
The open source DIY laptop for hacking, customization, and privacy - doener
https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform
======
kop316
My main concern with this DIY laptop is if they are mainlining everything for
Linux and U-boot. It looks to be entirely open source (due to the use of the
NXP/Freescale i.MX8MQ and the work going into that).

This unfortunately happened with the Novena. It was entirely open source, but
there were a lot of out of tree patches that had to be applied to get a kernel
fully functional. This meant that it was effectively frozen at 4.4 without
someone to dedicate a lot of time to port the changes to a newer kernel (I say
that as someone who tried, and gave up, to try to port the changes to 4.9).

~~~
malexw
So this is a bit off-topic, but I pulled out my Novena this past weekend to
work on an SDR project and after updating the installed packages I started
wondering about the process of keeping these devices running up-to-date
software and the community around it.

Are you able to offer any insight about how I, a developer with only a little
embedded experience, could learn enough about the process to meaningfully
contribute to keeping the Novena up-to-date? Is there still a community around
the Novena?

~~~
kop316
Sure! Look at my github:

[https://github.com/chris4795](https://github.com/chris4795)

I tried to document what I did as much as possible for others to look at it. I
recall I was able to update it to Stretch (with linux 4.4, not linux 4.9) and
I was able to make the whole boot process/update process more debian friendly.

u-boot-novena is where I put all of the scripts needed in order to get the
whole process to work with Debian Mainline.

The forums:

[https://kosagi.com/forums/](https://kosagi.com/forums/)

Also have most of the good bits of nuggets to figure it out too (that's how I
figured out most of what I did). I don't know how much of a community around
it there is anymore though (I really haven't looked in years).

EDIT: It looks like jookia actually did a lot of work and upgraded the Novena
to Buster:

[https://www.kosagi.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=542](https://www.kosagi.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=542)

I may try it sometime.

~~~
malexw
Thanks! I'm not sure how I overlooked the forums. It looks like there is
someone there who has ported everything to Buster, so it looks like there is
at least enough of a community to see some new software releases and hopefully
offer some more pointers in how to contribute.

------
tpxl
Previous discussion (3 days ago):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23113430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23113430)

------
maximente
i am an owner of a purism and this seems great if only to push forward full
openness down to the hardware/schematics level. i also like the trackball.

but... that enclosure looks kind of thick and blocky for a heavy travel setup.
it also weighs about .5 kg more than a librem v4; that's non-trivial. it's
nice that it's passively cooled, but i'm just having trouble seeing myself
working with that laptop as i would others, for some reason.

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greendave
The idea looks exciting, but the details are less so.

In particular, I have a hard time believing the CPU (4x1.5GHZ A53) and memory
(4GB RAM, non-upgradeable) will be sufficient for a lot of the more
interesting uses.

~~~
tyingq
Combine that with the thickness. This thing is chonky...4cm / 1.575in thick. I
get that compromises are needed in favor of openness, but this is a lot of
concessions.

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zwieback
Philosophically cool but the comparison chart made me seriously consider a
Pinebook at 20% of the cost.

~~~
sh-run
I have an original pinebook and it would be usable for light computing tasks
(note taking/light programming in vim, web browsing with FF + no script) if
not for the awkward keyboard layout. The other issue with the pinebook is the
Mali 400 GPU is not open source, so if you are after a fully open device the
pinebook is not it. IIRC there are also some video acceleration issues caused
by the Mali 400 drivers.

The new pinebook pro looks like a better product, but I don't own one so I
can't really comment.

~~~
morganvachon
You might indeed be interested in the Pinebook Pro. I recently ordered one,
and it's supposed to ship later this month. There is active work on an open
source GPU driver[1], and OpenBSD lists it as a supported device on their
arm64 port[2]. I'm excited to get my hands on it and see what I can get to run
on it, as well as potentially replace my current AMD64 laptop with it.

[1] [https://xdc2018.x.org/slides/Panfrost-
XDC_2018.pdf](https://xdc2018.x.org/slides/Panfrost-XDC_2018.pdf)

[2] [https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html](https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html)

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csense
This laptop is supposed to be an upgradeable machine for hacking. Why can't I
upgrade the RAM? 4 GB is not a lot these days.

~~~
daffy
Whence do you infer that the RAM can't be upgraded?

~~~
dkuntz2
The linked page says the memory is part of the SOM chip which to me implies
it's not upgradable. Though the i.MX8 reference website does appear to support
external devices for memory, so you may be able to upgrade it, by attaching
another device to the board (but that's unclear to me)

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vernie
In the current climate it feels like a better decision would have been to
include a camera and microphone with physical disconnect switches.

~~~
ninju
Just buy USB Web-camera with mic

That way you get as good (or bad) of setup as you can afford rather adding the
price to every laptop

~~~
vernie
Good idea, I love carrying peripherals around.

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unnouinceput
1k USD vs 1.1k vs 1.4k vs 1.43k - says the comparison table near the end.
Since they are in the same ballpark I want to know the numbers for benchmarks
as well. If they are in the same ballpark then this is worth buying, otherwise
I don't value my privacy just for the sake of it and lose instead 100%
performance. So, any links to benchmarks as well?

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daffy
Any chance of a keyboard option where the left control (at caps-lock position)
and the shift keys are full (or fuller) size? In principle I like the economic
layout very much, but I fear splitting these keys would hamper normal typing
(for me). Perhaps you could offer combining caps, so the splitting becomes
optional, if that would work.

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daffy
I didn't see anything about firmware. Does this have an intel-management-
engine-like firmware-backdoor or not?

~~~
ksk
Maybe you missed it, its right there on the first page - " and the system has
no "management engine" or other remote control features that could be used to
attack you"

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throw2020away
They made it blob free by omitting the storage ...

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valerij
on related note: what did become out of the network-admin laptop desing that
was proposed by some guy on habr?

