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MNT Reform is an open hardware laptop, designed and assembled in Germany
- boesboes 7mo agoI've been looking into switching away from apple and try to buy more EU based services and products. I love the concept and might just buy one to support the project, but I want something sleeker for my daily use. So I'm considering slimbook & tuxedo atm as buy-from-eu options.
- dlahoda 7mo agoWhere do you want it to be produced? Assembly is not production, essential parts production is.
- szszrk 7mo agoThen you are left with no options at all. Raspberry pi, maybe.
- F3nd0 7mo agoThey’re also working on MNT Reform Next, which is the sleeker version. It should be coming soon-ish, so if you otherwise like (and can afford) the classic Reform, you might want to keep an eye on it. https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next
- 1234letshaveatw 7mo ago[flagged]
- vrganj 7mo agoHow come?
- 1234letshaveatw 7mo ago[flagged]
- teo_zero 7mo agoWell said! Those Europeans with their tariffs, and their stupid motto "make Europe great again"! Oh wait...
- 1234letshaveatw 7mo agoJust because it is too subtle for you to notice doesn't mean it isn't there
- hulitu 7mo agoEU based products ? Can you name some ?
- 1234letshaveatw 7mo agoSAP
- vrganj 7mo agoIt's UK-based, so not quite EU anymore unfortunately, but the Starbook looks like one of the sleeker options: https://starlabs.systems/pages/starbook https://starlabs.systems/pages/starbook
- negura 7mo ago+1 for starlabs. they make sleek looking devices with strong specs
- yashasolutions 7mo agoLooks really cool!
- ehnto 7mo agoCan you fly with stuff like this? I only wonder because of the battery setup. Very cool, I would personally use a regular track pad over the ball as I prefer as little mouse interaction as possible and it would stay out of the way better.
- olgierd 7mo agoOff the shelf LiFePo4 18650, marked capacity - not at all sketchy. 8 cells are way below the carry-on limit of 100 Wh.
- megasquid 7mo agoHave multiple times no problems.
- ktallett 7mo agoYep, I have many times, no issues at all.
- selfawaresoup 7mo ago(on a Pocket Reform here) The trackball stays out of the way very nicely when you don't need it and it uses a lot less space than a trackpad would.
- silon42 7mo agoAs it's not very small, it would be a lot cooler if it had a full no compromise TKL mechanical keyboard.
- irusensei 7mo agoI think 1450 EUR for a 16GB RK3588 is hard to justify. Is the Rockchip open to begin with? I'd go for a framework using the Roma or CIX boards if I wanted to go for an "open hardware but not really" goal.
- Palomides 7mo agoother than maybe some RAM related blobs I believe the mnt stuff is completely open in both ways framework stuff is generally neither open hardware nor open software, intel and AMD don't permit it
- M95D 7mo agoRK3288 was true open source. It boots with just u-boot and no blobs. DDR init was done by u-boot code and armv7 didn't require a TEE. RK3588 is "almost" open. It boots with mainline u-boot and device tree from the Linux kernel, but needs two blobs: the DDR training blob and the trustzone blob (BL31). It can run without a TEE OS. I recently heard that the BL31 is now open source, but I didn't look into it. Mainline kernel has support for everything, including 3d (panthor driver) and video codecs acceleration (you find it in the v4l submenu). Mainline Mesa driver (panfrost) also works, but... not great - it stutters/freezes when I move the mouse.
- mghackerlady 7mo agoWhat about in kernel binary blobs? Would something like GNUs linux-libre work on it?
- M95D 7mo agomali_csffw.bin - see my other answer. Xorg works, it uses the generic modesetting driver which is accelerated by Mesa panfrost driver, but like I said, with stuttering and temporary freezes when I move the mouse. It happens in all apps: moving windows, vkgears, glxgears, mpv video playback, but "mpv -vo gpu -hwdec=vaapi" started from console plays fine, very smooth. I didn't try Xlibre or wayland.
