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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: 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.