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Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

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Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

#101

Post by clort »

zimpenfish wrote: post #89
mrec wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember 640x480 being the highest resolution my first personal computer could display Eeee, you were lucky. My first personal computer maxed out at 320x256, or 160x256 if you wanted more than 4 colours.

> 320x256 LUXURY. We had 32x24 b&w characters and we were glad of them. (ZX81, nominally 256x192 pixels but only accessible as 8x8 character cells.)

I seem to recall that there were characters made up of all the options of quarter squares, so you could have a pixellated display of 64x48 at least

edit: seems like HN doesn't support these characters but see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Elements

I made a 'zooming through a tunnel' program in assembler once, using them

Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

#102

Post by driverdan »

I love the concept but not the prices. In comparing their 13" to the Macbook Pro 13" I found the prices are about the same. The Macbook has a much better screen, a better touchpad, and the resale value will be much higher so its lifetime cost will be lower.

Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

#103

Post by djsumdog »

broodbucket wrote: post #25
hedora wrote: post #6

I really want one of these, but the ergonomics look awful. Is there a technical reason they only come with low resolution (1080p) screens? (“Linux” is not a valid reason...) Also, as much as I would like a 15” screen, the off center keyboard is a deal-breaker. It’s just asking for RSI. Does anyone own one? How is the trackpad / keyboard / battery life / fan noise? Maybe I can deal with 1080p in exchange for a reasona…

1080p is considered low res! Crazy the times we live in. There are still laptop manufacturers making 1366x768 displays, the worst resolution ever invented. I understand pixel density is nice, but for the vast majority of workflows you do not need anything better than 1080p on a 15" display.

My MSI from four years ago had a UHD screen:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/msi-ws60-running-linux/

My current Dell XPS15 does as well; both ran/run Linux. I do a lot of photo editing (Lightroom in VM, although I'd started to use Darktable) and I probably wouldn't buy a primary laptop without a UHD display today.

Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

#104

Post by Finnucane »

driverdan wrote: post #102

I love the concept but not the prices. In comparing their 13" to the Macbook Pro 13" I found the prices are about the same. The Macbook has a much better screen, a better touchpad, and the resale value will be much higher so its lifetime cost will be lower.

Unfortunately, doing custom manufacturing for a limited market (i.e., people who will pay for privacy) means they're probably never going to be able get price parity with mass-market brands.

Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

#105

Post by nilved »

askvictor wrote: post #59
belorn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain why you would want to link to fonts/js libraries rather than have a copy on the server and server that yourself?

One reason would be that the browser will cache them if they are used in multiple sites, so loading will be much faster on subsequent sites using the same resources. Another might be that such resources load faster off a CDN than your own server.

In practice, this never happens. The value is certainly less than the data you're selling about your users to Google.

Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

#106

Post by bo1024 »

driverdan wrote: post #102

I love the concept but not the prices. In comparing their 13" to the Macbook Pro 13" I found the prices are about the same. The Macbook has a much better screen, a better touchpad, and the resale value will be much higher so its lifetime cost will be lower.

I don't worry so much about resale because I plan on using my computers as long as possible.

The touchpad works fine for me, and I don't notice the difference in screens (except aspect ratio). Battery life and weight are comparable.

So to me, the privacy factor and supporting Purism is well worth the price. Also the Librem probably runs native Linux better, which is a huge difference-maker for me.

Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

#107

Post by bo1024 »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #98
ploggingdev wrote: post #15

What do the security experts think about Librem products? Does it live up to what's promised? Any gotchas users need to be aware of? I have not come across their comments on this topic, so links to the same would be appreciated if I missed them.

They have a track record of lying about their product, though disabling IME is a big step towards living up to their marketing.

Examples?

Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

#108

Post by bo1024 »

sspiff wrote: post #41

You can also order Dell machines with ME disabled. Additionally, most current Dell systems can disable Intel ME in the BIOS settings as well. This is a trap door setting - once disabled, there is no way to turn it back on. From what I've heard, this disabling is done through the Intel HAM (high assurance mode), but I have no idea what the differences between the Dell and Purism approaches are.

I would guess you are referring to a motherboard BIOS setting that at least claims to "turn off" Intel ME. But for all we know, it is still possible or easy for someone to remotely access the ME and use it.

Purism is doing some much more in-depth stuff including both hardware and software/firmware changes. I don't know the details myself but it's a whole different level of approach.

Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

#109

Post by rangibaby »

jchw wrote: post #63
andy_ppp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you don’t need better than 1080p but most developers need crisp text and I would like to go further and 4k 15inch displays would be perfect for me as it would allow me to have smaller text without a loss of quality.

It's a bit absurd to argue that you need a high pixel density to code. It's no longer an insane luxury, but even being a relatively younger programmer I remember 640x480 being the highest resolution my first personal computer could display. What fundamentally changed about programming that now we can't even do it without 200 PPI displays? Obviously, nothing. High resolution for most people is still just a 'nice to ha…

Low res on a CRT looks much, much better than low res on an LCD panel though

Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

#110

Post by oelmekki »

hiq wrote: post #95
oelmekki wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've considered a few times switching to a qwerty (from french azerty), but there are two things that made me pull back: 1. french people I know who use qwerty tend to not write any accentuated characters anymore. I'm ready to accept compose keys are usable, but it clearly seems to encourage incorrect spelling when you use a language with a lot of accentuated characters in a sentence 2. vim. I really don't see myself…

1. If you care about your spelling, you just need to find the right layout (which would be "English (international AltGr dead keys)" on Debian), then it's almost as easy as the azerty keyboard: é : altgr + e ` : altgr + ` (then the letter) ¨ : shift + altgr + ' (then the letter) ^ : altgr + 6 (then the letter) If I remember correctly it's slightly easier to type é and è on an azerty keyboard, but not that much. 2. vi…

Well, I guess it's a matter of preference, then, because I definitely feel like having to press 3 keys instead of one is indeed a problem when you have to do it four or five times per sentence :)

A side note, btw, regarding CTRL-[ : it seems not to be well known, and it doesn't work on things that use "alt" to access file menu (like gvim), but using alt + in insert mode instantly drops to normal mode and execute that key. For example, I usually leave insert mode by doing A-j or A-h, I never hit the ESC key.

My favorite trick is `A-e a` when inside parenthesis to jump just after it and still be in insert mode, like when writing parameters to a function and jumping out of parameters list to add the `{` character.

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