- bpye 7mo ago
- exitb 7mo agoIt's an interesting concept, but perhaps a bit financially and environmentally wasteful, when you can get a 10 year old ThinkPad for 10% of the price that will perform roughly as well as this one. We don't need to bring more low-powered laptops into this world.
- timschmidt 7mo agoOn the other hand, since all the design files are available, anyone can design an upgraded motherboard for this machine and keep all the other parts out of the landfill.
- exitb 7mo agoThat’s true. It doesn’t even have to be just „anyone” as they sell compute module upgrades themselves. The thing it though, the old ThinkPads are already here, readily available. It’s still more environmentally conscious to get one every few years instead of buying a new compute module.
- timschmidt 7mo agoI'm not sure it's so clear. On one hand, businesses will continue to purchase computers and sell them in lots every few years. On the other, every computer purchased from some other supplier is one less made by someone else. What's important about a computer is it's suitability for purpose, which is not necessarily the same thing as fastest / latest / cheapest / whatever. If my purpose requires modular expansion, my choices are this thing and Framework. Neither of which I'm going to find inexpensive used. I can think of a lot of scientific and engineering data logging applications that would be great for. And a machine like that might serve 20 years if it works well at the task. I've seen a lot of machine controls still running Windows 98. https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-uconsole https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-uconsole is another great example of a machine I've seen people mod into all manner of special-purpose device that wouldn't work as well with a used business laptop.
- F3nd0 7mo agoI think it’s very important to have someone making new, open, upgradeable computers. Getting an old computer might be more environmentally conscious now, but it doesn’t feel sustainable in the long term. New computers will (need to) continue being made, and the Reform by far seems like the best way to go about that.
- jabl 7mo agoI'm intrigued by this, but waiting for the MNT Reform Next.. https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next
- vaylian 7mo agoThey also have a small-form-factor stationary computer in the pipeline: https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt-research/mnt-station https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt-research/mnt-station
- abdullahkhalids 7mo ago> 3x USB Type-A ports > 1x USB Type-C for USB-C PD power input and built-in UART-to-USB converters It doesn't seem either present- or future-secure to have only USB-A ports.
- toast0 7mo agoWhy not? It's only an adapter away if you have something thst needs to connect to a usb-c female host port. And if you need more ports, which seems likely, you can get a usb hub which has ports of your preference.
- jogu 7mo agoThe MNT Reform classic discussed here was designed 6 years ago, but there’s nothing preventing an updated motherboard with better port selection from being created. The MNT Reform Next that’s scheduled to be fulfilled this year has a much more modern port layout: https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next
- fishgoesblub 7mo agoA or C you'll have to use a dongle regardless.
- blazarquasar 7mo ago
- roshin 7mo agothe trackball is interesting
- Tade0 7mo agoIt's been a while since I've last seen a laptop powered by 18650s. The thickness seems to be directly the result of using them there.
- jstummbillig 7mo agoI wished it was easier to manufacture things. There is a reason that Apple is held in high regard, and looking at this makes abundantly clear, why.
- bluGill 7mo agoYou can make things at home. However some parts will need $100 worth of your time when you can buy it - at slightly the wrong size - for $0.50. You could make the part for $0.25 instead - but it would cost several years to design the molds.
- jstummbillig 7mo ago> You can make things at home. Price aside, most just won't be very nice.
- bluGill 7mo agoMostly because you won't spend the time to make it nice.
- briandear 7mo agoTrackball?
- F3nd0 7mo agoTrackball.
- honkcity 7mo agoI use their Pocket reform option pretty regularly, its a gorgeous device. The keyboard is a delight to use and the community is very friendly and helpful. The RK3588 is also plenty fast for the programming I like to get up to -- mostly writing things in Go or Ocaml for myself, but also for larger tasks its worked fine. It has rough edges but its very usable , especially for somone inclined to hack on their devices. My main trouble being my yearning to use Alpine on it but not quite having the know how personally to get it up and running. I like it enough though, that I've also got the Next ordered, which I'm very excited for. Being able to upgrade them both more or less ad-infinitum while new boards come out is a big plus too.
- dharmatech 7mo agoHow was the process of getting used to the ortholinear keyboard?
