Just don't touch system76. They're just low quality rebranded Sager laptops with a crap version on Linux. You can just buy the same laptop and if you really like their horrible version of Linux, then put that on there.
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System76 and LVFS
11–20 of 84 posts
Re: System76 and LVFS
#12Just don't touch system76. They're just low quality rebranded Sager laptops with a crap version on Linux. You can just buy the same laptop and if you really like their horrible version of Linux, then put that on there.
Alternatively, there's Purism (https://puri.sm), who actually take security and build quality seriously.
Edit: looks like the system76 downvote brigade is hitting this discussion.
Re: System76 and LVFS
#13This article doesn't seem to explain why they have a hard dependency on a proprietary tool to flash the firmware. There are no alternatives to AFUEFI?
I am the engineer at System76 that has been working on the low-level firmware update procedure. The only alternative is to reverse engineer the SPI flashing method. We have switched to using FPT, the Intel Flash Programming tool, on new models. This means that we need to reverse engineer the SPI update method, which is something the flashrom project has had success in doing for older Intel chipsets.
SPI is a standard, right? What is the problem in using SPI?
Re: System76 and LVFS
#14This is the whole open source community destroying (edit: maybe better term would be "damaging") itself.
Basically it starts civilly about finding the one best way to do something. They agree to disagree.
Then there 2 standards...Then 4, then 8 all not having the effort exerted to make each solution great.
Then one party writes something like "don't buy this it not free/ doesn't do this".
And in the end 99+% of people can't be bothered with the arguments and end up running Mac/Windows laptops, harming the open source adoption goals of everyone who was arguing before.
I still own redhat stock. Corporations love having a point of contact when things go wrong and will pay for that.
Re: System76 and LVFS
#15The whole "Be wary" section is a really unprofessional swipe borne out of pure retaliation. It isn't germane to the discussion at all, and it's simply FUD spread by System76 in retaliation to Red Hat's security and legal teams balking at System76 wanting them "to ship a untrusted nonfree binary which would get run as root on RHEL on customer machines".
To be fair, both sides are acting somewhat unprofessionally in this story.
To be fair, both sides are acting somewhat unprofessionally in this story.
This. I think the whole "longer lever to move the boulder is to do this in public" is a very very bad trend. Posting stuff like this is inflammatory, on both sides.
Re: System76 and LVFS
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am the engineer at System76 that has been working on the low-level firmware update procedure. The only alternative is to reverse engineer the SPI flashing method. We have switched to using FPT, the Intel Flash Programming tool, on new models. This means that we need to reverse engineer the SPI update method, which is something the flashrom project has had success in doing for older Intel chipsets.
SPI is a standard, right? What is the problem in using SPI?
SPI is easy, and well understood. For firmware editing I often use an external flasher for updating the ROM, and use flashrom to do so. Accessing the SPI bus on the Intel chipset, from the computer itself, is undocumented and usually requires reverse engineering.
Re: System76 and LVFS
#17Just don't touch system76. They're just low quality rebranded Sager laptops with a crap version on Linux. You can just buy the same laptop and if you really like their horrible version of Linux, then put that on there.
Alternatively, there's Purism ( https://puri.sm ), who actually take security and build quality seriously. Edit: looks like the system76 downvote brigade is hitting this discussion.
The cheapest Purism seems to be $300 more than the cheapest System76. Is the purpose of your comment to say that more expensive laptops are better?
Re: System76 and LVFS
#18Just don't touch system76. They're just low quality rebranded Sager laptops with a crap version on Linux. You can just buy the same laptop and if you really like their horrible version of Linux, then put that on there.
The Linux community really does eat its own. For a long time the question was - when will there be a Linux supporting laptop. Now a company comes and does it and the complaint is they aren't bespoke enough.
Re: System76 and LVFS
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternatively, there's Purism ( https://puri.sm ), who actually take security and build quality seriously. Edit: looks like the system76 downvote brigade is hitting this discussion.
The cheapest Purism seems to be $300 more than the cheapest System76. Is the purpose of your comment to say that more expensive laptops are better?
Is that a controversial idea, that more expensive things are often better?
Re: System76 and LVFS
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, both sides are acting somewhat unprofessionally in this story.
To be fair, both sides are acting somewhat unprofessionally in this story. This. I think the whole "longer lever to move the boulder is to do this in public" is a very very bad trend. Posting stuff like this is inflammatory, on both sides.
Based on recent electoral trends from around the world, this sort of engaging spirited behavior may be exactly what consumers want.