Supporting hardware companies that support software freedom

1

There’s 2 sets of issues here;

  1. 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.
  2. 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);

1 Like
2

I’ve had experience with;

  • 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.

Other companies I’m aware of;

3

Nearly 20 years ago(!) I bought a laptop from system76 and they’re still operating - https://system76.com. It was fine.

I just looked at the prices though and they are eye-watering. Maybe that’s normal these days.

4

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.

5

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.

6

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?

1 Like
7

I’ve had great experience with Purism devices:

  • Librem 14 (they are selling Librem 16 in its place now). Delivered in one month.
  • Librem 5 GNU/Linux phone - essentially an ARM computer with touchscreen and modem attached. Delivered in 2 weeks.

Their customer support is good, they always help but their reply can take anywhere from a few days to a week!

I’ve used PureOS (based on Debian) and Fedora on the laptop, and PureOS and postmarketOS phosh on the phone.

Purism’s PureOS is one of the few distros endorsed as completely free by the FSF.

1 Like