this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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libre

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Welcome to libre

A comm dedicated to the fight for free software with an anti-capitalist perspective.

The struggle for libre computing cannot be disentangled from other forms of socialist reform. One must be willing to reject proprietary software as fiercely as they would reject capitalism. Luckily, we are not alone.

libretion

Resources

  1. Free Software, Free Society provides an excellent primer in the origins and theory around free software and the GNU Project, the pioneers of the Free Software Movement.
  2. Switch to GNU/Linux! If you're still using Windows in $CURRENT_YEAR, flock to Linux Mint!; Apple Silicon users will want to check out Asahi Linux.
  3. Social Media Recommendations:

Rules

  1. Be on topic: Posts should be about free software and other hacktivst struggles. Topics about general tech news should be in the technology comm or programming comm.
  2. Avoid using misleading terms/speading misinformation: Here's a great article about what those words are. In short, try to avoid parroting common Techbro lingo and topics.
  3. Avoid being confrontational: People are in different stages of liberating their computing, focus on informing rather than accusing. Debatebro nonsense is not tolerated.
  4. All site-wide rules still apply

Artwork

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Prices as of March 22nd based off my own observations.

System76 (base prices, not including addons)

  • Lemur Pro: $1400
  • Pangolin: $1300

Purism (base prices, not including shipping and that Purism is a shady company)

  • Librem 11: $1000 (a literal tablet)
  • Librem 14: $1370
  • Librem Key: $60 (A USB)

Tuxedo (base prices, not including shipping costs to burgerland) (based in Germany)

  • TUXEDO Aura 14 - Gen3: 840 EUR
  • TUXEDO Pulse 14 - Gen3: 1238 EUR
  • TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 - Gen8: 1419 EUR

Slimbook (Based in Spain, base prices no shipping or taxes)

  • Elemental 14 Intel i5 1235U: 600 EUR
  • Excalibur 16 AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS: 1200 EUR
  • Executive 14 Intel i7 13700H Black: 1400 EUR

Framework (base prices, but addons usually add $90-150)

  • Framework 13 (AMD and Intel): $850

Minifree Ltd (Run by a trans fem in the UK, very cool brand)

  • Libreboot 820 (1920x1080 IPS Screen Intel Core i5-5200U, 1 TB SSD): £378.00.
  • Libreboot T440p (1920x1080, 4 core, 1 TB SSD): £558.00.
  • Libreboot W541, (15.6″, 4-core Intel i7-4800MQ, 1920x1080, 1 TB SSD): £698.00.

Asahi Linux (from Refurbished Apple Store)

  • 13.3-inch MacBook Air Apple M1 8gb RAM 256 GB SSD: $760

My current laptop

Note that these are just retail prices, obviously the best way to score good tech is to always buy refurbished laptops from reputable resell sites (used thinkpads rock). I just wanted to point out the absolute state of Linux (TM) laptops. It's pretty disheartening that a lot of Linux laptops are clearly geared towards software engineers who have the money to splurge online.

Until this changes, your best bet is to hunt for windows laptops that are reported to have a good track record with Linux and perform the sorcery there. But that also makes Linux an obscure option for a lot of people. monke-beepboop since hardware support is either hit or miss (or distro specific).

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

The HP Dev One was pretty reasonable at $1000 and hardware support built out with help from system76. So of course they killed it after like 9 months.

The pinebook pro just doesn't have the guts for most people to be happy with it (rk3399 so 6 core BIGlittle architecture. not horrible but struggles to run modern massive webapps). But if you want a little ARM-book that is as FOSS as possible it's okayish at $200 or less. I found the screen and keyboard and overall feel to be pretty good. Speakers and power management chip both pretty bad.

but like yeah point taken, the landscape is pretty poor still, requires a lot of research to see what has good compatibility, or splurge on something like you listed, or accept major tradeoffs

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Ah very good point. Luckily you can't buy one anyhow. I just happened to have experience using one that was mostly positive