11 ms·
Gluglug X60 Laptop now certified to Respect Your Freedom
- agumonkey 13y agoAbout coreboot, they brought support for ThinkPad x201 too : http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU0NDY http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU0NDY see comments for some acer chromebook work too (http://johnlewis.ie/ http://johnlewis.ie/)
- conductor 13y agoDo these laptops have hardware on/off switches for the webcam and the microphone? If they don't, are there any such laptops? I couldn't find a modern and powerful full HD laptop which has no integrated mic and webcam (which I don't need).
- JoshTriplett 13y agoI've never seen a laptop with either of those. Many webcams do have the activity light controlled in hardware, such that it isn't possible to record without a clear indicator. I haven't seen a microphone killswitch, though; most microphone mute buttons are software-based. If you're that concerned and trust your software stack that little, it wouldn't be that hard to open up the system and physically disconnect the internal microphone, such that you can only use a 3.5mm or Bluetooth microphone. But if you trust your software stack that little, you have bigger problems. Efforts like the one in this article are a good step towards not having to worry about that kind of problem.
- exarch 13y agoOn the subject of the camera/microphone activity light and how it isn't possible to bypass, I'll just leave this here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18/research-shows-how-macbook-webcams-can-spy-on-their-users-without-warning/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18...
- conductor 13y ago> Many webcams do have the activity light controlled in hardware, such that it isn't possible to record without a clear indicator. Yesterday's news show that some implementations can be unsecure [0]. > But if you trust your software stack that little, you have bigger problems. I generally trust the software that I run on my main CPU but there are other threats like DMA malware [1] for example. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929974 [1] - http://www.stewin.org/papers/dimvap15-stewin.pdf http://www.stewin.org/papers/dimvap15-stewin.pdf
- vipstarry 13y agoThat's only for a Macbook. You can't say the same is done for these X60 computers.
- tedunangst 13y agoI have a Thinkpad T430s (previous generation) with no camera or microphone built in.
- csmuk 13y agoThe X60 that they advertise does not. However, you can disconnect the hardware pretty easy. I've done this on my T400. Took about 5 mins with a Swiss army knife screwdriver (all you need to service a ThinkPad!).
- mdip 13y agoThat would be an excellent feature and years ago I had a laptop that had a simple plastic sliding piece that would cover the camera lens. Later versions eliminated this piece (it probably broke off too frequently). I have taped a piece of aluminum foil over every webcam on my laptops/iMac with a large piece of packing tape (making it possible to pull it aside when I do rather frequent video conferences). I get dismissed as paranoid (or the next question that's asked is "what do you do in front of your computer!"). What they don't understand is that years ago I wrote software for a building access kiosk that involved a one-way video chat, followed with a photograph taken of the visitor. I used an open source library for interacting with the camera. When video was running, the light was on. I had the worst time getting the camera to take a picture, but after a bit of tinkering (read: shooting bullets randomly), I had it working. It was my coworker that noticed the light didn't come on when the picture was being taken. I had done something wrong (so wrong that every few pictures, the camera would stop working and wouldn't recover until the entire machine was rebooted). Though I've been writing software professionally for twenty years or so, I had never wrote code to interact with a web cam and yet had somehow managed to stumble upon this entirely by accident. It gave me the willies, so from that point forward, I covered my cameras with a bit of ugly aluminum foil. I've never really worried about the microphone, but it would be nice to have some kind of hardware control to disable devices that can be used to record in that manner.
- fidotron 13y agoI've recently run into one where it's possible to make Android devices recognize the faces of people in front of the device via the front facing camera with no sign of this to the user. Someone has to actually start an app (which needs camera access) and it is possible for it to be killed, but I too did this entirely by accident and would now be super wary about it.
- Crito 13y agoA few months ago I added a little tiny square of electrical tape over the front-facing camera in my phone. I never have a reason to take pictures of myself, so I'd rather that camera not exist at all.
- rodgerd 13y agoYou can certainly delete the webcam from T-series Thinkpads, which also have hardware switches for the wireless network. No ability to delete the microphone, alas.
- GrinningFool 13y agoMy alienware has a keyboard+Fn key for disabling the camera which is technically not hardware - but it seems to be handled in the bios. When I use this under linux, it reports an unrecognized keycode; but at the same time the USB device reports as if disconnected, which I can see in dmesg. Close enough for me.
- tigerweeds 13y agolegendary build quality but ancient hardware.
