hardware-wise (better than my work ThinkPads), but sometimes forced NVMe RAID gets annoying with FreeBSD when Lenovo and Asus let you disable it. At least it's not Acer with forced Secure Boot. Yes, I'll take a Mac over an Acer, and I work at Microsoft (but not Windows).
One of the work ThinkPads I get has a locked BIOS, the other (that I normally use for work) doesn't. But I won't use a ThinkPad as my main personal laptop unless FreeBSD only works on one and nothing else.
Like the new MacBooks, it's a donglebook and it has basically no ventilation. I'd much rather get a T-series or a non-X1 X-series at this point. I don't think Dell currently offers any Linux laptops with that form factor, but I"d be willing to try them
It’s not a big deal for me since I just share the same dock between it and my work macbook, but I do wish it had more than two ports, for redundancy’s sake.
For some reason the W10 kernel chokes when handling network streams, huge load on the CPU0 core and barely nothing on the other. I'm also constantly thrown off by the inconsistent and sometimes roughly cut UI.
Booting into Linux is a litany of horrors: desktop fractional scaling is blurry, Gnome 40 won't properly handle the alternatives to NetworkManager or PulseAudio which I had to install when WiFi or audio suddenly stopped working for unknown reasons. KDE is cute, but will crash spectacularly taking down the whole session. Tried Ubuntu and Fedora, Same.
I'm a software developer so I can deal with quite a fair amount of tinkering and tuning but frankly I don't have time to learn and debug multiple implementations of entire OS subsystems in order to pick the less unstable one and meticulously integrate it with the rest.
I regret straying off the Apple path, and counting the days the new "M2" (or whatever it will be called) is announced.
Sigh.
Firstly, there are nice access hatches for the 2.5" slot and the DIMMs, but not for some reason for the M.2 slot. Minor nitpicking, but why make nice access hatches for two items out of three?
Secondly, it does not support NVMe, only SATA drives. Not a huge deal, they are of course not required to support NVMe, but why? It seems to me like they're only saving some wiring going to the CPU. And the firmware menu contains references to NVMe, which led me to believe it did support it.
Third, there were some some issues with Linux on it. Half the time you booted into Linux, the trackpad wouldn't work, and you needed to reboot to get it working. A bigger issue though was that sometimes when you suspended the laptop, it would instead just hang and hard reboot. It took like a year before these issues went away I think. These can be excused I suppose, it's designed for Windows, so it can't be expected to work flawlessly with Linux right away, but it does mean I won't consider Acer for a Linux laptop in the future.
Recently, AMDGPU sometimes hangs when it resumes from suspend, forcing you to reboot. Though this is probably not an Acer issue.
It also seems like the battery stops reporting charge level until you reboot it. I think this happens under Windows too. At least this happens very rarely, but it's one more thing.
But by far the biggest issue though, and the thing that means I will never get another Acer computer, regardless of OS, was when they released a Firmware update for it that caused it to bootloop if you started it without the charger connected (https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/599232/a315-41g-1-1...). As in, you started it, and after a few seconds it would hard reboot, over and over. You could start it with the charger connected and then disconnect it, and it would work fine (until you suspended and resumed, at which point it would hard reboot after a few seconds). And this wasn't a Linux issue, it happened regardless of OS, and even in the Firmware menu. And there was zero official communication from Acer on this, all we got was some "Acer Community Expert" idiot telling people to uninstall some Windows driver, even though Windows had nothing to do with it, and someone telling you to modify the updater tool to downgrade the Firmware. And it somehow took them literally months to release a fix for this. So fuck Acer.
They were So bad... I remember they had "clips" instead of screws to remove the case.
It also covers charger replacements and accidental damage, so if your charger frays, they replace it (a big issue with Acer and Asus). I grant that the Geek Squad people aren't great at fixing things, but replacing? Excellent.
