Live data from Hacker News

Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

puri.sm

121–130 of 169 posts

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

#121
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I like the idea, actually. But I can guarantee that given how teachers/parents/old people always complain that young french people can't write french properly, they would brutally yell at this idea :)

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

#122

Call 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...

Not much left to the imagination after Snowden.

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

#123
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…

I just wish they made this in a desktop, or in a standalone board I could build a machine around.

[deleted]

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

#124
post #81
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a lot of systems still have mediocre high-dpi support As far as I can tell, the only desktop OS with good high-DPI support is macOS.

Gnome has had good high DPI support for a while now...

Any DE that does not support fraction scaling does not qualify as "good HDPI support". KDE is doing it the right way.

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

#125
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

You are, indeed, correct - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81_character_set

Although in the context of developing on small screens, they're not very helpful.

(And if you redefined the character set on the fly, you could make things like Forty-Niner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTTWMIQVznM )

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

#126

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.

Except for the long run you're pretty much guaranteed a brick when apple drops hardware support if you plan on running MacOS..

Not sure if these have replaceable battery which is another gotcha, so it might be a moot point in the 'disposable hardware' era..

That said, lack of replaceable battery on macs will change the resale value picture.. don't think that's really hit things yet..

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

#127
post #81
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a lot of systems still have mediocre high-dpi support As far as I can tell, the only desktop OS with good high-DPI support is macOS.

Gnome has had good high DPI support for a while now...

I'm running Gnome on my retina displayed laptop and I can confirm that this is not true.

The high DPI suppport on gnome equates to 'SCALE ALL THE THINGS 2x DERPA DERPA DERP'

And the scaling is integer-based. So, I can choose 1x, 2x, or any other whole number. Useless as hell for me, who wishes it was probably 1.25x.

It sucks bad enough that I actually WISH I was on a 1080p screen, because with the 2x scaling i effectively have a 1324x768 pos screen.

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

#128
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Value to whom? The site loads faster (so people like it slightly better), it's easier to maintain (less files to serve and keep track of), all for the cost of something the site owners didn't pay for in the first place.

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

#129
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…

Who cares about the ergonomics? It's a _laptop_ -- those always have terrible ergonomics, which is why you should carry a (small) keyboard and (small travel) mouse. Put the laptop on a table and the keyboard on your lap -- that way you won't hurt your neck as much as if you put the laptop on your lap, nor your arms/hands as much as if you put the laptop on a table but don't use an external keyboard.

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

#130
post #35

I'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)

It's a laptop. To not hurt yourself it's best to use it with an external keyboard and mouse anyways, so there's your I18N :)
Post reply on HN