21 ms·

Novena: A Laptop with No Secrets

446 points by zmanian 11y ago

erronjason 11y ago
It's sad that it's been 25+ years in the making to finally get something sort of okay, and even then it's ridiculously expensive by contrast of closed source. Why can't we have something thinkpad-like for the cost? Don't they know they'd make metric craptons of money on something like that?
- chadzawistowski 11y ago
  You might be looking for the Libreboot X200, a FSF-approved refurbished Thinkpad X200. http://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200/ http://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200/
  - mtw 11y ago
    all out of stock?
    - kawsper 11y ago
      Yes. The author of libreboot, and owner of Minifree (former Gluglug) said that he would complete all current orders, so he would mark them as out-of-stock. You can buy a X200 and free your laptop yourself if you dare :) You can swing by #libreboot on Freenode if you have any interest in the project.
      - yuhong 11y ago
        Of course, I dislike how libreboot doesn't do microcode updates anyway. ARM processors have no microcode at all.
    - e12e 11y ago
      I think you should be able to just grab an equivlent x200 off of ebay (possibly with a different wlan card added) - and be safe (as in safe that you can run libreboot, not any guarantees about firmware in all the dark corners, like ethernet card). I've been considering trying libreboot on my T420s - but as I use it almost every day, it's a bit high risk in case I brick it.
    - swampthinker 11y ago
      > ETA for restock: 10 November 2015. No preorders, sorry! First line of the description
- cwyers 11y ago
  > Don't they know they'd make metric craptons of money on something like that? They would? Thinkpad margins aren't that great to begin with (which is why IBM sold the business off to Lenovo). So now take out every high-volume, low cost component in there and replace it with something less popular. Because you no longer have those economies of scale you don't have the best fabs so the thermal profile of everything in there sucks, so you have to find some way to put the thing in a lap without causing permanent damage. And then you're marketing the thing to the users of the third-most-popular desktop OS, where the breakdown of market share is something like 90/8/2. But then not to users of the most popular desktop Linux distro, or even the top 10 most popular Linux distros, to the people who use stuff like Gnusense. Where's the metric crapton of money?
- zhemao 11y ago
  In the original blog post for the project, they explicitly anticipated this complaint and stated that this simply wasn't their goal. Novena is not intended to be a mass market Thinkpad clone, it is a laptop made by OSHW hackers for OSHW hackers. Hence why it includes an FPGA and plenty of GPIO pins.
  - dingaling 11y ago
    I wouldn't say it's a laptop; there is no integrated keyboard and the screen faces out when closed, so it is unsuitable for transport. It's a small portable computer that is probably underpowered for everyday general-purpose use.
Vexs 11y ago
I've been following the Novena since it's conception, it's a neat idea, and even though it's not 100% open source, it's closer than everything else we have. And the fact that you can just build hardware ontop of what's already there due to the FPGA and massive IO bus is downright neat. They've already demonstrated stuff like an oscilloscope. Also, Bunnie is a very cool guy, his blog is a wealth of information on hardware design, and Chinese manufacturing process. If anyone can make a laptop that has every component open source, it's him. might take time, but hey.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  As someone who bought Bunnie's Hacking The Xbox book many moons ago, it's been enjoyable to follow along project after project.
- chaostheory 11y ago
  Good to know that he's working on something new post Chumbie
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
mmastrac 11y ago
If the heirloom version didn't sell out so quickly I might have bought one. Fortunately for my wallet they were gone fast! Might be worth laser-cutting a case out of nice wood for one though. Hmm.
catskull 11y ago
> This open-source requirement of ours ended up influencing the selection of almost every piece of hardware, including the main CPU, the battery controller, and the Wi-Fi module. For example, we couldn’t use Intel’s x86 microprocessors because they can accept firmware updates that we cannot debug or inspect. Instead we chose an ARM-based Freescale i.MX6 system-on-a-chip, which has no such updatable code embedded. (A system-on-a-chip, or SoC, is similar to a microprocessor except it has more of the supporting hardware, such as memory and peripheral interfaces, needed to make a complete computer.) The i.MX6 does have some code burned into it to coordinate the computer’s boot-up process, but this firmware can’t be changed, and its unencrypted binary code can be read out and analyzed for possible security problems. I'm confused. They claim the open source requirement prevented them from going with an intel chip, but then they say the reason why was because intel could push firmware updates. Furthermore, the Freescale SoC has firmware built in, but it's not open source. Is this what we consider open source these days? Sure, a good whitepaper is nice, but it's not open source. Don't get me wrong, this is still nice effort on the open front, but calling this a "laptop with no secrets" seems like a stretch.