There used to be a hidden key sequence to reveal an "Advanced" menu. It changed a few times. But on the more recent versions, there is no "Advanced" menu any more, it is removed completely. (They use InsydeH20 BIOS; you can find some reverse engineering tool to decode its menu structure – I heard rumours on forums the hidden menu was completely removed, the tool confirmed it.)
May still be possible to inspect and change some undocumented settings with some more in-depth BIOS hacking. But I'm scared I'm going to brick the computer by doing that. I gave up. I guess next time I buy a computer I'll keep this in mind.
But there have been some low points. Dodgey motherboards on multiple generations of T series laptops, Superfish and whitelisted wifi cards on the yoga, and generally poor quality screens for a variety of reasons gives one pause before buying the next one.
For the first time in a couple of decades I've taken the risk and branched out to the Acer Spin 5. I am pleasantly surprised. Not perfect either but not nearly as cheap as I had feard. A Bios update was essential for it to be functional. But that was true of some models in the T series in the past.
I sent it into acer (under warranty!) because i couldn't play any games on it for longer than half an hour. They sent it back to me saying they couldn't find anything wrong with it. The laptop would still crash within 30-45 minutes of playing a game.
Whenever people ask me to recommend computers or computer accessories, I never recommend acer. I've never bought another acer product since and I have never been dissatisfied with that decision.
I bought a Razer Blade 15 two weeks ago during Amazon sales - once arrived I opened it and upgraded the SSD from 256GBytes to 1TBytes without any issue, and it works really good on Arch...
So, Acer, not all computer vendors are doing this shit.
The biggest issue I've had with it was actually with the charger - the USB C port on the charger snapped off after just a few months of reasonable use. Razer replaced it for free, but that's when I learned that any charger less than 100watts results in the battery draining under load when plugged in. The build quality of the laptop itself, though, is excellent.
I've done BIOS updates, etc., and have had no issues.
The machines look and run great, but they don't last. Mine's a paperweight unless I find a replacement motherboard, or send it in to Razer to get it fixed for ~$300.
Fuck that though. A Thinkpad is a better investment.
I'm still irritated that I have to spend more than $300 to buy a new laptop. It's a constant struggle to balance old man syndrome with reasonable sticker outrage.
Also, I didn't lose $2000, I bought a $2000 life lesson: never buy Razer products.
The Blade Stealth ran me $1300, which I thought was reasonable for what I was getting. I don't expect it to last more than a few years, though.
My immortal army of Thinkpads disagrees with you.
It will be interesting to see what happens in a few years of use. I wouldn't be shocked if it died - but if it did, I still might get another one. I already replace my laptop every ~3 years anyway, and the benefits it provides in terms of form factor and capability are substantial.
As long as the marketing focuses on the flashy lights I can't bring myself to ever buy Razer anything.
(The Razer Synapse program you use to control the keyboard RGB is annoying, it'd be a good weekend project to replicate its functionality in a free app, but it works for that purpose.)
It's already been done: https://openrgb.org/
Yet another case where the vendor specific software was complete garbage, but FOSS to the rescue.
I also remember being able to make my PS4 controller LED change brightness and colors/shades/blinking, etc on release, and I don't think you can do that on a PS4 to this day.
I really prefer the simplicity of not having to drag around a laptop brick, and love the simplicity of having one cable to carry all the signals I need (USB, DisplayPort, Power, etc.)
Even then it's not enough for some top-end laptops. Alienware laptops with a 3080 use 330W
Gaming might be fine in some laptops, but clearly not in the one for this article. Top-end laptops like an Alienware w/ 3080 use a 330W adapter. 100W USB-C is never going to keep that thing from running down the battery.
It has two fans that in turbo mode can keep GPU it under 70C even at 100% load. But yeah it's bulky almost 3KG workstation.
Oh and at max fan speed it as loud as modern vacuum cleaner, but people play in headphones most of the time. So yeah you can have laptop with high TDP, but it's gonna be bulky and loud.
Sadly the new AMD version (Blade 14) has the RAM soldered on. I'm not sure why. I hope Razer isn't backsliding here.
