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

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.
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.
Social Media Recommendations:

The Linux Experiment: Weekly news host for Linux/libre software related news.
Nicco Loves Linux: Developer for KDE who makes interesting videos.
David Revoy: An incredible artist with a cool webcomic, all done with GNU/Linux.
Michael Horn: Makes videos about his various experiences with Linux.

Rules

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.
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.
Avoid being confrontational: People are in different stages of liberating their computing, focus on informing rather than accusing. Debatebro nonsense is not tolerated.
All site-wide rules still apply

Artwork

Xenia was meant to be an alternative to Tux and was created (licensed under CC0) by Alan Mackey in 1996.
Comm icon (of Xenia the Linux mascot) was originally created by @ioletsgo
Comm banner is a close up of "Dorlotons Degooglisons" by David Revoy (CC-BY 4.0) for Framasoft

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

[Slight Rant] First-party Linux Laptops are too damn expensive. (hexbear.net)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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

Lenovo Yoga 6 2-in-1 AMD 13.3 inch 8 GB RAM (the one with the weird denim texture in the front): $450 from a Best Buy which has a battery life of 7-8 hours.

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] 3 points 7 months ago

It seems like Linux laptops serve like "pro users" and they don't really care about the entry or mid range price point. You really have to go for the netbook enthusiasts club computers to get something affordable, but it'll be super under powered and run on a random ISC. Probably arm64, but maybe MIPS or RISC-V depending.

That said, Pine64 does have pretty cute little netbooks for like 100 USD and there's extra space inside the enclosure for secret notes and stickers.