- honkcity 7mo agoIt took me much shorter than I expected, maybe a week or two. I'm quite quick on it now.
- paroneayea 7mo agoHi! I actually have, and have been using as my main device, an MNT Pocket Reform, and at one point was using an MNT Reform. MNT's devices are honestly kinda incredible. I can't recommend them for everyone yet, though that will change soon. Both of them are a kind of "laptop of theseus"; you can open and change and repair them, and honestly I have. Both device's guts are dramatically different than where they started, but changes happened piecemeal. The Pocket Reform is an incredibly cute device. I can't pull it out anywhere without people fawning over it. Not even just hackers! It's an open hardware cyberdeck you can use as your main device. What's not to love? The MNT Reform Next will be closer to what many people want out of a laptop. It'll still be chonkier than a normal laptop. But again, these things are incredibly upgradeable and hackable. Now for the caveats: for most people, I would wait until the MNT Quasar module comes out. The reason being is that while the current "best" module, the RK3588, is honestly pretty good with the 32gb version, it lacks one critical thing for most people and one other critical thing for me in particular. The first thing it lacks is support for suspend. Honestly, it does make working with a tiny computer like this a bit less appealing than the Pocket Reform's form factor could be, since what you really want to do is just be putting it to sleep and taking it out everywhere. The other thing is that Blender doesn't really run on the rk3588 either. You can kind of get a patched version working based on Lucie's patches, and I did, but it doesn't support the Eevee renderer, which is a must-have for me personally. But the MNT Quasar board will be apparently fixing both of those above issues, and yes, at that point this will be a device that I can recommend generally. And I'll also note that I got the very first MNT Reform when it came out, and holy moly the state of the hardware now vs when it originally launched half a decade ago... it's hugely far between, but the amazing thing is that to get it up to the current state, I didn't need to throw things away, I could just open and tinker with things bit by bit. In many ways, the MNT Pocket Reform reminds me of the book the main character has in the solarpunk book A Psalm for the Wild Built; a computer that is issued to you at the age of 16 and that which you carry with you for life. You can upgrade and repair it easily, but you don't need to throw it away. So yeah, it's not for everyone. But if the idea of supporting repairable, upgradeable open hardware made by a lovely bunch of queers in Berlin sounds great? That you can hack on, that has a neat little community, that will be a conversation point amongst fellow hackers for its quirkiness? It's appealing to some, but not all.
- dv_dt 7mo agoFor this kind of hobby device, I would love a different kind of approach that is more like an detachable independent tablet panel with a extended docking base both with CPUs - and hack on the smarts to make resources on the docking base seamlessly available between independent/docked states.
- leonleon69 7mo agoCurious why they went with the i.MX8M SoC specifically — was it purely about open documentation, or did the memory bandwidth also factor into the decision?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- unleaded 7mo agoWhat's with all these new accounts posting Claude-generated comments?
- Schlagbohrer 7mo agoWebsite appears to be slashdotted
- catlikesshrimp 7mo agoI can only get a page sekf signed. And it is still loading through http only. Yhe internet archive, OTOH, was able to access through https https://web.archive.org/web/20260421151811/https://mnt.stanleylieber.com/reform/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260421151811/https://mnt.stanl...
- scottlamb 7mo agoI ran across their trackpad [1] last night; it uses the same Azoteq TPS65 module as the keyboard I just bought. Unfortunately the module's discontinued. [2, 3] I guess people have been going through stockpiles of these given that the last manufacturing run was 2 years ago, but I note the MNT Reform Trackpad is listed as out of stock... I'm wondering what they'll do to replace it. You can still buy the IQS550 chip it's based on and apparently make a very similar PCB. [4] The black frosted glass seems like more of a challenge for most DIY keyboard makers, maybe not for MNT. The replacement project I saw recommended "2mm thick matte acrylic". [edit: or maybe the TPS65 manufacturing restarted? mouser apparently has it in stock. [5] although that's the A unit without the surface.] [1] https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform-capacitive-trackpad-module https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform-capacitive-trackp... [2] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/azoteq-pty-ltd/TPS65-201A-S/7164942 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/azoteq-pty-ltd/TP... [3] https://mm.digikey.com/Volume0/opasdata/d220001/medias/docus/6284/EOL_TPR-TPE_TPS_May2024.pdf https://mm.digikey.com/Volume0/opasdata/d220001/medias/docus... [4] https://github.com/geek-rabb1t/GR-Trackpad65 https://github.com/geek-rabb1t/GR-Trackpad65 [5] https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Azoteq/TPS65-201A-S?qs=pfd5qewlna5Lh8O0E8DcUQ%3D%3D https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Azoteq/TPS65-201A-S?qs=...