Citation needed?
There was once a time when you purchased a product you owned it, and were allowed to do devious stuff like "Change The Boot Order".
Apparently that's now out of bounds.
I despair.
Op is making a bet not a claim.
A better bet would be to provide a non-nefarious answer as to why this isn't part of the product description.
According to the review, they are also unable to turn off Secure Boot and UEFI.
https://www.skitsolutionbd.com/Services/buy-negative-amazon-...
There was a time when people would make trustworthy Amazon reviews, but... one bad apple spoils the bunch. If I don't know if the review I'm reading is manipulated crap, then I need to go elsewhere.
-------
For better or worse, "Best Buy" and "Walmart" have solid non-comingled supply chains. There's also the option of buying directly from some manufacturers (although I've had bad luck with say... HP from their website. So I prefer having a trusted 3rd party retailer to handle returns in the worst-case scenario. Best Buy handles returns fine, and I trust that an 'HP' laptop is indeed from HP from them. Good enough for me).
I also live near a Microcenter, which would be my primary computer store. But Best Buy isn't bad for prefab and/or laptops, I take my friends there to check out some merchandise when they're looking for new laptops.
First, Acer (the manufacturer) is doing it, not Amazon.
Second, it does appear to be systematic.
Third, refund policy is irrelevant and implies (falsely) that the issue is simply a consumer choice problem.
Fourth, you ignore what is troubling: it represents the loss of general purpose computing devices as a product category, even in that last bastion of "freedom", the personal computer. Acer is a major manufacturer, and this shift is ominous.
That's not what's claimed?
That doesn't make any sense. Why would you lock it because it was sold through Amazon?
Is it accessible if you buy it direct from Acer?
Sounds like a customer support person just made up a reason.
(Of course, they could still install a “hard mod” root kit by e.g. reflashing the BIOS through its JTAG pins, or just desoldering it and soldering on something else. But that requires a much higher tier of resources, one that also enables other classes of attacks that don’t involve putting the stock back into the first-party warehouse.)
Could be protection against that?
This happens a lot, I find. People just hate having no answer for you. So they make up one.
Customers hate not having a reason, and many techs will simply make one up rather than be yelled at again for not knowing.
While I don't shout at tech support, as I know what the script is, you better believe my blood is quietly boiling as I'm rebooting various devices that have nothing to do with the issue on their instruction, just so I can get to an appointment with technicians to fix my real issue.
Same thing occurs with GP doctors, and basically every other system in tiers, where it inevitably organizes to basically stall you, so people don't overload the higher tiers.
In the mean time, the techs would get yelled at for not knowing what was happening. I wasn't surprised when they invented reasons... And they may even have believed them.
As for the rebooting... I've seen too many weird things to deny them the reboots. And a few times it has actually fixed my problem, even though I believed it impossible. (And had the same happen to customers I was supporting.) So I know it's frustrating, but it's necessary in a surprising number of cases.
Also, techs were often the worst customers. They thought they knew everything, even if it was just Dunning-Kruger. Forcing them to reboot was painful, but actually worked more often than non-techs because the non-techs would blindly try things like that after having been told it once in the past. There were plenty of times I fell back on the "I can't send this up until you reboot it" because I knew there was a good chance the reboot would actually work if the customer tried to avoid it.
For how long will we be able to run unsigned code on Windows or MacOS? And for how long will 'secure boot' hardware allow us to run Linux?
Soon we'll have to buy very expensive and specialised development kits/development workstations to create content for the other 'content consumption computing' devices
GNU/Linux phones are general-purpose devices running desktop Linux. Support them if you want to have the freedom to run anything.
Probably depends on your usage pattern. Pinephone works quite reliably for me.
> lasted at least a day on battery
Pinephone fits here
> and had some sort of NFC payment method
Not available yet, but in the works (you will just replace the back cover): https://www.tweaksforgeeks.com/linux-based-pinephone-to-come...