- mmastrac 11y ago
  Intel firmware is obfuscated, closed-source and very low-level which means that it could be running nearly anything -- you don't know what it is. The SoC has closed-source blobs, but it's all debugging and reversible which is not as good as OSS, but not as bad as opaque blobs from Intel.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    I really can't wait for the first fully open down to the metal system. A few arm cores, a few vulcan-ish gpu cores, optional fpga. Just nice compute power easy to tap into for oss devs. ps: I shouldn't have written ARM, I meant simple ARM-like ISA (from what I understand it's way smaller than x86).
    - joezydeco 11y ago
      What's the probability that ARM will open-source their CPU core designs?
nickpsecurity 11y ago
It's not a laptop with no secrets or fully open-sourced. There's the hardware components internal operation, the FPGA tools, and so on that need to be open. Incidentally, the things with the biggest risk, too. Freescale operates DOD-certified fabs in U.S. on top of it with major sales to U.S. govt. Whatever subversion risk Intel poses we must assume Freescale does as well. It's actually a laptop for FPGA hackers with incremental steps in the direction of an open-source laptop. That's great. That they made FPGA development a bit easier plus made a more open laptop is extra great. So, let's give them props they deserve while acknowledging it's still untrustworthy hardware and there's plenty of ways to go.
- JoachimS 11y ago
  You don't need to use the FPGA to use the Novena, it is a peripheral you could even remove (albeit it would be hard since its a BGA). The tool chain for the FPGA is proprietary and a black box. There are some reverse engineering efforts, but hard to do any meaningful. By and large, open HW is in a fairly sorry state. Most users seem to think zero cost is good enough.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    I know. I'm just assuming FPGA is trusted in TCB, esp with DMA, plus implying many people will want to use it. Your assessment of open HW is accurate. Far as FPGA's, there's progress on several fronts. Some for you to check out that your people might even consider using given the continual payoff of a FPGA w/out high unit costs. Open-source FPGA architecture at 45nm http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-43.pdf http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-43... Open-source bitstream generation for Xilinx w/out EULA violation or R.E. (!?) http://www.isi.edu/~nsteiner/publications/soni-2013-bitstream-fccm13.pdf http://www.isi.edu/~nsteiner/publications/soni-2013-bitstrea... Open tools for Lattice http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/ http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/ Open-source HW synthesis flow http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/ http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/ Note: Cliff is on a winning streak, eh? I recently did a write-up showing what it could or would take at both ASIC and production levels here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10468534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10468534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10468624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10468624 So, paths are clear and plenty of potential. Just no uptake. Will take government, corporate, or private sponsors working with academic (low NRE) and professional (experienced) HW designers that open-source stuff as they go. Proprietary, dual-licensed OSS is the only way to go for HW that I know of.
nextos 11y ago
We need a cheap general purpose Novena-like laptop. I'd argue a really good place to start from is a custom Rockchip machine (like Asus C201, which is now supported by Libreboot). Add a free GPU (or finish the Lima driver) and we are ready to go.
snvzz 11y ago
I'm hoping this is the start of a trend. The true start will be once the lowrisc SoC is out, and open hardware devices using it start to flood the market.
chatman 11y ago
It looks terrible. These are the kinds of machines that bring bad name to the concept of free/open source hardware. Nothing that is the fault of Bunnie, but something that reflects a sad reality.
- avmich 11y ago
  This is a machine for early adopters - not the followers.
  - chatman 11y ago