- jogu 7mo agoThe trackpad in the MNT Reform Next is custom based on the Azotech IQS9150 IC from what I’ve seen in their firmware sources. Not sure if that will be directly compatible with the MNT Reform classic discussed here though.
- gjvc 7mo agothis idiom should be encouraged: echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/ath9k-phy0/brightness rather than the style in the article: echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/ath9k-phy0/brightness # needs root permissions
- camel-cdr 7mo agoThanks I've been doing dumb sudo sh -c ... stuff before.
- mghackerlady 7mo agoI would love to have one of these with a RISC-V SBC, I know there's a framework board but as good as framework is they're never be able to beat MNT in terms of hackability
- jogu 7mo agoThey have a CM4 adapter module so maybe you could get a RISC-V module in there some how but I don’t know if anybody has actually done that or if it would be worth it at this point.
- ryukafalz 7mo agoTyping this from a Pocket Reform right now. The two non-work devices I use most often are this and the Reform 2, and I've upgraded both to various degrees over time. I plan to swap modules between them at some point soon so I can have the Pocket Reform be the faster of the two. I should really write up a long-term review of this thing at some point, but overall I love it. It can be a bit rough around the edges at times, but it's also the coziest little machine I've used in a long time. (And seriously, having a mechanical keyboard in this form factor is great.) I hope to keep using it long into the future, and the fact that it's open hardware (and that the batteries are standard off-the-shelf pouch cells, or 18650s for the full-size Reform) gives me hope that I will be able to.
- dharmatech 7mo agoHow was the process of getting used to the ortholinear keyboard?
- ryukafalz 7mo agoThere was a bit of a learning curve, but I was used to split ortholinear keyboards already, so for me it wasn't all that steep. YMMV though, if you don't already have experience with a similar style of keyboard it might take longer. I think for me it helped that none of the keys are odd shapes and sizes too. The arrow keys for example are the same size as all the others, unlike some (even larger!) laptops.
- MisterTea 7mo agoI bought a ZSA Moonlander and have a poor on-and-off-again relationship with it. However, the smaller ortho on the MNT Pocket was easier for me to use and I am not a great typist. Unfortunately the small screen of the Pocket at this stage in life is a bit of a strain to use for long periods so I wind up using my surface or X1 carbon when not at my PC.
- disqard 7mo agoThank you for sharing your personal experience! I often think "I should get me one of those" (MNT Pocket, or similar form-factor), but with my visual acuity getting worse (got my reading glasses in the past year), my X1 carbon might just remain my mainstay.
- anthonj 7mo agoI'm trying to design my own, and this project has been of great inspiration. But for mine I really would prefer to wait for the RK3668. My past experience with the current soc is that it's a tad too slow for many cases.
- fortheswarm 7mo ago9Front 03 Certified: https://helpful.cat-v.org/Blog/2022/07/12/0/ https://helpful.cat-v.org/Blog/2022/07/12/0/
- ux266478 7mo agoI really like almost everything about MNT's products except for the hardware. Not from a performance standpoint, but on a more fundamental level. I'm really not impressed with all the caveats that ARM brings here. I understand the hacker ethos is part of the brand, and that's perfectly fine when it comes to the friction involved in getting a preferred distro (and other software) running. What's less fine are things like the fundamentally broken sleep/wake functionality. I'd love to drop $1700 on a Pocket Reform, it's far more appealing than a GPD Pocket 4, but what makes it hard to justify is knowing I'm just buying into another system hampered by the critical flaw of being an ARM SoC. Even though they're tantalizing as a super-luxury boutique computer, overbuilt and absolutely lovely, at the end of the day I simply can't overlook the awful ARM experience it brings with it.
