Ask HN: PRISM-free laptops? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: PRISM-free laptops?

13 pointshellcow14 comments

I'm in the market for a high-end laptop running Linux, but after several days of searching, I haven't found anything that fits my criteria.

The ideal laptop will have:

  - No PRISM affiliation (No Windows or Mac pre-installed)
  - Strong basics (great keyboard, touchpad, 6+ hours of battery life,
    HD+ resolution)
  - Good support for Arch Linux or Debian out of the box
    or with easy setup
  - Nvidia GPU
  - Haswell i5 or i7
  - 256GB SSD or SSD+HD combo
  - 8GB+ RAM
  - 13-15" screen, lightweight
  - Great customer service
  - No optical drive

Edit: Preferably with a removable battery and without a built-in webcam/microphone.

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Item one is baffling. You use the Internet - whatever you do is cached by numerous parties, and the NSA will be one of those parties, no matter what the OS is. It sucks that machines come with an OS pre-installed, that you have to pay for that OS, and that the OS often has really lousy additions to it. Buying a clean copy of the OS is often more expensive. But, whatever machine you buy, it's normally possible to get a different OS on their. Be careful about some of the more obscure tablets and mini pcs which might have an odd ARM processor with minimal support.

I'd be interested to see what people recommend though. It sounds like a nice machine.

There's probably a market for a good developer / professional machine. Chromebook Pixel is lovely, but only has 4 GB RAM. People say that Lenovo Thinkpad T Series lost touch with the market. MacBook Pro has a lot of respect, but they have some weirdnesses too.

It's about boycotting companies that are eagerly cooperating with the government to spy on hundreds of millions of innocent Americans.

Chromebook Pixel is made by Google—again, PRISM.

Yes yes, I know it's about boycotting those companies.

Accepting the fact that someone only cares about PRISM and similar government spying: All companies are involved.

You can claim the OS money back, sometimes. I don't know if anyone ever actually did that, or if it's still something that people can do.

So, even if the machine has a bad OS pre-installed you can remove it and reclaim the money. OR there are a few hardware makers who sell machines with Linux pre-installed.

But, assuming the boycott is strong: What if those hardware makers also sell to governments? Do you add those makers to the boycott?

And, once you have the hardware: Where do you get Internet connectivity from? Because all those companies are happy to roll over and give the government data.

Closest I can think of off the top of my head is http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd

No discreet video though.

Unfortunately that is a huge point, since I need to program using Nvidia cards.

you must be joking. it is a large (if not the biggest, compare with hp etc.) hw supplier.

Just make sure the laptop has a hardware off/on switch for the wireless card. Then flip the switch to "off" for PRISM-free mode.

/snark

Why a Nvidia GPU? That would require using Nvidias binary blob, or the unstable open-source driver. You could go full-RMS http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

I've been doing work in OpenCV lately which really only has good support for Nvidia.

If you're worried about this then I wouldn't trust any "pre-installed" OS on these machines, whether it's Linux or not. Get a machine and install Linux on your own, and it's probably best to use open source drivers for it.

I'm not opposed to this, but buying a machine with Windows pre-installed means that Microsoft gets paid. I want to avoid that.

You could try to find one used. Microsoft still gets paid but at least not by you. Also no customer service I guess...

Also it occurs to me that you could possibly buy a laptop without a hard drive, then a blank hard drive, boot linux from a thumb drive and install that way. You would still have to luck out on matching the hardware specs and everything though.

Also also it occurs to me that that might be a viable service right now, for someone who has money to burn.

On a slightly related note, how can we detect backdoors implemented on the physical level?

You can't.

No, seriously, you won't find a video card (especially an nVidia) that doesn't have a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft for the use of certain patented codecs. Whatever you buy, there's gonna be a small amount of cash going to Microsoft. Sorry.

Have you considered being less indignant and working to encourage other people to be more aware of the security of their data?

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