    The sad part is that we are talking about "early" adoption with just 2 months to go for 2016!
- tdicola 11y ago
  I'm sure people said the Apple I looked ugly too. That didn't stop it from revolutionizing home computing.
- Yaggo 11y ago
  It's about priorities. This [small budget] project priorities open source hw/sw, not industrial design. Good industrial design isn't cheap, easy nor comes for free.
  - vlehto 11y ago
    I think its more about people. I'd love to work for something like this. I might not even need money for it. But I would not do it just to "sleek up this box", I would want to take part in the design process. (Or some money. I can do boring stuff with salary.) 1. These people probably don't know anybody like me. 2. Nobody wants to give away decision power when it's about their pet project.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Glass-half-full-guy here. Free software, as a movement, started in the early 80's. Writing free software is incredibly easy because you need only a bare minimum of building blocks. Also once the initial tool set is built, anyone can join with virtually no cost to entry (for example, if you had emacs and GCC binaries and a computer capable of running them, you could participate in free software). Free hardware is completely different. You have to rely on other organizations all the way down the chain. And even if you manage to build a tool set to build something, it's not like anyone else can simply copy it and get started. They end up having almost the same struggle that you did. Consider as well how long it took for the free software view point to become acceptable to mainstream thinking. Even today, almost 2016, there are huge populations of programmers who think free software is crazy. But now there are companies built on free software with near billion dollar valuations, and other companies mostly built with free software that are in the many-billions-of-dollars of valuation. The concept has gotten over the hump, though it was a huge struggle for decades (and it continues to be necessary to make sure that legislation doesn't take our freedom away). Software was crazily hard. Hardware is nigh on impossible. And yet, they have accomplished this! It's not sad, it's amazing! I understand that you wish that the world was made up in a way that would make free hardware easy, but it's not. It never will be. It will take the concerted effort of dedicated pioneers to drag it into the consciousness of the masses. I suppose it is sad that it isn't easier in the same way that it is sad that it doesn't occasionally rain candy instead of raindrops. But that is no reason to be disappointed.
aij 11y ago
Why didn't they use an open source CPU? Eg: OpenSPARC
- avmich 11y ago
  May be they wanted good speed, freedom from particularly complicated FPGAs, and not to have to order chips as ASICs?.. I'd like to know too; this could be a good thing to have.
- xobs 11y ago
  Aside from the fact that we're familiar with Freescale and ARM, many other chips we "could have used" are unobtanium. While it's true that there is a source-level implementation, I can't find any T1 or T2 parts available for purchase. It's the same reason why we went with an A9 instead of an A15 or a 64-bit chip: You just can't buy them unless you're a big company. And if a small two-person company can't buy them, how can we claim it's open source hardware if you can't buy them either? The other possibility would be to fab a chip ourselves, but that's a whole other order of magnitude in terms of cost and complexity, and the result isn't that great in terms of speed and available peripherals. Plus, when you fab a chip like this a lot of the hardware blocks are IP provided by the chip foundry, e.g. flash controllers and DRAM cells, and those are always closed-source. It just moves the whole thing one turtle down.
- renox 11y ago
  Because you can't buy (1) an OpenSPARC? 1:for a reasonable amount of money, paying for a custom ASIC is quite expensive.
mfincham 11y ago
I have one of these machines and it's been great fun so far to hack on. The development process and the continuing work of the community has been great to be a part of.
akhilcacharya 11y ago
I like the project, but I'm not a fan of the designs they're going with for the first run - I'd prefer a model more similar to the one they first teased a few years ago, if only in terms of form factor [1] [1]: http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Open-Source-Laptop.jpg http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Open...
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  I'd guess the first model case would be more expensive to manufacture, and the current model they've chosen is more 'modular' and adaptable to ad hoc engineering situations?
- xobs 11y ago
