What devices are available at all, and what are their pros and cons, considering not just software freedom, but also open hardware and repairability? The FSF’s Respects Your Freedom certification and LinuxPreloaded are good resources for finding companies and devices. EDIT: As is the list of vendors shipping variants of the CoreBoot BIOS replacement.
What devices can be bought from retailers in Aotearoa, or shipped here with decent customer support?
Companies and devices community members have shared experiences with (in alphabetical order);
ThinkPenguin: Sells laptops and a range of other hardware known to work with Trisquel and other 100% Free Code OS. Ordered a WiFi dongle sometime in 2016/17. The ordering process was easy, delivery fairly prompt, and after-sale customer service was excellent. Would buy from them again.
Pine64: Makers of PineBook, Pine Phone, PineTab, PineTime, etc. I ordered one of the first community edition PinePhones in 2020. The device was very cheap, the process was fairly simple, and delivery was prompt. Would buy from them again.
I’m guessing that’s do to with the MOLE Training con pushing the price of RAM though the ceiling?
EDIT: $2000-ish seems to be the standard price for laptops roughly equivalent to a MacBook. ThinkPenguin has one for about $1200, but I’m guessing that’s more minimal specs. Purism is at the more expensive end, closer to $3000.
I’m not aware of any high-volume Linux laptop sellers (which would push the cost down) except, occasionally, Dell. But those are not available in Aotearoa NZ so far as I know. All the recent laptops I’ve bought for myself, family, and friends (at least half a dozen) have been ‘refurbished Thinkpads’, mostly Carbon X1s and T490s (I’m loving the latter) for between $500-$700… they come with 16GB RAM, and between 250-500GB storage… They’ve got plenty of power for most uses (not gaming, though)… But they do come with Windows. I’ve normally - pre ‘AI’ circus - put a new NVME drive (usually a TB) into them, and installing Linux on it. Then I reuse the Windows NVMEs (but not the Windows!) for smaller devices like Raspberry Pis or similar.
As you might have guessed @lightweight , paying for a Windows license - however indirectly - is a total showstopper for me now. That’s why I’ve generally made do with cheap used laptops. But that puts me on a treadmill of having to get a new laptop every few years, and it’s a crapshoot whether they’ll run Trisquel (a deblobbed Ubuntu distro endorsed by the FSF).
Plus, if we want more hardware that respects our freedom in the market, we need to prove there’s a demand for it, by buying it from the vendor when it’s available. Ideally from companies that share our tech values. So then our money is going into funding the development of more freedom-respecting hardware, which we can buy later, creating a virtuous cycle.
But that’s harder to do in a small country, thus this topic. I wonder if we could pool resources with our counterparts in Oz to get more freedom-respecting hardware available here with good customers support?
On this subject, I’ve thought many times about setting up a co-op hardware buyer for Aotearoa, to help people find out about rights-respecting devices, and get a hold of them. The MVP would be a website where people can see a curated set of recommended hardware, of different types, from a range of vendors who currently ship to Aotearoa, with links to the relevant ordering page on the vendor’s website.
But if that worked out, and there was sufficient interest, it ought to be possible to get a competent core group together and start handling orders on the co-op website, and taking a markup from sales. At that point it would probably make sense to start talking to the vendors about dealer accounts, bulk discounts, etc.
To get the volume to really make it work, it would probably be necessary to evangelize to small-to-medium businesses, and not-for-profit orgs, especially those who buy a new set of devices every couple of years. Individual buyers could then get access to a wide range of devices, at cheaper prices, coasting on that baseline.
EDIT: The co-op could also offer a classifieds service (using something like Flohmarket?) where vetted customers could sell unwanted gear that meets the co-op’s ethical hardware criteria, This could even be an intermediary stage between the simple recommendations and links site MVP, and the full online retailer stage. An initial version could just connect sellers and buyers of used stuff and walk away, but if an online store and payment system was set up, the co-op could perhaps provide some payment-handling infrastructure to facilitate these trades (eg an escrow service), modulo financial regulations, liability, etc.
The predictable enshittification of Android/Linux seems to have set off a Cambrian explosion of new mobile offerings. Including companies making commercial devices to run deGoggled Android out-of-the-box, or novel mobile OS like Mobile GNU.
One that’s new to me is Brax, which popped up recently in the Flounder Matrix room, specifically their Wink device, which apparently supports 5G calling, and has a physical keyboard Brax also have devices in more standard ‘phone’ and ‘tablet’ form factors. As well as a privacy-focused wall panel (Wall Up) that might interest @lightweight and anyone else using Home Assistant for domestic automation.
But off the top of my head, the co-op would be the first port of call for customer support, but ultimately the vendor would have to stand behind the hardware they supply. If a problem can be resolved locally (eg simple software problems, replacing bad RAM or drive), so much the better. But the vendor would need to cover any replacement parts. Otherwise the co-op could facilitate sending the device for a repair or replace by the vendor, under the terms of both the warrant supplied and the Consumer Guarantees Act.
Brax also have devices in more standard ‘phone’ and ‘tablet’ form factors. As well as a privacy-focused wall panel (