But the way things are going, the open source community might soon have to start designing their own CPUs, as you may not even be able to buy a high-performance CPU within a couple of decades, they'll be proprietary tech that only exists as part of a locked-down platform, like Apple are now doing.
Anything to back this claim up? I disagree here. Librem 5 and Pinephone are getting more and more popular now. The first one is even recommended by the FSF: https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v11/
> the open source community might soon have to start designing their own CPUs
Like RISC-V?
Google or Microsoft trying to prevent you from running whatever you want would probably lead to swift action from EU courts, it looks too much like an attempt to control competition on their platform. So instead they stick to scare-mongering with opt-out.
Apple gets a pass because they are the underdog (30% market share in the EU)
You can sideload apps, which is better than iOS, but for root access most devices need some sort of hackery.
Heck, why do we even accept that 'sideload' is a word. It should simply be 'load'.
I was one of those people threatening to either walk or get another option - lo and behold they signed me up for the old 2FA for a few extra weeks.
I don't know what they were thinking, really. Rooted phones, or in my case, custom ROMs like LineageOS are quite common in these parts.
My bank is just one of many using a reskinned version of the same 2FA app, so you might want to re-check yours.
I also wonder: how can you develop on them? Android Studio would fail app deployment, the way you tell it.
One device I know of that doesn't allow sideloading or developer mode is the Ratta Supernote A5X/A6X.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
In that case, don't mention it, just use it.
Non of this prevent you from e.g. running Linux, I have been running Linux with Secure Boot since 5+ years. The problem is:
- not being able to select a alternate boot device (for install medium, diagnostics etc., even a major problem if you only run windows IMHO)
- not being able to set a custom platform key
- the EFI "missing" some "standard" keys especially if combined with the previous point
Sure temporary disabling secure boot for making Linux installs easier is nice, but not required for functionality.
Similar legacy boot mode can be nice, but I haven't used it in ~10 years or so.
As a side note you can use TPM for some usages comparable to e.g. a Yubikey (with drawbacks). So having a TPM can be quite useful, even on Linux.
For as long as Microsoft deigns to allow the signed shim to boot.
Microsoft is the only key authority allowed by the main PC manufacturers. If you wish to become a key authority yourself, to allow your OS to boot on Secure Boot enabled devices without asking the end user to install additional keys (note: some devices may not allow this), then you must go to the OEMs individually and petition to be added to their key authority list. Prices from the OEMs that allow this are in the millions of dollars.
In which case this doesn't matter. (i.e. if you can set a custom platform key)
Also Microsoft would not only need to stop signing shims but revoke all existing signatures.
if you run windows update it's happened dozens of times on your machine without you realising it
for example: they blacklisted a load of linux bootloaders last year due to the boothole vunerability
as a result: on a machine that's run windows update you now can't boot pre-2021 linux (both existing installs and installation media)
they could be nefarious very easily if they wanted to:
1. refuse to sign new builds
2. wait for the inevitable exploits
3. block all bootloaders capable of booting Linux as a security measure
Or they already would have done it years ago.
What is holding them back is regulatory oversight, and the fear of it.
So if they ever do so, it's not a fault of "secure boot" and similar, but 100% the fault of politicians seriously messing up their job.
EDIT: You can also blame Apple, for constantly pushing in a direction where such regulatory oversight is removed. (END EDIT)
IMHO Secure Boot and TPM are features I want in my system if properly implemented. A laptop not supporting some form of secure boot and TPM would be for me a reason for not buying it. (Through being able to use custom platform keys is also a must have for me.)
A lot of distributions supports secure boot trough generating your CA, using it to sign the bootloader and the kernel and installing it in the UEFI, to do this you need to put the UEFI in "setup mode", that is a mode that permits the OS to add/remove keys, and then put it back in "user mode". Of course not being able to disable secure boot will not allow you to do so.
As far as I know the only distributions that supports secure boot without the need to put the firmware in setup mode and install custom keys is Ubuntu, since they bought keys from Microsoft. But that is just as bad as running Windows...
