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Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

In contrast to the Purism machines the Gluglug has free firmware. As far as I know this is the only commercially available solution with free firmware. It's also the laptop Richard Stallman uses.

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I've been using a C720 Chromebook with custom SeaBios firmware and running Linux.

While not a beast, a Haswell i3 with 4GB isn't bad at the ~$300 price point. Throw in a 128GB ssd and it's good to go. It's been my daily driver as I'm unfortunately content with 'open enough' given the market.

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-C720-3404-11-6-Inch-Chromebook-Gr... https://johnlewis.ie/custom-chromebook-firmware/faq/

Do you have any idea whether there's a model with more RAM? I'm sick of my X1 Carbon but 4GB of RAM hasn't been enough.

Edit: The Chromebook Pixel might do but it's not particularly Free.

Looks like 4GB is it unless you want to shell out for a Pixel. http://prodct.info/chromebooks/#f&

Edit: Chart seems somewhat up to date at least, best I could find.

The original Acer C7 (now back-called C710 I guess) supports up to 16GB: http://normcf.net/~john/chromebook/Acer/acerC7ChromebookUpgr...

You could even put Coreboot on it.

People praise the C720 a lot but it has no upgradeable RAM which makes it a regression in my book.

My wifes old netbook is about to die. Unfortunately I only upgraded it with a 2.5" SSD less than a year ago. I was thinking about buying a chromebook for her but was hesitant, because I'd really like to reuse that SSD. Does the C720 come with standard 2.5" SATA SSD or is it mSATA/m.2?

It's an m.2 unfortunately.

In contrast to the Purism machines the Gluglug uses second-hand, 7-year old hardware.

I've been using my X200 since I got it. Not only has it survived multiple falls from a 1.8m standing desk, it's still perfectly serviceable for everything I've needed it for. Most Thinkpads released since then are markedly worse, plagued with low-resolution or glossy screens. They've also removed the LED indicator that tells you whether the AC adapter is plugged in and when the battery level is critical.

tl;dr: sure there are newer machines with better specs, but nothing better in ways that actually matter to me.

I am thinking of buying a Gluglug, mostly as a political statement. Is it easy to replace the battery, memory, disk, etc. on the X200?

BTW, I appreciate the work you did in the Clojure community!

I don't know about the X200 specifically but older ThinkPads tend to be really good with that. I have an X220 and it is easily the most serviceable laptop I have ever owned. It was super easy to upgrade the memory and add an extra disk. The battery is replaceable without opening the machine up and so it's easy to swap batteries if you use your machine for very extended periods of time.

Yes, that's another reason I've avoided upgrading--I really appreciate the ability to swap the battery out in the middle of a long flight without a screwdriver.

Basically everything in the X200 is user-serviceable; you can even replace the keyboard without taking it in, provided you can find the parts you need. The only thing I'd be worried about is being able to find new batteries for it; worth looking into before you pull the trigger.

Because newer hardware is even more difficult to liberate.

So what? Specs are not everything that counts.

I would think that power vs battery life would be pretty high on the list of priorities for technically inclined users. I current-gen core i3 (like the 5010U) packs quite a bit of performance vs. the power it requires.

For me, first and foremost are the parts that I interact with... namely the screen, keyboard and mouse. TBH, I have yet to try a laptop keyboard I like... I use a model-m style keyboard from Unicomp (103-key US), and all laptops and most other keyboards feel like sponges. I've yet to use a touchpad that's nearly as good as a macbook pro's, and their keyboard is better than most. The rMBP screen is pretty nice too. That said, there's certainly a price tag attached.

As to the software, I could care less mostly. I survive in windows, linux and osx on a daily basis, if I have a command prompt (bash) and most of the same tooling available (thankful for git extensions for windows bringing all the gfw/git/bash/ssh tools with it), I'm pretty happy. I have also started using an natural scrolling everywhere.

All of that said, it's nice to see open options that start under $1k in price, even if slightly older hardware. I'm not sure how good/easy Trisquel is to use, I know it's based with dpkg, but without apt/aptitude on top of it, may be difficult for most people to use in practice (I couldn't find reference to this, just a cursory look).

> As to the software, I could care less mostly.

This offering is essentially for people who care about the software more than anything else. So this is probably not for you.

> priorities for technically inclined users.

There are a bunch of very different people who can claim to be technically inclined. Let's stop generalizations.

This offering is for people that care that the software in charge of the computer is open. They might be perfectly fine with sandboxed binary blobs.

Plus, tracker1's software tastes are pretty much unrelated to the claim that efficiency is important.

They don't care about software, they care about ideology.

What do you mean by ideology? You mean they care about ideals and ethics related to software? Is that a bad thing? Even to people who don't care about ideology, ideology matters because they are affected by the dominant ideology. Actually that's how ideology mostly tends to operate, through the quiet complicity of the people who don't care. So when you talk about software without talking about licensing, freedom to read and change source code, etc, that is how the ideology of proprietary software becomes normalized.

