How much do they cost and where can I buy them?
In Germany: https://www.floss-shop.de/de/hardware/
Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
111–120 of 169 posts
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#112I've been looking at librem laptops, as I'd kinda like a dedicated linux laptop. But as with many of these kinds of projects, i18n concerns are secondary, and in this case, there is no scandinavian/nordic keyboard options :/ (And I do appreciate that it might not be quite simple to have all kinds of keyboard configurations available)
I use US/intl (also the new Dutch) layout for Nordic languages, Dutch and German. You get all the characters for Scandinavian languages easily with the EURkey layout (AltGr + aow for äöå). I did bind en-dash and em-dash to AltGr + - and AltGr + _ respectively because I use those a lot.
I have also tied CapsLock to the Nordic layout (Swedish/Finnish), so when CapsLock is on, you can blindly type and get those öäå characters on a regular qwerty layout. I never seem to use that, but at least I'm rid of CapsLock. ;)
I write both code and text in different languages, and in international environments just getting used to a standard qwerty layout has turned out to be the most efficient option.
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#113I 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.
It's just too narrow. 1200 lines is the bare minimum for my comfort.
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#114Earlier 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…
Hello, I'm living in France and I made the switch to qwerty and it was one of my best work-hacks in my live (after learning touch typing). It took around 3 weeks to get used. The advantage is soo huge! Just to take your fears - I'm a heavy VI user and I have to say after switching to qwerty you will get to love VI even more. Not even talking about programming. Regarding your concern with accents: Under Linux I am usi…
Has nobody made a kind of autocorrect that just adds accents and such? Of course you’d sometimes have to fix them yourself, but my experience so far learning French on an iPad (coming from English and not wanting to learn a new keyboard too) has been that this ought to be a reasonable approach.
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#115Call me cynic, but it wouldn't surprise me if the NSA intercepted those in their hardware interception program[1] and install spyware on them whenever they are delivered to an address outside the US. [1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/173721-the-nsa-regular...
That's why the OS should check to make sure the ME is still disabled and not boot otherwise, or signature check it somehow, create a hardware indicator, etc. But then there's still the harddrive firmware and who knows what else.
Still, this is upping the bar quite a bit if you're security conscious. In security all you can do is make the attackers lives harder, you can't fool proof it.
Plus they mentioned two different open source tools to disable it yourself (via software, not hardware as they do here). So you can buy a laptop with cash off craigslist and do it yourself if you're super paranoid.
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#116I 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.
I'm not paying premium for a device with a worse resolution than my phone's
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#117There's a blog post on their site that goes into detail on how this is done: https://puri.sm/posts/deep-dive-into-intel-me-disablement/
That's a fun article. Thanks. The best part was the wifi breaking randomly. This is why I could never be a hardware guy:
> Therefore, I started progressively whitelisting more modules so me_cleaner wouldn’t remove them, and testing if it affected the wifi module. This was annoying to test because I’d have to change me_cleaner, neutralize the ME firmware, then copy the image from my main PC to the Librem then flash the new image, poweroff, then restart the machine, and if the Wifi wasn’t working, which was 99% of the time, I had to copy the files through a USB drive.
Sounds painful. We've all had debugging experiences like that once in our lives.
I appreciate their effort and public documentation!
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#118I 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.
I bought a laptop with a 1920x1200 display in 2007. It was a 17" Dell, but still, it took nearly ten years before higher resolutions became common.
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#119Call me cynic, but it wouldn't surprise me if the NSA intercepted those in their hardware interception program[1] and install spyware on them whenever they are delivered to an address outside the US. [1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/173721-the-nsa-regular...
It’s not likely that the NSA would do that to every laptop a vendor ships outside the US, because it would increase the risk of their tools being compromised for no benefit. Hardware intercept would only be used if someone they were already interested in happened to order a laptop from the United States, and the risk/reward ratio supported bugging the laptop.
The NSA has already had a whole cache of tools get out in the open, and they wouldn’t want that to happen again. The thing about so-called cyber weapons is that they get weaker every time you use them...