open source hardware has a lot of potential
Especially when home manufacturing becomes more of a thing.
I mean home manufacturing is cool and all, but in the short term open source hardware has the potential to create a lot more competition in traditional manufacturing. Most big tech rely on IP nowadays, without it there would be more competitors to drive prices down and increase supply. Home manufacturing is more in the far future IMO
Test it with OpenBSD and with a Linux-libre distribution to verify how open the hardware is.
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This is patently false. As of now my Dell laptop doesn’t use any proprietary blobs to speak of.
Even if that’s true, that’s a different computer.
Right. This laptop will be even more open. I’m not getting it…
I see what you’re saying now. Which dell laptop is it, by the way?
I suspect what people are assuming is that your laptop might have some closed source firmware or BIOS, and I assume what System76 is saying is that this won’t be true on their Virgo laptop.
I’m a framework guy myself, at least so far.
As of now my Dell laptop doesn’t use any proprietary blobs to speak of.
By chance, it wouldn’t happen to be the Dell Latitude E6400?
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Intel hardware is very well supported in all distros at this point. You don’t need to do any configuration with intel or nvidia at this point [running the open source driver]. You can have Arch up and running in minutes on certain Dells. My two are a 2021 XPS with Arch and a L5411 with Ubuntu [for work]. Both of these IIRC you can get with Ubuntu from Dell direct.
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The GPU and WiFi drivers are going to be the major limitations here. All GPU and WiFi vendors now require proprietary blobs in order to function.
No. OpenBSD develops their own drivers fot Intel iGPU l, 2.5Gb ethernet, and wi-fi. They don’t have.license to include them in base, they download the firmware after first reboot if there’s a basic ethernet connection.
The source code is publicly available from OpenBSD firmware folder on server, but cannot be included in the base installation.
I’ve only used Linux-libre when it comes to fully free systems. There is no option to download proprietary firmwares on a GNU/Linux-libre distro.
Are the firmwares distributed as blobs, or as source-available (proprietary-licensed) code?
For OpenBSD firmware? They are not blobs but are binary installs as there is no such thing as a source installation, everything has to be compiled and build before it can be installed.
I believe OpenBSD firmware has an ISC license attached to them, but since OpenBSD developers develop the firmware, they don’t have legal license from Intel to distribute in base, but I’m pretty sure that OpenBSD firmware has an ISC license for freedom.
That’s based. I might give PopOS a try when their new DE reaches feature completion (since they don’t sell their laptops in my country unfortunately)
Pop is my new go to distro. Even without their own DE, the tweaks to gnome are really well considered and I don’t spend an hour unfucking the default environment.
I just don’t give it a go sooner because I don’t really like gnome 😅 too many things that work differently from what I expect, and too many things I take for granted requires plugins and extensions. From what I’ve seen, Cosmic is shaping up really well though.
I distro hopped forever until I finally landed on pop, staying on it for a long time before thinking about switching
I was on Pop for a while, if I was still using an Nvidia card I would still be on Pop. Their built in support/installer is just so convenient and seamless for the most part.
Nvidia is just such a pain on Linux. Like if it works then great, but I have had just so many minor problems in the past.
My Nvidia card is essentially just a backup now in my server in case I need video output for a terminal.
EDIT: I’m like 90% sure I’m remembering Purism here, not System 76.
I want them to succeed (and open source hardware in general), but I got burnt by one of their early ones. A complete lemon of a laptop. I’ve had better build quality out of Acer.
I was pleasantly surprised by my OG Framework DIY laptop though. They’re doing great work.
Wife got one a few years ago that had multiple hardware issues that took a ridiculous amount of back and forth to get them to fix . Talking months of effort.
I agree, I had a darter that was garbage…but both my wild dog and thelio have been spectacular, and I trust their hardware and PCB dev absed on success in the thelio custom PCBs and launch keyboard. I think judging them by their clevo rebrand isn’t as valid as judging them by the launch and the thelio. If I needed a laptop, I’d strongly consider this
Fingers crossed they’ll open that EU warehouse sooner rather then later. And they’ll sell more then their keyboards from it (I’ve been looking forward to at least those with affordable shipping for ages)
That’s awesome! Next laptop decided on.
