
Taurinus X200 laptop now FSF-certified to respect your freedom - IceyEC
https://shop.libiquity.com/product/taurinus-x200
======
justin_vanw
Yea, this is just a Lenovo X200 w/ libreboot. The same old laptop that's been
around for years and years, now with a crappy sticker over the windows key!

[http://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/x200.html](http://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/x200.html)

~~~
buffoon
You forgot the ridiculous price tag for a refurb X200. My stacked X201 8Gb of
RAM, 256Gb Samsung 840 pro, new 9-cell, ultrabase with DVDRW, keyboard, mouse,
22" TFT cost about the price of their bottom end model in total (via ebay)

I assume it hasn't got a hard disk in it as well as they are technically
standalone computers with closed source firmware as well these days.

 _Freedom_ is expensive.

~~~
jordigh
> Freedom is expensive.

I'm willing to pay that price for owning something that I know cannot spy on
me, does not have remote kill switches I can't control, and is completely
serviceable from bottom to top by any third party.

It really is sad that these requirements are now expensive. They used to be
taken for granted.

~~~
Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0
But if there's one thing we learnt the last few years, it's that we were never
able to take those things for granted in the first place. You were never free
of threat of spyware or kill switches. If anything, we have gotten much better
at security than ever before.

~~~
nitrogen
Security from whom? Malware has always been fairly easy to avoid as a
consumer. Built-in backdoors? What do you do about that?

------
badpenny
_Notebook designed and manufactured by Wistron Corporation, assembled by
Lenovo Group Ltd., and modified by Libiquity LLC. Product contains a
combination of new and refurbished parts._

So it's a rebadged Thinkpad?

~~~
userbinator
A Lenovo Thinkpad X200 is itself a rebadged _Wistron Mocha-1_ , if you want to
think of it that way.

Despite what companies like HP/Compaq, Gateway, Dell, Lenovo, etc. want you to
think, their products are actually mostly just branded by them, and mainly the
work of ODMs such as Compal, Inventec, Pegatron, Quanta, and Wistron. Looking
on the motherboard often reveals the true name and manufacturer of the
product:

[http://www.laptopschematic.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/04/Mo...](http://www.laptopschematic.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/04/Mocha-1.jpg)

(HannStar is the manufacturer of the actual PCB.)

~~~
buffoon
Most stuff is like this. If you pick up an HP, Casio or TI calculator these
days you'll find they are all Kinpo calculators with slightly different
firmware.

------
pcunite
I want freedom from ugly stickers on new laptops! I currently have to take a
blow-dryer to remove them.

------
pella
"The Free Software Foundation loves this laptop, but you won't"
[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2879086/the-free-software-
fou...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2879086/the-free-software-foundation-
loves-this-laptop-but-you-wont.html)

\--

Why the FSF loves these old ThinkPads

\- Trisquel GNU/Linux operating system.

\- The low-level firmware on the laptop was replaced.

~~~
tokenrove
They also have great keyboards, great pointing devices, no irritating touch
pad, and are highly portable and highly robust. It would be nice if there was
something newer that actually compared on these fronts, but there just doesn't
seem to be. (I am using a 2015 MBP presently and it's pretty ghastly compared
to any of my X-series Thinkpads, except the X1 which is even worse.)

One bummer about these is that the aspect ratio isn't 4:3, though.

~~~
bluecalm
I haven't used old Thinkpads but my current x250 is great:

1)great pointing device - check (the buttons are back)

2)no annoying touch pad - it's there but it's small and easy to set to very
low sensivity (I use it only for occasional quick click with my thumb)

3)highly portable - check + great battery life (I sometimes get more than 15
hours)

I've got 8gb of RAM but 16GB chip is already available (RAM is not soldered
but there is only one slot). The display (IPS 1920x1080) is fantastic and the
keyboard is fantastic as well (well, apparently it depends if you are lucky to
get it from one manufacturer over the other).

I am not a fan of 16:9 but other than that I love almost everything about this
laptop.

------
IceyEC
I just wish they would make something like this on newer hardware

~~~
gioele
Librem 13 and Librem 15v2 [1] are one blob away from being FSF-certifiable.
And they are brand new hardware.

[1] [https://puri.sm/](https://puri.sm/)

~~~
garrettgrimsley
It isn't going to happen, at least not through the use of Libreboot [0], which
is what the X200 in the parent article relies on for their firmware
replacement. The X200 is one of the latest support ThinkPad models, as the
newer ones also use Intel Management Extensions. Without replacing these
binary blobs with free software you won't be able to get the FSF
certification. [1] Or would it fall under the "secondary embedded processor"
exception?

>Will the Purism Librem laptops be supported?

>Probably not. There are several privacy, security and freedom issues with
these laptops, due to the Intel chipsets that they use. See #intel. There are
signed proprietary blobs which cannot be replaced (e.g. Intel Management
Engine and CPU microcode updates). It uses the proprietary Intel FSP blob for
the entire hardware initialization, which Intel won't provide the source code
for. The Video BIOS (initialization firmware for the graphics hardware) is
also proprietary.

>It will likely take many years to replace even one of these blobs, let alone
all of them. Some of them (ME firmware and microcode) can't even be replaced,
which immediately disqualifies these laptops from being added to libreboot.

[0] [http://libreboot.org/faq/#librem](http://libreboot.org/faq/#librem)

[1]
[https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/criteria](https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/criteria)

~~~
ploxiln
Purism claims to have gotten access to intel CPUs specially fused to run
unsigned Management Engine firmware, and it claims to have made progress on a
minimal replacement for the ME firmware.

The plan for the microcode is to just not ship any updates, either in the bios
or the default distro.

The other parts will indeed take a lot more time, but it isn't hopeless.

[https://puri.sm/posts/pioneering-cpu-efforts-to-liberate-
lap...](https://puri.sm/posts/pioneering-cpu-efforts-to-liberate-laptop-
hardware/)

[https://puri.sm/posts/weekly-update-on-librem-
production-201...](https://puri.sm/posts/weekly-update-on-librem-
production-2015-10-02/)

~~~
garrettgrimsley
Wow, I wonder how they pulled that off. It's certainly a good start, but since
it will be shipping with non-Free (though replaceable) BIOS binaries it would
still fall short of the Respects Your Freedom hardware certification
requirements. I did some digging since I have little knowledge of the Purism
project. The Purism project offers an estimate of one year for replacing the
non-Free blobs in the firmware. The Libreboot FAQ says that it could take
years to replace the Intel FSP or Video BIOS, much less both. Given that a
Coreboot developer has expressed doubts [0, 1] about the bold claims the
Purism project has made in the past I'm inclined to take the word of the folks
working on Libreboot. If by the time, if ever, a truly Libre product ships
from Purism will it be any less dated than the X200 we have now?

[0] [http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/08/09/the-truth-about-
pu...](http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/08/09/the-truth-about-purism-
behind-the-coreboot-scenes/)

[1] [http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/02/23/the-truth-about-
pu...](http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/02/23/the-truth-about-purism-why-
librem-is-not-the-same-as-libre/)

------
nickpsecurity
Because a Core Duo and GMA combo is the very definition of respecting freedom.
;)

------
pcr0
I love how they called it a "small ultraportable".

~~~
tdsamardzhiev
The X200 is also a viable self-defense tool, unlike those pesky macbooks!

------
lawnchair_larry
Too bad 2GB has been unusable for a decade or so.

