SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has awarded its Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to the Taurinus X200 laptop sold by Libiquity.
This is the first product of Libiquity to achieve RYF certification. The Taurinus X200 has the same architecture and certified software as the Libreboot X200, which was certified in January 2015. The Taurinus X200 can be purchased from Libiquity at https://shop.libiquity.com/product/taurinus-x200.
The Taurinus X200 is a refurbished and updated laptop based on the Lenovo ThinkPad X200, with all of the original low-level firmware and operating system software replaced. It runs the FSF-endorsed Trisquel GNU/Linux operating system and the free software boot system, Libreboot. Perhaps most importantly, all of Intel's Management Engine (ME) firmware and software has been removed from this laptop.
The RYF certification mark means that the product meets the FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy. The Taurinus X200 comes with the fast and secure Libreboot firmware and the FSF-endorsed Trisquel GNU/Linux operating system. Importantly, Intel's Management Engine (ME) firmware with its applications like AMT (remote out-of-band management/backdoor system, part of "vPro") and PAVP (audio/video DRM) have been removed from this laptop.
The laptop ships within the USA and may be purchased from the Libiquity Store.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2015, @10:03PM
I agree with the premise....but isn't this a pretty old laptop? I seem them refurbished for $150...
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday September 30 2015, @10:21PM
Tes it is old. I'm typing this on an X200s, the incremental update of the X200 and if Lenovo still made Thinkpads I'd have replaced it already. Still hoping their efforts to reintroduce one succeeds because this sucker is getting long in the tooth.
Yes it would be nice to buy a laptop without blobs and secret bits, but if we have to buy ancient refurb gear to get it, that is pretty hard to justify.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 01 2015, @12:42PM
Lenovo does still make Thinkpads, but they're nothing like the older ones made by IBM. I have one of those I still use in my household and it's a lovely machine--first and only computer I ever developed an emotional attachment to. So as old as this machine is, the FSF certification and the pricepoint are attractive to me.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by frojack on Wednesday September 30 2015, @10:27PM
Yes, kind of old, but still pretty good for anything except gaming.
Slightly better than my old workhorse Dell Inspiron 9400, 2007-ish.
Upon which I run Linux+Kde4 with all the bling turned on and even Virtual machines running under VMware.
The Lenovo is a Pretty capable machine, even if it suffers from the small screen.
CPU Intel® Core™2 Duo, 2.26 GHz – 2.66 GHz
Graphics Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500MHD
Screen 12.1″ 1280x800 TFT LCD
Wireless Qualcomm Atheros 2.4-GHz 802.11b/g/n or
Qualcomm Atheros 2.4/5.0-GHz 802.11a/b/g/n with long-range Signal Sustain Technology (SST)
Bluetooth Broadcom (some models)
Ethernet Intel® Gigabit Ethernet
Ports 1 x VGA
3 x USB 2.0
5-in-1 card reader
1 x Headphone
1 x Microphone
1 x Gigabit Ethernet
1 x ExpressCard/54
Fingerprint reader (some models)
Camera 1280x1024 1.3 MP (some models)
Dimensions 11.6″ x 8.3–9.2″ x 1.4″
Weight 3.24–3.58 lb
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Wednesday September 30 2015, @10:56PM
Sorry, but that's less than the minimum spec of the lowest clients that I buy for a school's use (i.e. going to be trashed within a couple of years), and costs more. Not to mention that a 12" screen is pretty pathetic, especially 4:3, and a VGA port? Come on, that's way past legacy now. You are never going to plug that in in that machine's life, except as proof of concept. I can't even buy a VGA port on an expensive TV, and VGA monitors are already getting harder to find. Even projectors have moved on. I can understand no HDCP, but not even a DVI or similar? And the webcam is barely up to scratch.
I know price-point isn't their main concern but I'm basically buying a very old, reconditioned laptop, with some OS slapped over the top, some stupid stickers, and a couple of add-in cards. It's pathetic, really, as a realistic modern computing option.
It's actually MORE difficult to use that computer than, say, a Raspberry Pi with some accessories. About the only thing going for it is the old-style IBM design but even that's legacy nowadays and things have moved on - I mean, seriously, not even a number pad.
This is truly an "I support your principle" purchase and NOTHING else.
I still have old IBM Thinkpads running around in my house. One of them I kept as it was like this - I tricked it out with every modern gadget I could find to make it a viable modern machine when my laptop blew and I couldn't afford a replacement. Hell, that actually had external floppy and 802.11g, which was a pretty insane combination. And it worked/still works. But, hell, the second I could use anything else I did. And that was nearly 10 years ago. It didn't even have a Windows key. By comparison this is even less useful hardware, for more cost, and as a deliberate purchase to be like that.