- agumonkey 13y agoI can testify for the sturdiness of these. And X60's aren't the most robust of the pack. But I bang them once a week and yet no glitch. The platform is ancient, a Haswell ULV will be twice as fast for less than 25% of the TDP, with many added niceties (64bits, vt-*, a decent gpu, ...)
- tigerweeds 13y agoI own a T400 and it saved my back twice when sliding on ice. After 5 years of taking it everywhere, it looks like it was barely used. I love it, but damn... a P8600 Core 2 Duo in 2013 is noticeably slow even in browsing.
- pgeorgi 13y agoHaswell has the disadvantage that it won't be FSF-free _ever_.
- massysett 13y agoI have an old x61s, so it's not even as old as this. It does work perfectly. However the screen is bad--very dim, even on maximum brightness. It seemed fine back then but compared to the x230 I would never go back. Otherwise, though, there's nothing about the machine that makes it antiquated for most uses (web, video, etc.) Even the 1024 x 768 would be tolerable were it not for the dimness.
- voltagex_ 13y agoMight be worth reading http://www.coreboot.org/Board:lenovo/x60 http://www.coreboot.org/Board:lenovo/x60 - seems like there's still some rough edges on the BIOS replacement.
- csmuk 13y agoThe shipped BIOS is a little rough as well. The T61 which is where my main experience lies has hardware whitelists for WiFi cards and restricts the internal SATA port to basic SATA speeds rather than SATA2 speeds which the chipset supports. There are many hacked BIOSes (I use Middleton's BIOS) out there which fix this though.
- voltagex_ 13y agoArgh. Lenovo are still doing this. On my X1, it's impossible to boot from the SD card reader and only the official ($$$) USB Ethernet adapter will allow PXE-boot.
- exarch 13y agoThey're selling an ancient laptop at a premium because they installed Coreboot. They haven't addressed any of the problems with proprietary firmwares or backdoored chips. RMS has been recommending the Loongson Lemote for a long time, which would seem to be a much better choice. The Lemote's firmware and hardware is essentially all open source, including its MIPS CPU.
- jff 13y agoExtremely difficult to get a Lemote, though. I guess there's somewhere in the Netherlands that has them in stock. Shame the battery only lasts a couple hours.
- davexunit 13y agoThe company is Tekmote. http://www.tekmote.nl/ http://www.tekmote.nl/
- jff 13y ago$500 for the 10' model, which gets 1.5 hours out of the battery. This is laughable. When these were first announced, I wanted one badly. A cheap, MIPS-based laptop? Yes please. But you couldn't get one for a long time, and queries to the Chinese company were never answered. Now you can get one, but they're now out of date and too expensive.
- sliverstorm 13y ago200 quid really isn't so bad, and the X60 was one of the best laptops of the age. And it includes a brand new battery and the docking station. Hmm... I still have fond memories of my X61. This is actually kind of tempting.
- csmuk 13y agoDo it. I still use a T400 every day and have a T61 as a fallback. There's nothing like them out there.
- bri3d 13y agoThe RYF guidelines are interesting: http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/criteria http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/criteria . They require the BIOS / core boot firmware to be open but allow closed peripheral firmware and CPU microcode. This is a natural allowance as otherwise no modern computer would ever be certifiable, but it's interesting in that it doesn't require the firmware for wired-in peripherals like webcams or wireless chipsets to be open.
- csmuk 13y agoI'm not sure it should be allowable. WiFi firmware can in theory allow passive monitoring and forwarding of data. This is because the WiFi card is a small self-contained embedded system. The CPU microcode (and arguably architecture) is more difficult to modify but it's possible that the microcode for an AES round opcode could be intentionally flawed. Enough press is around not to have to explain this. USB is the one I find interesting. Anything (webcam/keyboard/mouse) could arbitrarily register itself as an HID device and inject data into your OS. The whole systems architecture is a mess. I'm not suggesting we go back to discrete wire-wrapped PDP11's but something needs to be done by putting security and privacy first. That means starting again as where we are isn't good.
- bri3d 13y agoI do agree that it probably shouldn't be allowable; even minor pieces like webcam firmware have proven very important (see the Apple webcam firmware with no light story from a few days ago). Plus without the requirement to release firmware for co-processors, some full machines with the potential for DMA and all sorts of nefarious concepts can exist that nobody even notices (SMC, WiFi, Bluetooth, "fan managers" and so on). With that being said no modern CPU vendor would even think about open-sourcing their CPU microcode especially, so the FSF are stuck between a rock and a hard place. With a true "every single thing open" requirement in place, the only general purpose PC made in the last ten years or so that could hope to come close to passing would be a Chinese MIPS laptop.
