You can run a free OS pretty effortless, but when wanting 100% free software, you have to dig deeper and replace the proprietary BIOS firmware.
Besides the already mentioned Star Labs and System76, there’s also Insurgo, Nitropad and NovaCustom.
As for an exhaustive list on the matter, unfortunately, I don’t think something like that is out there. Though both Canoeboot (formerly known as Libreboot) and Dasharo do have their own respective lists.
Canoeboot is more of a sister to libreboot than a replacement
Canoeboot is engineered to a high standard, basing off of each Libreboot release, but you should still use Libreboot. Canoeboot is only a proof of concept.
Thanks for the correction!
The starlabs one is actually pretty interesting. Too bad the keyboard is not included in the price and costs extra.
I just got myself a Clevo MZ41, supported by Dasharo! Lets see if this machine would like to boot my damn usb sticks XD
Hehe :P , consider to keep us updated on how it goes ;) !
Clevo MZ41
Would that be the Clevo model that NovaCustom’s NV41 Series is ‘based’ on?
Yes, model names, its a NV41MZ. Very rare to find actually and an older model than novacustoms.
So far, the build quality… they saved on material. Keyboard and chassis are very cheap. I wish I could swap in my Thinkpad keyboard, would probably be possible.
It’s unfortunate to hear that; with the chassis being my biggest concern as I don’t think you would be able to find suitable replacement for that. As for the keyboard, perhaps an affordable and portable external keyboard might help you with that.
The keyboard is okaaay. I will post a review of the laptop soon. I am simply very spoiled by my Thinkpad.
I am not sure what material the chassis is, top around the keyboard is like metal, the screen thing too, meanwhile when opening it up you can see the metallic spray paint inside?
It is easy to open, not sure how easy to find spare parts but everything is very well removable. I think modern Thinkpad keyboards are the best ones ever, one could get a usb variant and wire somehow inside.
Or you would need an arduino board, a custom mini firmware and all, just to translate the different keyboards. But that was “random keyboard to usb”, and not “random keyboard to random keyboard”.
Man it would be great if you could just swap keyboards
spare parts
It seems NovaCustoms offer some spareparts. I wonder if the ones not explicitly stating NV4xMZ can be used on your device as well.
No the NV41MZ for example has no numpad. Its the compact 14in model which I would always choose for my tasks. Maybe not all, but it was the only clevo on like all Europes Ebay. Literally shipped it in from Great Britain
Thanks, true! The people from Novacustom are very nice.
Just get a 20 or 30 series Thinkpad that has no nvidia GPU, and flash coreboot on it.
No, you cannot get 100% free firmware these days, but you can get something close this way.
I mean… Depends what you mean by 100% free firmware… If you mean only the boot firmware, that’s the case for PCs like the ThinkPads T400, T500, R500, W500, X200, as well as the Dell Latitude E6400. Note Libreboot even recommends the latter for new full libre buys, as it can be software-flashed without disassembly.
But if you mean 100% free including EC firmware, wireless firmware, and disk firmware, then this will probably never happen, or at least not until a very very long time.
You can indeed get free firmware, it just is on older devices
yes you can, read other comments
Read my other comment
The disks still have proprietary firmware, as do several other components though.
I bet that wireless mouse probably has some code in it.
If you’re using an active thunderbolt cable, you wire has proprietary code in it.
https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/
also iirc starbook/system76 also does coreboot support
ThinkPads have some sort of an open source replacement I think…
Some ThinkPads. I have coreboot on my T430, but I don’t think my X270 can run it.
Lenovo G505S 16gb RAM - no (the A10-5750M processor has neither Intel ME nor AMD PSP), software probes - too, if instead of the closed UEFI from the manufacturer you install the open source BIOS coreboot+SeaBIOS: it will contain only a few small closed binaries , they were all dismantled and no backdoors were found. Someone made a script in which by rolling back 1% of the last commits (made after deleting the G505S) you can return AMD boards to coreboot - https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/76832. You can install the AR9462 module, whose ath9k family WiFi is 100% open source.
Saving this, thanks for sharing!
nice i’ll have to try this out, what hardware did you use to flash it?
honestly… why? i really get why open source software is great, but there’s no benefit in replacing the bios, right?
Star Labs’ take on the matter.
Furthermore, if one is sensitive regarding their cybersecurity, then one is likely to adhere to the zero trust security model and thus choose to simply not trust; which would include the closed source BIOS. coreboot, on the other hand, at least allows one to audit it themselves. As Linus Torvalds has been approached for implementing backdoors, it should surprise nobody that (some) of the vendors we buy our devices from have been as well and thus our BIOSes might not have been as safe as one would like to believe. Qubes OS, the most secure OS on desktop, shares the view that coreboot is preferred over closed source BIOSes due to reasons related to trust.
There can be. There are certainly Bios’ that don’t give options that motherboards are perfectly capable of changing. I had an old Phenom II that I managed to patch NVME support into the bios so I could boot off of a PCIe Riser.
Granted, I was patching UEFI stuff and none of it was open source – but the idea is the same. Open source bios in theory, could unlock features.
Check out Pine64, however they only develop Arm and RISC-V devices, not x86.
What laptop is that? That dock looks so cool…
That’s a x200 lenovo thinkpad.
System76, starlabs, protectli, raptor computing…
Is the deer the Libreboot logo? Mine has a rabbit (Coreboot). I flashed Coreboot on my old Chromebook a couple of years ago and it’s been running different flavours of linux since without any fuss.
Yes the deer is the Libreboot logo
deleted by creator
What’s MOBO?
Shorthand for motherboard
Thank you!
As of Debian 12, non-free firmware is enabled by default
