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) by dyingtolive on Thursday October 01 2015, @12:47AM
To be fair, if there ever was an ancient laptop worth doing this to, it'd be one of the Thinkpad line. I came into a spare Thinkpad R50 (Pentium M of all the things) some, probably, eight years ago, that I gave to my sister to use at college. She installed Ubuntu on it and has been using it ever since. Only hardware problem she ran into was when she had to edit a bios image to disable the damned wlan whitelist (the one bad thing about ANY of the IBM/Lenovo line), and she had to replace the coin cell because she was getting sick of the RTC resets.
I actually now have a spare G500 I should really send her as an upgrade, now that I think about it.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 1) by pehjota on Thursday October 01 2015, @02:35AM
Yeah, that's a problem with IBM/Lenovo, HP, Dell, and others. You may be pleased to know that this Taurinus laptop comes with no such whitelist. In fact an Atheros Wi-Fi card comes installed, which was not "authorized" by Lenovo's BIOS.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday October 01 2015, @05:29AM
Such a pity it's so old though. I've already 'fixed' the G500. Had to for linux/hackintosh compatibility issues.
The bios fix was one of the few times she's called me for tech support though. Didn't really need to do much other than provide moral support. For an art grad, she probably got the real brains in the family, all things considered.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!