Freedom is fabulous. I would pay good money for a properly free laptop from these people - one that they get Clevo or somebody cheap to build and certify every chip and use a Coreboot-bios to run it all. But this is just recycled second-hand junk with a Linux distro on it. And not even a Linux distro I've ever heard of.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pixeldyne on Wednesday September 30 2015, @11:05PM
I agree about the specs (mostly), however in my experience VGA and 4:3 screens are actually sought after features. At the very least 16:10 but never 16:9.
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Wednesday September 30 2015, @11:32PM
Sorry to troll, but no. While I'm not normally much of an Intel fan, that Core2 would trash a raspberry pi, easily. Also, have you ever used a projector? As it turns out, VGA is actually still good for that, unless you want to park your laptop within about 6ft of the projector and have it there the entire time.
To be fair, that laptop costs far too much for what it is, but it's still a very competent machine by most people's standards. The fact that it doesn't come with whatever the hell passes for a touchpad these days is actually a bonus, and I'd gladly pay for a 4:3 screen (as long as it had some decent resolution).
If anyone really wants something like this, then it would be far easier to just get one off of eBay and flash it themselves. On some of the x200s, flashing the BIOS is as easy as firing up Debian and using flashrom. For others, it just requires a cheap adapter and some patience.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 1) by pehjota on Thursday October 01 2015, @01:57AM
The aspect ratio is actually 16:10, which is IMO a good balance between good old 4:3 and the new short widescreen displays.
And no, unfortunately it's not as easy as just running flashrom. You need an external programmer like a BeagleBone Black, a SOIC clip, some jumper cables, and a power supply.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2015, @03:02AM
There's privacy-respecting BIOS firmware you can easily flash onto laptops now? Neat! Link please...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2015, @09:15AM
There's privacy-respecting BIOS firmware
Sure is.
you can easily flash
How nimble are you?
onto laptops now?
For a pretty small number of laptops for now.
Neat! Link please...
Agreed. http://libreboot.org/ [libreboot.org]
(Score: 1) by pehjota on Thursday October 01 2015, @01:53AM
It's 16:10, not 4:3. You can get a dock which adds DisplayPort (which you can passively adapt to DVI-D or HDMI).
The distribution is basically Ubuntu with a nicely themed "classic" GNOME instead of Unity by default and without Adobe Flash Player and whatever other proprietary software comes with Ubuntu these days.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday October 01 2015, @09:19AM
I'd agree with the low spec CPU - it is the same as the one that the laptop I had two upgrade cycles ago had. Both upgrades were noticeable speed improvements (though I do a lot of dev work on this machine, and fast builds make a huge difference in productivity. With 16GB of RAM and a decent SSD, I can keep a quad-core [8 thread] i7 saturated quite happily). The old Intel graphics are also fairly anaemic, though they should be fine for running a compositing desktop. The default config comes with a spinning rust disk (I was very happy not to have one of those in my last three laptops - a portable is really not a mechanical-disk friendly environment). The largest SSD they ship is 240GB which is pretty small by modern standards (my current laptop has 1TB, and is over a year old now). The max RAM is only 8GB, which might be just about enough now, but isn't particularly future proof.
The one thing that I disagree on is the VGA port. Most projectors still have VGA (HDMI is just starting to appear, but most organisations upgrade their projectors on a very long cycle) and so not having to carry a dongle around to be able to give presentations is a nice feature. I'd still want something more modern (ideally DisplayPort) for driving a monitor, though I don't think the GPU could actually handle a 4K monitor, even with the correct port.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 01 2015, @12:54PM
This statement puzzles me. I bought an i7 1 year ago and it has a VGA port. It's handy for projectors. So calling a 1 yr old laptop "way past legacy" because it has a VGA port seems a strange thing to say, since the latter part of your post hints that you're old enough to remember older models.
This part is perplexing, too. After all the Snowden files revealing how the NSA and other nefarious agencies are collaborating with big companies to invade your privacy and compromise your freedom and security, do you really honestly think that a FSF-certified laptop is "pathetic?" I'm not a FSF partisan and whether this laptop is safe against the aforementioned tampering remains TBD, but I salute the direction these guys are trying to take things in.
Then maybe it's worth supporting what these people are doing, to encourage them to do more of the same and enable them to eventually offer a "properly free laptop."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Thursday October 01 2015, @12:04AM
The GPU is garbage, which means video acceleration is gonna be piss poor at best, and honestly a $40 AMD quad APU like the 3850 AM1 is gonna have better performance than this thing. This is...what? First gen C2D? Both the quad Intel Atoms and the quad AMD APUs both have better performance per watt and better performance overall than this thing. Also let us not forget that plastic and boards DO age and every heat cycle brings these things one step closer to failure. Are you REALLY gonna trust your important work to a unit made when Dubya was president?