  There were a few issues with that design. One was that we never really got hinges working. I bought some friction hinges, but couldn't settle on a way to attach them. The temporary bodge was to 3D print some chucks with an angle on them to use. The other was that it was difficult to get past airport security. The German agents seemed to at least appreciate that we'd built a laptop that we can trust. Finally, it was nigh impossible to access things like the FPGA and the serial ports. I find myself using GPIOs all the time to do things like bitbang SWD, and being able to do that by reaching around the screen is handy, not to mention being able to mount the thing being debugged under SWD directly in the case, so it's much easier to take with me.
scott_karana 11y ago
How in the world does a SMART-compatible Samsung SSD not have secrets? Did they never read any of Snowden's leaks? :( https://www.google.ca/search?q=nsa+hard+drive+firmware https://www.google.ca/search?q=nsa+hard+drive+firmware
- adj_ 11y ago
  It seems that you don't know that they are aware about the topic. In fact they proved the possibility of running arbitrary code on some sdcards' microcontroller: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554 http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554
  - scott_karana 11y ago
    Well, I read through the entire article and despite the detailed attention lavished on CPUs and GPUs, there was not a single mention of their disk's security. It's disappointing that if they are "aware" of the problem, they didn't mention it to their audience in an article about their device's security, don't you think?
eccstartup 11y ago
1. Open does not mean ugly. 2. C'est trop cher! 3. Is it a manually-capsuled desktop-style laptop? 4. Is it light enough to carry? 5. Where can I get one?
pjmlp 11y ago
Nice effort, but software rendering is a no go in 2015.
ekianjo 11y ago
The expression "GNU/Linux is a special version of Linux" sounds a big strange to me. GNU/Linux is an actual OS, not a version of the Linux kernel. That's really the wrong way to explain things.
- vog 11y ago
  Maybe this was meant to distinguish GNU/Linux from other Linux userlands, such as Android? Apart from that, for the layman "Linux" is generally understood as the whole Linux distribution, not just the kernel or the OS. Still, even from that perspective this wording is quite confusing.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Yes. It would have been nice to say something like, "We decided not to use Android. -- insert reasons for not using Android here --. Android uses a kernel called Linux that interfaces with the hardware. Instead we went with GNU on top of a Linux kernel". It makes it clear what's actually happening. If you've seen an Android machine and a GNU/Linux machine, then you can easily understand what Android and GNU provide on top of Linux. Still, I was happy to see the comparison even if it was slightly misleading.
deleted 11y ago
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acd 11y ago
I´m looking for a laptop that is easy to repair and has open source hardware. Preferably there would be something like the ITX standard for laptops with different standard designs. Like a ultra book, notebook and different screen sizes. If there was standardized screen you could easily repair your laptop. All hardware should be open. The firmware should be open with known checksums. Open boot loader. Open source operating system. All components should be upgradable so that once the laptop speed wise is obsolete by moores law it should be easy to dissamble and recyle the materials. Further you should be able to reuse components which does not age that fast as the cpu and mainboard, for example the keyboard, mouse and display. We throw a lot of electronic garbage, that ends up being exported to cheap scrap yards in China and Africa, this needs to change if we do not want a junk yard planet.
- ymse 11y ago
  Fairphone is doing something similar with their upcoming phone. Although the hardware is not open. They should talk with OP. https://www.fairphone.com/phone/ https://www.fairphone.com/phone/
  - reirob 11y ago
    Thanks for sharing. Just looked on their site, but can't see when the Fairphone 2 will be coming and what other OSes it will be able to run additionally to Android 5.1. Any idea?
- pjc50 11y ago
  What %age extra are you prepared to pay for this?
kriro 11y ago
Interesting, never heard of this before. I have backed a pitop on indigogo with the plan of switching out the pi for a beaglebone to get closer to all open components. Very cool project :)
theallan 11y ago
Possibly slightly off topic, and not something I would normally comment on, but wow - what a lot of adverts! Desktop browser and aside from the full screen ad you need to click through on load, about 3/5 of the screen is adverts. I've been torturing myself over the idea of having a single banner ad on my site (decided not to for now), but this is something that makes me want to finally give up and install an adblocker.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