You can say, but I can simply turn off secure boot. If the firmware allows it, you can. The problem is if you have a dual boot with Windows: you would need to enable secure boot each time you want to boot into Windows and disable it to boot back into Linux. That is a complication that would make some potential new Linux users just stick with Windows (you have the WSL and you can run all the Linux programs into Windows, why would you need to install it really? That seems to me the policy of Microsoft).
From https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/dev...
> The platform must come provisioned with the correct keys in the UEFI Signature database (db) to allow Windows to boot. It must also support secure authenticated updates to the databases.
I'm not sure how to contact Microsoft about this issue though.
This does not imply "the user must be able to add their own keys". (Particularly as that would not usually be "authenticated").
Secure Boot keys include keys which (in theory) are used to authenticate an update to the key database.
On the last one (a 2016 Acer Aspire E5) I replaced its IPS panel twice because the owner (my GF) had repeatedly stepped on it. That was pretty easy: Removing the screen bezel, scan the panel’s QR code revealing its part number, ordering replacement on ebay (€70, delivery from one day to another), loosening four screws and replacing the old panel. The second time I additionally had to replace the panel’s housing and transfer hinges (bending one back into form), cables, camera modules and WiFi antennas which was done in under an hour. Again, all modules and individual parts carried a QR code for easy sourcing of replacements. The replacement housing had cost me only €30. I also replaced the laptop’s battery before (after 2.5 years of intense usage) — €50, the battery was not even screwed in or glued but just held by the casing. So easy peasy replacement.
In the end we sold the poor and unloved thing — repaired, well-working and 4 years old — for €200 on Ebay. Just because my GF longed for a MacBook Air for over 1400 bucks that surely looks great but is neither upgradable nor well repairable …
I must admit I never tried to change the boot order on these systems, so I might have overlooked the crippled BIOS. But ever since I’ve been recommending mid-range Acer laptops for the great price and repairability and been thinking of replacing my Fujitsu Siemens business laptop with an Acer.
Photos from the last repair: https://www.facebook.com/1483420419/posts/10224056908918861/...
I learnt my lesson though, never by from Acer.
I never owned one myself, but I've heard complaints about their laptops from several people regarding reliability/longevity.
At the last company I worked at, we had two beamers made Acer, both broke within six weeks, we sent them in for repair, when they came back, one of them still didn't work.
Beyond that, you may be able to find a way to remove the restriction and flash with your programmer, or use the bios from their website, but you have to be careful in case machine specific things like serial, etc are overwritten.
If you're after a new laptop, buy Apple or a business grade unit from Lenovo (T/X/P series). If you can't afford that or don't want to afford it, buy a 2-3 year old machine from a larger refurbisher from the same list. If you shop around you can pick up a previous gen machine with 3 years next business day warranty on it sealed new for less than half current retail proce. I got a ryzen T495 for 500 GBP here with 3 years NBD on it.
If you're not looking for latest cutting-edge performance then you're usually better off buying a second-hand ThinkPad if available in your area.
My last purchase experience was very successful (30 mins install including a compressed dd backup of the original hd contents. Before buying the product I had web-searched for other people's experiences), but it is absurd that one may have doubts about the process working (flawlessly, effortlessly...). It is like buying a car still wondering "will it work in my weather". This definitely should not happen.
EDIT: one trick I use, that some may find useful, to get corroborations about Linux running on a product: the Geekbench results browser. The Geekbench benchmark results are uploaded to browser.geekbench.com, and the 'Platform' column may contain 'Linux'. So, for example, https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q... shows e.g. that a few days ago the benchmark was run on an Acer Aspire V5-552G using Ubuntu 14.04.2 etc... EDIT2: of course the information about which this page revolves is based on laptops which are locked under some conditions, so techniques like the one I mentioned are not full warranty - they guarantee that in some instances of the product Linux may work.
