Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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HP Elite Desk (lemm.ee)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Thinking of buying a second hand Elite Desk small factor to throw Linux on. I'm worried about the HP firmware-bios thingy. Does it call home? Can I disable calling home somehow? Can it have access to my hard drive info ?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

We use HP EliteBooks and EliteDesks extensively at work. I even used to set them up in my old job, and as far as I'm aware, it doesn't connect to the Internet or "phone home" by default (although that could've changed in recent models). In any case, one of the nice things about the HP BIOSes is that it's very configurable - you can disable the automatic BIOS update checks, network adapter etc. I forget if there was an option to just disable the network stack, but what you could do is configure the UEFI network settings so that they're invalid - ie, set it to a random static IP + random DNS etc (eg: 0.0.0.0) so that it can't connect even if it tried.