446 points by zmanian 11y ago

It's sad that it's been 25+ years in the making to finally get something sort of okay, and even then it's ridiculously expensive by contrast of closed source. Why can't we have something thinkpad-like for the cost? Don't they know they'd make metric craptons of money on something like that?

chadzawistowski 11y ago
You might be looking for the Libreboot X200, a FSF-approved refurbished Thinkpad X200. http://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200/ http://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200/
- mtw 11y ago
  all out of stock?
  - kawsper 11y ago
    Yes. The author of libreboot, and owner of Minifree (former Gluglug) said that he would complete all current orders, so he would mark them as out-of-stock. You can buy a X200 and free your laptop yourself if you dare :) You can swing by #libreboot on Freenode if you have any interest in the project.
    - yuhong 11y ago
      Of course, I dislike how libreboot doesn't do microcode updates anyway. ARM processors have no microcode at all.
  - e12e 11y ago
    I think you should be able to just grab an equivlent x200 off of ebay (possibly with a different wlan card added) - and be safe (as in safe that you can run libreboot, not any guarantees about firmware in all the dark corners, like ethernet card). I've been considering trying libreboot on my T420s - but as I use it almost every day, it's a bit high risk in case I brick it.
  - swampthinker 11y ago
    > ETA for restock: 10 November 2015. No preorders, sorry! First line of the description
cwyers 11y ago
> Don't they know they'd make metric craptons of money on something like that? They would? Thinkpad margins aren't that great to begin with (which is why IBM sold the business off to Lenovo). So now take out every high-volume, low cost component in there and replace it with something less popular. Because you no longer have those economies of scale you don't have the best fabs so the thermal profile of everything in there sucks, so you have to find some way to put the thing in a lap without causing permanent damage. And then you're marketing the thing to the users of the third-most-popular desktop OS, where the breakdown of market share is something like 90/8/2. But then not to users of the most popular desktop Linux distro, or even the top 10 most popular Linux distros, to the people who use stuff like Gnusense. Where's the metric crapton of money?
zhemao 11y ago
In the original blog post for the project, they explicitly anticipated this complaint and stated that this simply wasn't their goal. Novena is not intended to be a mass market Thinkpad clone, it is a laptop made by OSHW hackers for OSHW hackers. Hence why it includes an FPGA and plenty of GPIO pins.
- dingaling 11y ago
  I wouldn't say it's a laptop; there is no integrated keyboard and the screen faces out when closed, so it is unsuitable for transport. It's a small portable computer that is probably underpowered for everyday general-purpose use.

Vexs 11y ago

I've been following the Novena since it's conception, it's a neat idea, and even though it's not 100% open source, it's closer than everything else we have. And the fact that you can just build hardware ontop of what's already there due to the FPGA and massive IO bus is downright neat. They've already demonstrated stuff like an oscilloscope. Also, Bunnie is a very cool guy, his blog is a wealth of information on hardware design, and Chinese manufacturing process. If anyone can make a laptop that has every component open source, it's him. might take time, but hey.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
As someone who bought Bunnie's Hacking The Xbox book many moons ago, it's been enjoyable to follow along project after project.
chaostheory 11y ago
Good to know that he's working on something new post Chumbie
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

mmastrac 11y ago

If the heirloom version didn't sell out so quickly I might have bought one. Fortunately for my wallet they were gone fast! Might be worth laser-cutting a case out of nice wood for one though. Hmm.