- BirAdam 7mo agoI have wanted an MNT Reform for quite a while. The problem for me has been spending so much money on an RK3588. Feels irresponsible for a machine that would mostly be accessing my Mac Studio as the Reform is so weak. On the other hand, every single design choice hits for me. I may get one at some point, possibly second hand.
- selfawaresoup 7mo agoMNT Pocket Reform user here, had mine for about 1.5 years now in pretty much daily use Mostly I use it at university (studying psychology) for reading and annotating literature, writing papers using LaTeX, statistics in RStudio, and email, or at home whenever I'm not at my desktop PC and need something with a keyboard or otherwise more capable than my phone. Sometimes I'll take it with me on a trip in case I want to do some writing while traveling. It sure is a conversation starter. I"m certainly "the lady with the cute cyberpunk-ish laptop" at uni now (I have the purple version) Things I like: - trackball: I wish more laptops came with that option these days. Love it - keyboard: I use a columnar layout on my desktop as well so the ortholinear one was very welcome and afaik the Pocket Reform is the only laptop available right now with such a layout. - case: it's chunky but very sturdy. I used to run a few MacBooks over the years and I always worried about their super-thin screen assemblies. I never worry about damaging my Pocket Reform when chucking it in a bag. This thing is really sturdy. - community support: whenever I had any issue, people on the user forum were quick to help and usually a solution was found very soon. Things that could be better: - battery life: I get about 4h on a full charge, which is fine. And I can easily get to 8h with a small USB-C powerbank. There's a guide on how to replace the battery cells with larger ones for about 8-10h of running time on the user forum but I haven't gotten around to trying that. Sounds promising though. - performance: the RK3588 is fast enough for most everyday tasks but it sure has its limits. I'm not going to edit my 50MP RAW photos on this machine. Issues experienced: - Debian unstable: by default the device ships with Debian unstable (sid) which has caused a lot of issues for me early on, just software breaking a lot. However there's a really good community project providing stable (Trixie) images for Reform laptops and since switching to that it's been smooth sailing. - some battery charging inconsistency: might be related to an early revision of the charging board and I'll probably switch it out for a newer one soon. Who is this device for? I'd day it's definitely an enthusiast device. If I just needed a laptop, then yes, I could have gotten an old Thinkpad or a Framework or even a Macbook Air for less money as others have commented, but I think open-hardware projects like MNT Reform are important. That's why I joined the early crowdfunding for the Pocket laptop. I like that I can actually repair this thing when necessary, upgrade components (like I've already did with the RK3588 CPU), that Linux is the "original" OS for this and not an afterthought, that I can talk to the people designing it (I've personally been to their workshop in Berlin) and contribute things myself. Knowing Linux basics is certainly helpful too. I would not want to throw a Windows/Mac user with no UNIX terminal experience into the deep end, especially not when running Debian unstable. It's a nerdy and unique machine for people who are fine with some level of tinkering and I really like it. No other laptop feels like this to use and that's hard to express in specs.
- mbix77 7mo agoYou don't have SSL.
- kube-system 7mo agoTheir packets are open source, no DRM.
- rbanffy 7mo agoThe MNT Pocket Reform keycaps are gorgeous. I wonder why they didn't go with these for the bigger model and keyboard.
- normie3000 7mo agoAre those AA batteries?
- gt0 7mo agoThey're 18650 cells, a bit bigger than AA.
- Moosdijk 7mo agoThis is nice website.
- cultofmetatron 7mo agoon the same day the new framework pro launches...
- fgfarben 7mo agoThe plan fell off.
- aussieguy1234 7mo agoIt has that trackball. I'm assuming that must need cleaning from time to time, like the old mouse balls?
- qiu3344 7mo agoCan't wait for the Qualcomm modules ^^