What's a Laptop?

[Tenka]

I'm a little out of the loop, I haven't bought any already assembled computers in a long time.  I like buying parts which are each special for their own silly reasons and assembling them into a complete personality of a computer, but I can't really do that with a laptop.  I forgot that fully assembled computer sellers could be so annoyingly mysterious and forcibly inclusive of junk I don't want.  I wonder if there are laptops that follow the same kind of open spirit as the Pandora, like a blank laptop devoid of logos, made from all open drivers hardware, with an option to buy it without an operating system.  I imagine if there are handhelds that follow these ideas there at least once were laptops that have, but I don't know if any still do today, or even which have in the past.  Do you?

 

[FaeMinx]

I don't sorry...

But in my searches over the years for the ideal desktop replacement... it seems Sager are pretty reputable, give good value, and offer the most flexibility in building your system:

http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=shop_buy_help

 

[Morn]

Well there are companies like compal or clevo that produce laptop parts or generic sets but they use the same core components as big labels so it's up to you to check every part whether an open driver exists or not.

 

[ekianjo]

there is also the open novena laptop project going for crowdfunding.

 

[monty]

RMS uses something called a Lemote Yeelong: http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

I'm a little out of the loop, I haven't bought any already assembled computers in a long time.  I like buying parts which are each special for their own silly reasons and assembling them into a complete personality of a computer, but I can't really do that with a laptop.  I forgot that fully assembled computer sellers could be so annoyingly mysterious and forcibly inclusive of junk I don't want.  I wonder if there are laptops that follow the same kind of open spirit as the Pandora, like a blank laptop devoid of logos, made from all open drivers hardware, with an option to buy it without an operating system.  I imagine if there are handhelds that follow these ideas there at least once were laptops that have, but I don't know if any still do today, or even which have in the past.  Do you?

Look nowhere my friend.  That would be the current Openpandora and the soon Pyra.

 

[levi]

In any current mainstream laptop you're pretty much guaranteed to get a TPM module, but those can be turned off in the BIOS and if you blat the included OS with one you trust, and don't enable TPM functionality, I don't see how it can harm you.

In terms of open driver support, the only significant problem in Linux these days is graphics chipsets, and thankfully Intel graphics chips have fully functional open source drivers.

I've peeled all the stickers off my computers.  The only remaining taint is the windows logo on the keyboard.  I did manage to get an eee pc with Xandros preinstalled, so that came with a generic house icon on the left super key, but that's the only recent machine I've seen free from a windows logo. You could always file it off I guess.

 

[Tenka]

Well there are companies like compal or clevo that produce laptop parts or generic sets but they use the same core components as big labels so it's up to you to check every part whether an open driver exists or not.

Clevo looks really nice.  Their website is so grey and boring, and the pictures of their laptops don't look like "their" laptops, but just laptops, although partially because the pictures are so small.

I don't sorry...

But in my searches over the years for the ideal desktop replacement... it seems Sager are pretty reputable, give good value, and offer the most flexibility in building your system:

http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=shop_buy_help

Oh awesome, Sager is a Clevo laptop seller.  It doesn't look like they have all of them, but I'm finding a lot of good talk about Sager.

there is also the open novena laptop project going for crowdfunding.

They sound like cool people, I'll come back to this in a year.

 

[Exophase]

A laptop from Think Penguin should be pretty close to what you get with a Pandora:

https://www.thinkpenguin.com/catalog/notebook-computers-gnu-linux-2

You can probably get one without any OS installed if you really want.