catskull 11y ago

> This open-source requirement of ours ended up influencing the selection of almost every piece of hardware, including the main CPU, the battery controller, and the Wi-Fi module. For example, we couldn’t use Intel’s x86 microprocessors because they can accept firmware updates that we cannot debug or inspect. Instead we chose an ARM-based Freescale i.MX6 system-on-a-chip, which has no such updatable code embedded. (A system-on-a-chip, or SoC, is similar to a microprocessor except it has more of the supporting hardware, such as memory and peripheral interfaces, needed to make a complete computer.) The i.MX6 does have some code burned into it to coordinate the computer’s boot-up process, but this firmware can’t be changed, and its unencrypted binary code can be read out and analyzed for possible security problems. I'm confused. They claim the open source requirement prevented them from going with an intel chip, but then they say the reason why was because intel could push firmware updates. Furthermore, the Freescale SoC has firmware built in, but it's not open source. Is this what we consider open source these days? Sure, a good whitepaper is nice, but it's not open source. Don't get me wrong, this is still nice effort on the open front, but calling this a "laptop with no secrets" seems like a stretch.

mmastrac 11y ago
Intel firmware is obfuscated, closed-source and very low-level which means that it could be running nearly anything -- you don't know what it is. The SoC has closed-source blobs, but it's all debugging and reversible which is not as good as OSS, but not as bad as opaque blobs from Intel.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  I really can't wait for the first fully open down to the metal system. A few arm cores, a few vulcan-ish gpu cores, optional fpga. Just nice compute power easy to tap into for oss devs. ps: I shouldn't have written ARM, I meant simple ARM-like ISA (from what I understand it's way smaller than x86).
  - joezydeco 11y ago
    What's the probability that ARM will open-source their CPU core designs?

nickpsecurity 11y ago

It's not a laptop with no secrets or fully open-sourced. There's the hardware components internal operation, the FPGA tools, and so on that need to be open. Incidentally, the things with the biggest risk, too. Freescale operates DOD-certified fabs in U.S. on top of it with major sales to U.S. govt. Whatever subversion risk Intel poses we must assume Freescale does as well. It's actually a laptop for FPGA hackers with incremental steps in the direction of an open-source laptop. That's great. That they made FPGA development a bit easier plus made a more open laptop is extra great. So, let's give them props they deserve while acknowledging it's still untrustworthy hardware and there's plenty of ways to go.

JoachimS 11y ago
You don't need to use the FPGA to use the Novena, it is a peripheral you could even remove (albeit it would be hard since its a BGA). The tool chain for the FPGA is proprietary and a black box. There are some reverse engineering efforts, but hard to do any meaningful. By and large, open HW is in a fairly sorry state. Most users seem to think zero cost is good enough.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  I know. I'm just assuming FPGA is trusted in TCB, esp with DMA, plus implying many people will want to use it. Your assessment of open HW is accurate. Far as FPGA's, there's progress on several fronts. Some for you to check out that your people might even consider using given the continual payoff of a FPGA w/out high unit costs. Open-source FPGA architecture at 45nm http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-43.pdf http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-43... Open-source bitstream generation for Xilinx w/out EULA violation or R.E. (!?) http://www.isi.edu/~nsteiner/publications/soni-2013-bitstream-fccm13.pdf http://www.isi.edu/~nsteiner/publications/soni-2013-bitstrea... Open tools for Lattice http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/ http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/ Open-source HW synthesis flow http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/ http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/ Note: Cliff is on a winning streak, eh? I recently did a write-up showing what it could or would take at both ASIC and production levels here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10468534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10468534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10468624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10468624 So, paths are clear and plenty of potential. Just no uptake. Will take government, corporate, or private sponsors working with academic (low NRE) and professional (experienced) HW designers that open-source stuff as they go. Proprietary, dual-licensed OSS is the only way to go for HW that I know of.

nextos 11y ago

We need a cheap general purpose Novena-like laptop. I'd argue a really good place to start from is a custom Rockchip machine (like Asus C201, which is now supported by Libreboot). Add a free GPU (or finish the Lima driver) and we are ready to go.

snvzz 11y ago

I'm hoping this is the start of a trend. The true start will be once the lowrisc SoC is out, and open hardware devices using it start to flood the market.

chatman 11y ago

It looks terrible. These are the kinds of machines that bring bad name to the concept of free/open source hardware. Nothing that is the fault of Bunnie, but something that reflects a sad reality.