The BIOS locking is obviously egregious and they deserve anything from refunding this person to a class action lawsuit.
But wow. That sounds like "wait, you mean people are going to use this as a computer?" style product management.
First, I'm just confused why Acer would even do this. At first I thought they'd be charging extra $ to unlock the BIOS or something, but the review doesn't mention any of that. It's just... locked period? Businesses usually only do things they have a financial incentive for, but I'm not seeing what the incentive is here. Does anyone have any idea?
Second, what is the "support number in the pamphlet that came with the computer" that wasn't Acer? Is it normal for computer manufacturers to provide a third-party support service or something?
Third... why even bother trying to return it to Acer? Probably the #1 reason to buy from Amazon is you can return almost everything to Amazon no-questions-asked for a full refund within 30 days.
However in this case it may be a different "lockdown" issue, though quite an odd choice reasoning-wise.
Hang Up; Call Again.
I’ve used this in many scenarios, with much success. It does mean you might on hold for a bit, so it’s best to plan mindless tasks that can be quickly interrupted while doing this, but for big ticket items where there isn’t much recourse it’s often worth it.
As soon as it becomes clear the person on the other end can’t help say “goodbye” and hang up.
Call right back and hopefully you’ll get a more helpful person.
It’s very possible there is a way to get into the BIOS, and the rep just didn’t know it but didn’t wanna come off as ignorant.
I used to consider ACER to be one of the good guys and more open source/Linux friendly.
I will NEVER trust them again!!!!
Why would this be done? People add secondary drives, may need to boot from USB, etc. It seems like a weird limitation.
> I replied I will simply complain to Amazon and seek a refund through them
I would ask Amazon why this is blocked and that they are selling something that is not proper (and Amazon cannot refer me to the producer because they are responsible).
I now got the fact that he was trying to make the laptop work, rather than just getting a refund.
Makes you wander if Amazon pays for these re^H^Hviews.
That's why System76 charges more.
What ass-hattery.
How do you even burn a CPU!
Tldr; set a bios password
Would anyone be interested in something like that btw? Fits mATX boards, most graphics cards (sadly not the top end), 4x 2.5 drives (plus onboard NVMe/mSATA), standard ATX PSUs and has a BIOS reset button.
Thinkpads have a pretty good reputation. You can also get big "desktop in a laptop" style PCs, and generally, the thick gaming laptops tend to be easy to work with. You can look at Clevo, which is known for being the OEM for many off-brand PCs, notably System76. If you are a bit more extreme, you can look at Panasonic Toughbooks: hardened, industrial laptops with plenty of swapable modules.
Framework have the advantage of being thin and light, most modular laptops are on the big side. It means it fits a niche. However, if re-usability is your goal, keep in mind that it is a startup, it may fail, and if that happens, forget about support and spare parts. By comparison, Lenovo is not going anywhere.
I confirm, I havent bought one yet, but the other day I saw this laptop:
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-IPS-Type-i5-10300H-Keyboard-FX70...
17 inches, a 144hz screen,GTX 1650, 512 GB SSD and space for 2 more!. You can add a 4 TB HD, a 1GB SSD, and change the RAM to 32 GB and get a monster machine for about 1200 USD.
With a Clevo (and other similar brands) you can have even more customization options, although I expect them to be more expensive.
A cheap B450 board will last me a decade at least. Start with a 2700x, upgrade all the way to a 12 core or even 16 core Ryzen 9. No thermal issues.
64+ GB of RAM, plenty of room to play with voltages and clocks everywhere, will actually run Linux without ridiculous issues.
Wifi handled by an external router with dual radios and Openwrt. Add a Li-Ion UPS if I'm going to a place with bad power supply.
I swore off desktops for laptops a decade ago but then they turned to locked down shit. No thanks.
Patently false. I’m secure-booting all my Ubuntu installations and (iirc) I could do that too back when I used Fedora.
Why do people keep repeating this FUD? Linux plus UEFI Secure Boot works fine as long as you use the signed version of GRUB. It’s not hard.