- hackmiester 13y ago
- tedunangst 13y agoFine print: The X60 has a Core2 CPU with a variety of errata which require proprietary microcode to fix (typically applied by the Lenovo BIOS).
- loser777 13y agoThat's interesting because I can't seem to find the exact CPU that these laptops ship with anywhere on the page. The ThinkWiki page shows that there are Core Duo (not 2!) and Core Solo variants of this laptop that exist as well.
- tedunangst 13y agoafaik, the Core models are a very small fraction of the total sold. They were replaced by Core2 models very quickly. I don't think there's enough Core models to reliably source used ones. If I'm not mistaken, thinkwiki gets their info from the thinkpad service manuals. (I have one too). There are a billion configurations of every laptop, most of which you'll never see because they were restricted to one region or market (or govt or edu). Some of them probably never even made it into production, but they exist as a row in a database.
- csmuk 13y agoThis. I worked for a company that had lots (3000+) T60's and they were all Core2 units.
- JanezStupar 13y agoI had a T60 with Core Duo CPU. AFAIK they were only sold for a couple of months.
- keithpeter 13y agoI have an X60 that can't run a 64 bit Linux, as I found out when I tried to boot the RHEL 7 beta installer. I'm assuming that is a Core Duo rather than a Core Duo 2. My sample is a Type 1706-CT0 with product ID 1706WB5 and it was manufactured December 2006 (06/12 on the end of the serial number). Did I get 'lucky'?
- davexunit 13y agoThis is great news! Hopefully this will get the ball rolling so that more modern hardware can be supported with fully free software.
- ngsandy1618 13y agoIts ancient laptop! why still sell on market?
- redthrowaway 13y agoIt's a nice gesture, but I fear they've missed their target market. Most of the people who care about free software are programmers, and programmers need things this laptop doesn't have, namely modern specs and a great screen. Cheap is nice for toys, but not for the computer you use every day to do your job and entertain yourself. This simply isn't a good enough laptop to do everything you'll want to do with it, which means you won't use it all the time, which means your freedom and privacy are compromised. Give me a laptop that can actually replace my MBP, instead of merely sit on the shelf while I watch movies and surf the web, and we'll talk.
- tokenrove 13y agoI think it depends on your workflow; for me, the keyboard is the single most important thing, then probably portability and RAM. Screen and CPU are pretty low on the list.
- pwpwp 13y agoA Thinkpad X60 certainly isn't as good an entertainment machine as a MBP, but with enough RAM and a SSD it's an excellent programming laptop.
- technomancy 13y agoI really miss my X60. If it had an LED backlight (I hack outside a lot) I would still be using it. The 1440x1050 resolution is better than anything currently available in this weight category.
- everyone 13y agoArticle is not good. They keep using the word 'free' as if it means 'open'. Also why is there a picture of an IBM thinkpad? I can imagine the writer just google image searching 'laptop' for this article.
- pkamb 13y ago> Dvorak (UK) layout is also available. Is this simply a rearrangement of the standard QWERTY keys? Or a "real" Dvorak keyboard? Specifically, the nubs on [F] and [J] are always an impediment to swapping keys.
- Crito 13y agoI don't believe Lenovo has made Dvorak laptop keyboards themselves (last time I looked for my T60p, I found nothing), so I suspect they are talking about a rearranged QWERTY that they can do during refurb.
- thisiswrong 13y agoNot related to the laptop: I like the retailer's site [1]. It's simple and clean. But most importantly there are no 3rd party trackers, and they have chosen not to use Google's surveillance code (Analytics) and instead they use Piwik analytics - which is probably hosted on a server that they control. [1] http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/ http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/
- ppereira 13y agoI purchased one of these machines running Trisquel. With an SSD it is quite snappy and the IBM keyboard is fantastic. It was a pleasure to purchase from Gluglug, although at the time I was restricted to paying via Paypal.
- reirob 13y agoI just ordered one. Payment is still via Paypal.
- transitionality 13y agoIt's all very cyberpunk, building hardware designed to enable freedom for a small resistance force, salvaged from megacorporation scraps. I imagine RMS using one while wearing a leather trenchcoat and mirror shades.