avmich 11y ago
This is a machine for early adopters - not the followers.
- chatman 11y ago
  The sad part is that we are talking about "early" adoption with just 2 months to go for 2016!
tdicola 11y ago
I'm sure people said the Apple I looked ugly too. That didn't stop it from revolutionizing home computing.
Yaggo 11y ago
It's about priorities. This [small budget] project priorities open source hw/sw, not industrial design. Good industrial design isn't cheap, easy nor comes for free.
- vlehto 11y ago
  I think its more about people. I'd love to work for something like this. I might not even need money for it. But I would not do it just to "sleek up this box", I would want to take part in the design process. (Or some money. I can do boring stuff with salary.) 1. These people probably don't know anybody like me. 2. Nobody wants to give away decision power when it's about their pet project.
mikekchar 11y ago
Glass-half-full-guy here. Free software, as a movement, started in the early 80's. Writing free software is incredibly easy because you need only a bare minimum of building blocks. Also once the initial tool set is built, anyone can join with virtually no cost to entry (for example, if you had emacs and GCC binaries and a computer capable of running them, you could participate in free software). Free hardware is completely different. You have to rely on other organizations all the way down the chain. And even if you manage to build a tool set to build something, it's not like anyone else can simply copy it and get started. They end up having almost the same struggle that you did. Consider as well how long it took for the free software view point to become acceptable to mainstream thinking. Even today, almost 2016, there are huge populations of programmers who think free software is crazy. But now there are companies built on free software with near billion dollar valuations, and other companies mostly built with free software that are in the many-billions-of-dollars of valuation. The concept has gotten over the hump, though it was a huge struggle for decades (and it continues to be necessary to make sure that legislation doesn't take our freedom away). Software was crazily hard. Hardware is nigh on impossible. And yet, they have accomplished this! It's not sad, it's amazing! I understand that you wish that the world was made up in a way that would make free hardware easy, but it's not. It never will be. It will take the concerted effort of dedicated pioneers to drag it into the consciousness of the masses. I suppose it is sad that it isn't easier in the same way that it is sad that it doesn't occasionally rain candy instead of raindrops. But that is no reason to be disappointed.

aij 11y ago

Why didn't they use an open source CPU? Eg: OpenSPARC

avmich 11y ago
May be they wanted good speed, freedom from particularly complicated FPGAs, and not to have to order chips as ASICs?.. I'd like to know too; this could be a good thing to have.
xobs 11y ago
Aside from the fact that we're familiar with Freescale and ARM, many other chips we "could have used" are unobtanium. While it's true that there is a source-level implementation, I can't find any T1 or T2 parts available for purchase. It's the same reason why we went with an A9 instead of an A15 or a 64-bit chip: You just can't buy them unless you're a big company. And if a small two-person company can't buy them, how can we claim it's open source hardware if you can't buy them either? The other possibility would be to fab a chip ourselves, but that's a whole other order of magnitude in terms of cost and complexity, and the result isn't that great in terms of speed and available peripherals. Plus, when you fab a chip like this a lot of the hardware blocks are IP provided by the chip foundry, e.g. flash controllers and DRAM cells, and those are always closed-source. It just moves the whole thing one turtle down.
renox 11y ago
Because you can't buy (1) an OpenSPARC? 1:for a reasonable amount of money, paying for a custom ASIC is quite expensive.

mfincham 11y ago

I have one of these machines and it's been great fun so far to hack on. The development process and the continuing work of the community has been great to be a part of.

akhilcacharya 11y ago

I like the project, but I'm not a fan of the designs they're going with for the first run - I'd prefer a model more similar to the one they first teased a few years ago, if only in terms of form factor [1] [1]: http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Open-Source-Laptop.jpg http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Open...

