But those laptops all have something in common with run-of-the-mill Windows PCs: a reliance on closed-source hardware and, often, the proprietary software and drivers needed to make it function. For some people, this is a tolerable trade-off. You put up with the closed hardware because it performs well, and it supports the standard software, development tools, and APIs that keep the computing world spinning. For others, it’s anathema—if you can’t see the source code for these “binary blobs,” they are inherently untrustworthy and should be used sparingly or not at all.
The MNT Reform is a laptop for the latter group. It’s a crowdfunded, developed-in-the-open, extensively documented device that cares more about being open than it cares about literally any other aspect of the computing experience. Perhaps predictably, this makes for a laptop that is ideologically pure but functionally compromised.
This ain’t it. I appreciate – as always – the effort, but this is not the way to go.
I do have conflicted feelings about this. It’s a device that can’t beat even a RPi4, and sure looks like a bad deal against a Pinebook.
The premisse of a fully open hardware is nice but it’s waaaay too expensive for what it offer in exchange for ideological purity.
And some choices seems odd: why use a cheap ARM processor if RISC-V looks to be more aligned with their objectives? What’s the deal with the trackpad/trackball thing if they bothered to bundle it with a good keyboard? Why use such a cheap wifi in a 1500 dollar hardware? Why it don’t have proper battery control circuitry to avoid it dropping to literal 0% requiring a external charger? Why bother to create a tank like expensive aluminum frame and pair it with a garbage acrylic bottom?
What’s the big difference with a Pinebook Pro ?
https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/
Costs 5 times more to receive half the functionality. That’s the difference.
A stable and well thought through driver model built for forwards compatibility which doesn’t break when you sneeze solves a lot of problems. Also a good DDK and documentation. With that out of the way…
An allegedly open system which then promptly sources closed components is like a yoghurt sold as being low in fat while its sugar content is through the roof. Nothing else seems thought through either. No microphones and cameras? Well, real hardware switches which break real wire connections would be a plus, or simply a sales option of with or without and easy maintainability to customers could remove or replace them themselves. They’re also forgetting that speakers can act as microphones. So yes the laptop actually does have an internal microphone. It’s just not normally used this way or called a microphone but it is a microphone and can be used this way with the right software.
For the paranoids worrying about their laptops why are you carrying around a smartphone 24/7? Duh. Missed that didn’t you?
Checklists are your friend.
A speaker can be a microphone, but only if the hardware on the other side of the wires wants to read a signal from it. I’d *hope* they didn’t put an A/D convertor on the speaker output pins for fun.
MattPie,
Yeah, then there are tons of ways to sneakily hide things if they really wanted to. Even hardware that was properly manufactured can be bugged at any time (ie evil maid attack). But for most people, that’s not likely and the bigger threat is for “normal” hardware functionality to be exploited.
Not sure about OpenPOWER but with the emergence of RISC-V there is now a realistic chance this could happen some day in not so distant future. With ARM (and x86) you currently can’t achieve that. Due to both not being open enough.
Isn’t this the same guy/team behind Interim OS project? (https://github.com/mntmn/interim)
What a monstrosity. You can get basically the same thing if you buy a Asus Chromebook Flip C101PA, except perhaps that you have to “suffer” a binary blob firmware uploaded to the bluetooth/wifi chip to make it work. Plus you get a couple of extra 2GHz performance cores and a decent GPU. At least then you don’t have to lug around a relic from 1998.
The laptop strikes me as all the things some people say they want, but then when you see it implemented there’s an “oh, that’s why things are the way they are”. “I want a trackball!” “I want a standard battery!” and then you actually see it. For the batteries, I wonder if using a 20Ah PD USB power brick would have made more sense, although I’m betting the USB-C power stuff has some proprietary stuff or patents on it.