The simple facts are thus...CAN it work? Sure you can even surf on a 2003 1.8GHz Sempron in 2015 if you like but it will NOT be a great experience and sure as hell isn't worth $450 for a laptop that you can find on eBay for sub $140. If you want an "open" laptop simply buy this AMD quad APU lappy for $50 less [tigerdirect.com] and load Linux on it. Acer doesn't use any of the BIOS bullshit like Lenovo,AMD has hired guys to work on the open driver with the goal to ultimately replace their Linux driver with the FOSS one, and the performance per watt and performance overall will be head and shoulders better than a CPU+GPU combo that came out nearly a decade ago. Hell it takes less than 30 minutes to load Linux on one of these things with a flash stick and I can vouch for these as I've sold a few of them at the shop and they are great performers, solid and reliable. Oh and its the same APU in this list of Ubuntu certified systems [ubuntu.com] and if it'll work in Ubuntu it'll usually work just fine in all the Ubuntu derivatives which are by a pretty large margin the most popular Linux distros.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Thursday October 01 2015, @01:47AM
You seem to have forgotten what it was they were trying to accomplish.
They want a guaranteed backdoor free computer. With any new Intel or AMD chip or Video cards you can't guarantee that any more.
http://wccftech.com/intel-possibly-amd-chips-permanent-backdoors-planted-nsa-updated-1/ [wccftech.com]
http://theunhivedmind.com/wordpress3/amd-will-also-release-spyware-processors-like-intels-vpro/ [theunhivedmind.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Hairyfeet on Thursday October 01 2015, @02:08AM
Did you bother even reading your own link? Its a rumor that AMD will be POSSIBLY using the exacttrak DRM chip at some point in the future which guess what? Is NOT including in the above APU and in fact has yet to be released in a single AMD product and with the death of Seamicro and GloFlo failing to make the leap to 14nm? Will probably NEVER be released!
So sorry, you are complaining about hardware which does not exist not to mention you are actually believing a site that has Putin with headphones and is actually putting up "Jade Helms is teh EBIL!" articles as a reliable source? Whats' next, want to give us some links from the Weekly World News while you are at it?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by pixeldyne on Wednesday September 30 2015, @10:54PM
Yes but they have additionally replaced the firmware and tested it to make sure everything works, so that's extra labor cost involved.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday September 30 2015, @11:27PM
Is that really needed though? Granted without that it wouldn't be 100% FSF-certified, but the firmware really and truly doesn't need to be FSF-certified as long as it's probably compliant with relevant standards and allows things like secure boot to be turned off.
I get that some folks get a hard on for this sort of thing, but it's too expensive for what they're selling and some of it isn't any more useful than Apple's glowing apple on the back of their laptops.
(Score: 2) by pixeldyne on Wednesday September 30 2015, @11:35PM
Yes, the product here is the firmware not so much the thinkpad laptop. Sales figures will determine actual demand for this sort of configuration.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2015, @08:43AM
It's not useful to have a computer that fully respects your freedoms? Speak for yourself; I actually care about my freedoms.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pehjota on Thursday October 01 2015, @02:55AM
Exactly. There's significant labor in testing that everything works, reconditioning/refurbishing and cleaning the laptop, installing (with an external SPI programming setup) the firmware, etc.
With that quality control work put into it, it comes with a warranty much longer than basically any other "used" computer, and in practice it'll most likely last far longer than that warranty period.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday September 30 2015, @11:10PM
Confirmed [tigerdirect.com]. That does give the $445 price tag a bit of sticker shock. On the other hand, the GNU key on the keyboard instead of a Windows key is pretty neat, and I have no problem paying some extra to get something running entirely free software. I'm not sure if $295 falls under “some extra,” but based on the specs it would do everything I'd need it to do.
Might give it some thought. I have been needing a new laptop ever since the old one died.
(Score: 2) by pixeldyne on Wednesday September 30 2015, @11:21PM
It seems its major and practical selling point is security. I havent checked if it has TPM, I assume it doesnt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2015, @12:05AM
I would be happy with a computer like this that came in a 14"x7"x1" box, as in an easily transportable CPU box. I don't really need the screen and keyboard to be built into the CPU box. With a device like this, I could easily carry a screen and keyboard with me if I have need of moving around.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pehjota on Thursday October 01 2015, @02:16AM
Sure, $150 for a laptop with the original proprietary (and generally slow) Lenovo BIOS, the proprietary Intel ME firmware with its security issues, little or no warranty, etc.