nosuchthing 11y ago
I'd guess the first model case would be more expensive to manufacture, and the current model they've chosen is more 'modular' and adaptable to ad hoc engineering situations?
xobs 11y ago
There were a few issues with that design. One was that we never really got hinges working. I bought some friction hinges, but couldn't settle on a way to attach them. The temporary bodge was to 3D print some chucks with an angle on them to use. The other was that it was difficult to get past airport security. The German agents seemed to at least appreciate that we'd built a laptop that we can trust. Finally, it was nigh impossible to access things like the FPGA and the serial ports. I find myself using GPIOs all the time to do things like bitbang SWD, and being able to do that by reaching around the screen is handy, not to mention being able to mount the thing being debugged under SWD directly in the case, so it's much easier to take with me.

scott_karana 11y ago

How in the world does a SMART-compatible Samsung SSD not have secrets? Did they never read any of Snowden's leaks? :( https://www.google.ca/search?q=nsa+hard+drive+firmware https://www.google.ca/search?q=nsa+hard+drive+firmware

adj_ 11y ago
It seems that you don't know that they are aware about the topic. In fact they proved the possibility of running arbitrary code on some sdcards' microcontroller: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554 http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554
- scott_karana 11y ago
  Well, I read through the entire article and despite the detailed attention lavished on CPUs and GPUs, there was not a single mention of their disk's security. It's disappointing that if they are "aware" of the problem, they didn't mention it to their audience in an article about their device's security, don't you think?

eccstartup 11y ago

1. Open does not mean ugly. 2. C'est trop cher! 3. Is it a manually-capsuled desktop-style laptop? 4. Is it light enough to carry? 5. Where can I get one?

pjmlp 11y ago

Nice effort, but software rendering is a no go in 2015.

ekianjo 11y ago

The expression "GNU/Linux is a special version of Linux" sounds a big strange to me. GNU/Linux is an actual OS, not a version of the Linux kernel. That's really the wrong way to explain things.

vog 11y ago
Maybe this was meant to distinguish GNU/Linux from other Linux userlands, such as Android? Apart from that, for the layman "Linux" is generally understood as the whole Linux distribution, not just the kernel or the OS. Still, even from that perspective this wording is quite confusing.
mikekchar 11y ago
Yes. It would have been nice to say something like, "We decided not to use Android. -- insert reasons for not using Android here --. Android uses a kernel called Linux that interfaces with the hardware. Instead we went with GNU on top of a Linux kernel". It makes it clear what's actually happening. If you've seen an Android machine and a GNU/Linux machine, then you can easily understand what Android and GNU provide on top of Linux. Still, I was happy to see the comparison even if it was slightly misleading.

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acd 11y ago

I´m looking for a laptop that is easy to repair and has open source hardware. Preferably there would be something like the ITX standard for laptops with different standard designs. Like a ultra book, notebook and different screen sizes. If there was standardized screen you could easily repair your laptop. All hardware should be open. The firmware should be open with known checksums. Open boot loader. Open source operating system. All components should be upgradable so that once the laptop speed wise is obsolete by moores law it should be easy to dissamble and recyle the materials. Further you should be able to reuse components which does not age that fast as the cpu and mainboard, for example the keyboard, mouse and display. We throw a lot of electronic garbage, that ends up being exported to cheap scrap yards in China and Africa, this needs to change if we do not want a junk yard planet.

ymse 11y ago
Fairphone is doing something similar with their upcoming phone. Although the hardware is not open. They should talk with OP. https://www.fairphone.com/phone/ https://www.fairphone.com/phone/
- reirob 11y ago
  Thanks for sharing. Just looked on their site, but can't see when the Fairphone 2 will be coming and what other OSes it will be able to run additionally to Android 5.1. Any idea?
pjc50 11y ago
What %age extra are you prepared to pay for this?

kriro 11y ago

Interesting, never heard of this before. I have backed a pitop on indigogo with the plan of switching out the pi for a beaglebone to get closer to all open components. Very cool project :)

theallan 11y ago

Possibly slightly off topic, and not something I would normally comment on, but wow - what a lot of adverts! Desktop browser and aside from the full screen ad you need to click through on load, about 3/5 of the screen is adverts. I've been torturing myself over the idea of having a single banner ad on my site (decided not to for now), but this is something that makes me want to finally give up and install an adblocker.

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