Edit: Downvotes? Really? For clearing up a (way too) common misunderstanding about Linux and UEFI, with facts? Jeez guys.
The Amazon customer was evidently confident enough to flip BIOS settings (or attempt to) but may have not known how to get Secure Boot working properly.
The default Ubuntu installation media boots OOB.
It’s really, really not hard.
1. Too guaranteed boot Linux with UEFI Secure Boot OOB without technical fiddling you have to use GRUB signed using keys trusted by Microsoft, like Canonical’s keys. So kinda, yes.
2. Many firmwares allows you to roll your own keys, meaning you don’t have to trust MS or Canonical or anyone else.
So you have the choice between user-friendly (default) or improved security (requires fiddling).
I personally think the default makes sense for most users, and I’m already 200 miles beyond proving that Linux can indeed use UEFI and Secure Boot. That’s an established fact for more than half a decade now.
Not being able to disable those in BIOS won’t prevent you from loading Linux, and it would reflect better on the wider Linux-community if people stopped pushing such FUD.
Canonical has a good write up here, if you want more details: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEFI/SecureBoot
I personally haven't seen a computer yet that doesn't allow this. Even if it's not provided the option to disable secure-boot is still available.
Phones are the real problem. As far as I can find only the Pixel phones will allow secure boot with a custom OS. If you own another phone you're already locked in to your manufacturers keys or no keys.
I don't like Ubuntu, in fact I consider it the worse Linux distributions (it was good in the old days, nowadays is full of crap like snap packages and commercial stuff).
Also, secure boot will have implications, for example with secure boot enabled you cannot load unsigned kernel modules. That depending on the situations can be a problem (for example a lot of third party drivers, for example the NVIDIA one, works by building a kernel module, you cannot install them, the distribution must provide a binary signed module or you won't be able to use them).
I can’t recall having issues with Fedora, but I’m not 100% on that. I might be wrong.
> Also, secure boot will have implications, for example with secure boot enabled you cannot load unsigned kernel modules.
I mean, that’s kinda the point. You should be able to boot into a kernel you can trust is untampered, and that includes blocking unsigned modules from being loaded.
Let’s face it: allowing that would essentially erase any trust you had built up until that point.
You can always enroll your own keys though?
> for example the NVIDIA one, works by building a kernel module, you cannot install them, the distribution must provide a binary signed module or you won't be able to use them
For Nvidia that’s a bit if a pain, but I’m not a gamer and has always used the open source nouveau drivers instead.
For me secure boot is clearly worth it (much improved security) at near no cost. For you the tally may be different, and I’m ok with that.
I’m just trying to help kill the myth that you can’t UEFI secure boot Linux, because clearly you can. People are doing it every day.
At this point you have to be wilfully ignorant if you still believe you can’t.
But look in this thread: replies upon replies and downvotes en masse on unopinionated, factual posts. Maybe some people really want to remain ignorant? I really can’t tell.
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html-single/U...
With the access to the UEFI, you can add your own trusted key, without needing to rely on Microsoft good will on signing your preloader.
It literally couldn’t be simpler.
Very ridiculous. You have to get someone else to sign it for you, don't you?
I tried with Ubuntu, Pop-OS, Arch, Manjaro... All except Fedora require to disable Secure Boot.
I give the benefit of doubt that the person just didn't know how to do it (also the source is this single Amazon review? Pretty low for HN tbh)
Here is another video with Ubuntu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap386n98j0U
There is even a Hackintosh tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpJmttuumVU
/r/linux_gaming also have several positive threads
Edit: And of course I'm instantly downvoted
I mean I'm all in for some good HN rage but there is no proof beyond that one person. Also no other review mentions this problem (just by searching around). Linux distros can pass Secure Boot just fine but maybe the reviewer just simply didn't know that
Honestly if I were in the US I'd just buy one to test this then send it back to Amazon because I very much doubt it's true