... and as a result, I end up with reliable, light, somewhat costly machines(1) that come from one or two vendors and provide a consistent if inflexible experience.

This is not the lose-lose that some people seem to think it is. One of the reasons closed-source few-vendor is a dominant ideology is that it actually satisfies the use-case for an awful lot of users. Meanwhile, in 2015, I still can't get a reliable basic audio(!) experience on my Linux distributions because the open-source community can't seem to decide on the right way to do something as fundamental as "pipe bytes to the digital-analog-conversion hardware."

(1) Costly in general. With the Gluglug running at around US $500, it's not winning the cost game.

If the default audio setups of several different distributions fail to work, that's unfortunate. In my case, Dell's preinstalled Ubuntu had working audio, and when I replaced that with a custom NixOS installation, all I had to do was enable PulseAudio with a oneliner. Is your audio hardware supported by the Linux kernel?

Hardware companies keep specs secret and sabotage the development of free software drivers. That's feasible because they only need to collaborate with Microsoft and Apple to support a big market share. If consumers don't care, then apparently this is what happens. But it's not just a question of the competence of free software developers.

My hardware is ostensibly supported, but I often have to killall pulseaudio or restart the machine to get audio playing on Flash in Chrome.

Part of my point, though, is it's not a question of the competence of free software developers.

It's a question of the capacity of free software developers in the long-standing market / legal ecosystem to deliver a reliable solution at all. The roadblock may be entirely structural and completely unfair; doesn't matter. As the end-user (speaking with the Queen's "end-user"), we don't care why it doesn't work; we care that if we buy this computer / OS it works, and if we install that OS on that computer it doesn't. So of course we buy this computer / OS; we have work to do, and "Make the ecosystem fair for hackers to implement a working and reliable pulseaudio" isn't that work.

Knuth, when faced with a world where he didn't have a typesetting solution to print his book, wrote TeX. Most people just put up with the crappy existing solution, because their goal is to write a book.

Well, Flash is a proprietary bundle, right? Who knows what it's doing? It may not be PulseAudio's fault.

Of course there's some causal reason why many are stuck using proprietary software. That doesn't invalidate the free software cause, and is not a reason to snark about how "they don't care about software, only ideology." That distinction is itself ideological.

    I know [Trisquel]'s based with dpkg, but without apt/aptitude on top of it

Trisquel is virtually a deblobbed and cleaned Ubuntu, so it does use apt/aptitude.

Thanks... I looked through bits of their FAQ, and a few other places. The wikipedia article referenced only dpkg, not apt/aptitude. Though, pragmatically I load some not entirely free software on my machines (chrome proper, flash, and a few other things namely).

I still think it's cool to have open options... I've tended towards buying routers/phones that I can replace the software, even if I don't start off that route because I like having supported, updateable options past the production date.

I've been less concerned on the desktop/laptop front, but am actually getting more so.. given the lock-down methods that have been in the pipeline, I don't want to be stuck with the MFG OS... I've been looking into getting a couple C2D macbooks, so I can load linux on them to play around with... I'm relatively happy with my current rMBP, but the changes apple has made to the OS irk me more with each release.

Trisquel is as easy to use as Ubuntu. It's built from Ubuntu LTS with all the proprietary parts removed. The default desktop environment is a customized GNOME 3 meant to operate more like GNOME 2, but it supports everything Ubuntu supports, including standard tools like aptitude.

Just throwing this out there, but isn't it possible that a lot more performance can be squeezed out of a machine that offloads less to the CPU in binary blobs?

In the end it's all binary blobs that go to the CPU... in the case of closed software, it's that the source is unavailable, so you cannot confirm security, or patch bugs when you encounter them... tbh, I don't typically dig that deep into the bowels, but have had ever increasing concerns, that have manifested themselves more in the cell phone and home/small-office routers than anywhere so far, but with Windows RT came into the desktop world full front.

I want to be able to use my hardware beyond the manufacturer's expiration date. If I choose to replace functional hardware with new hardware, that's my choice.. but the ever encroaching state of planned obsolescence disgusts me. Which is why I really appreciate FOSS, and more open hardware options.

I think it is a fair criticism.

It correctly portraits the two options we have to spend our money on a new device:

    a) Very modern device and supporting the status quo

    b) A slightly outdated device and supporting the market for
       devices that are more free

I'll add "supporting reuse and reduction of e-waste" to the second option.

I'm typing this on an (unliberated) X60 which I use as a sort of netbook and which steadfastly refuses to go wrong! I'll keep it out of landfill as long as possible I think.

I'd argue that this is far from slightly outdated. Starting with RAM, four gigabytes of RAM may work for a barebones programmer machine, but once you want to start doing any sort of media work, like editing photos, video, etc, you start running into that wall real quickly. Even software development work is going to cause you to run into limitations. As the processor doesn't have an IOMMU, any vms you want to run will be limited to slower, virtualized, graphics, and that expresscard slot on the side becomes a security concern (hello, evil maid). Additionally, it only supports outputting to vga, limiting your options in monitors, and making sharing content on a friend's tv a lot harder.

So in short, its constraints in various areas really do shackle you in a lot of ways. Media creation, software creation, sharing, all suffer from the weaknesses of this machine.

Not everyone needs to do all of those things. In fact, I'd argue that very few people need to do all of them. So, yeah, it's a fraction of the machine the (not maxed out) 13" rMBP I'm typing at right now is. So? If "freedom" (as the term is used by the FSF and folks of similar ideologies) is your priority, you make some compromises. If not, some would argue, that's a compromise you're making, right there.

The x200 also unofficially supports 8GB of system RAM. Since the machine is under no warranty coverage whatsoever, running an unsupported configuration will, at worst, cost you the price of a couple of 4GB SO-DIMMs or return shipping on an RMA.

Please don't judge a thing that doesn't satisfy your priorities as being somehow objectively "bad" or "wrong". It just doesn't meet your needs. Go find a machine that does, then, and let the people whose needs and priorities are met by a Gluglug x200 satisfy theirs with this.

So I'm not allowed to discuss what these people are giving up in the name of "freedom"? That the fact that this is a refurbished machine from seven years ago shouldn't be brought up? That functionality was removed in order to, through some bizarre twist of logic, make the machine "more free"? Given that this is a machine that is built in the name of ideology, I would argue that questioning aspects of that ideology, and what is demanded to acheive their idea of purity, is more than fair game.

You're perfectly free to discuss it. Your posts read more like telling people they're wrong in finding these machines suitable for their purposes than just discussing the tradeoffs they're making. Even this comment, with clearly un-biased turns of phrase like "bizarre twist of logic" and "their idea of purity" conveys a conviction on your part that these people aren't merely wrong, but deluded.

Tone down your dismissal of other people's needs and use-cases, and we can have a discussion.

Remember, RMS uses a Libreboot-based x60, which is even less machine than the x200 under discussion here. Are you going to tell him he's wrong, too?

I feel that the machine here is borne more out of ideology than logic or necessity. The laptops in question, and the software installed, are designed to take away any ability to do things that the designers do not like. For example, the ability to update the CPU's microcode, or load firmware for numerous devices. I would argue the rational approach would be to not ship the firmware, but keep the drivers in place for a user to use them and the firmware, if they so desire.

Regarding RMS, I do not feel that he is a good spokesperson for the Free Software movement, or computing in general. He's requested people to delete Free software and pretend it doesn't exist because it could potentially be used with unwritten software to potentially allow a non-free program to use gcc as part of its chain [1]. He has criticized software because it allows interoperation with a perceived enemy [2]. Lower down on my list of criticisms would be his use of the x60, because it is in a lot of ways saying that free software is an inferior good. Instead of trying to work with a team to create a completely open laptop, like Bunnie Huang has done [3], or use a Chromebook that runs a Free software boot environment by design, he uses a very old laptop instead. Which in the end, is one of the biggest flaws with RMS's operations. He seems unwilling to show that one can use Free, modern, devices and still not limit himself.

I use sharp words because I am tired of the lack of vision, lack of foresight, and lack of creativity from the gnu branch of free/open software. Modifying a seven year old laptop and making it less functional is not revolutionary or interesting. Selling said item for a three time markup is not revolutionary or interesting. There are more than enough options out there, the Free software community needs to put up or shut up.

[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2001-02/msg00895.html

[2] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg003...

[3] http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?tag=novena

I also think your tone is inappropiate.

And your justification

    I use sharp words because I am tired of the lack of vision, lack
    of foresight, and lack of creativity from the gnu branch of free/open software.

discredits you.

"but once you want to start doing any sort of media work, like editing photos, video, etc"

Its interesting how slowly use cases change and how slowly software changes, but how fast hardware increases. In the 90s I would have really been lucky to have 4 gigs to do those tasks you list.

For me, the larger fallback would be the largest SSD options seems to be 120GB, if this is a SATA2/3 interface, which I would presume it would be nice to see a 250/500GB option for SSDs which are generally more of a boost for me than going above 8GB ram.

Apparently the first Core2Duo MacBooks (MacBook 2,1) can also run free firmware: http://www.libreboot.org/docs/hcl/index.html

It's the Intel "Calistoga" platform, which is very similar to the X60 in that it uses the same chipset (945) and Apple probably followed the Intel reference design closely since it was their entry into the x86 world.

IBM/Lenovo tends to follow the reference designs more than the other companies, which helps with Coreboot porting.

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