Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NovaCustom – Framework Laptop alternative focusing on privacy

novacustom.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 52 posts

Re: NovaCustom – Framework Laptop alternative focusing on privacy

#31

Post by qchris »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #13
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think system76 is now designing their own hardware too?

As far as I know, for models currently on sale that applies only to their desktops (which are cool, but considerably more niche since people interested in desktops are likely to build their own), with their laptops being Clevos.

My personal opinion is that System76 isn't really targeting personal users with their desktop line, though, but instead is more focused on professional users. For example, I built my own desktop computer at home, but if I needed one for work for doing ML or just to have the increased compute over my company-issued laptop, there's no way that my organization would sign-off on letting me spec out my own parts from Newegg and spend a day or two building and testing the system, then trying to install NVIDIA drivers on Ubuntu.

What they would (and do) sign-off on is a one-time purchase of a desktop from an approved vendor for that desktop, which comes with out-of-the-box support for the NVIDIA GPU I've selected. That's more the niche that I feel System76 is really filling.

Re: NovaCustom – Framework Laptop alternative focusing on privacy

#32

Post by marssaxman »

speedgoose wrote: post #11

A maximum of 8GB vRAM in 2025 is quite limiting. You can only run the smallest large language models on those laptops.

Your world must be so different from mine! It would never occur to me to care about such a thing.

I was content with 8GB of main RAM in my dev laptop until about a year ago.

Re: NovaCustom – Framework Laptop alternative focusing on privacy

#34

Post by bigyabai »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #33

Yeah a company that you have to pay 9 euros to NOT HAVE an engraving of their logo on your $2,000 machine really inspires confidence in their respect for your privacy.

It does for me. In case you missed the Snowden leaks, pretty much every American laptop OEM is in bed with the NSA.

I swear that hipster marketing has ruined HN's ability to evaluate products. Next you people are going to start bitching about the logo not lighting up.

Re: NovaCustom – Framework Laptop alternative focusing on privacy

#35

Post by mixmastamyk »

ementally wrote: post #28
princevegeta89 wrote: post #9

I don't understand... what is the privacy concern with Framework Laptops? All hardware used is transparent and replacable. Software is the user's choice, and many users go for Linux. It is as transparent as you can make an OS to be. What am I missing here..?

https://4fa2b80c.privsec-dev-2oz.pages.dev/posts/knowledge/l... >Framework. vPro Enterprise Framework devices actually meet HSI level 4, but they unfortunately do not handle firmware updates properly. They have not shipped a single firmware for their 13th generation over a year since its release date, and over 6 months since the disclosure of LogoFail. While they do ship some updates for other devices, how they have…

Believe they updated firmware again, but yes proprietary and slow to update.

Re: NovaCustom – Framework Laptop alternative focusing on privacy

#36

Post by yndoendo »

bigyabai wrote: post #30
zamalek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a poke around their website and it looks like you can purchase a motherboard. It seems this exists somewhere between the mainstream and Framework: a regular laptop with right to repair. NVIDIA, though? We are still a good few months, or years, away from attempting to seriously use NVIDIA and Linux in the same sentence without looking like a complete idiot.

Nvidia drivers have included serious Wayland support since the 550 series. My NixOS Nvidia system has run equally as smooth as my Intel iGPU for close to a year now.

I have a GTX 650 Ti that keeps being erratic with Wayland to where it becomes unusable out of the box. Didn't take any time to try and resolve because it is being used as a server. Disabled the GUI service and only boot into terminal.

Re: NovaCustom – Framework Laptop alternative focusing on privacy

#37

Post by exiguus »

necovek wrote: post #2

This seems to have nothing similar to what Framework laptop offers. The main (only?) selling point for NovaCustom is open source coreboot firmware and disabling of Intel ME. I'd like to see Framework laptop with these features, but those two features do not make a Framework alternative.

The security features are options you can select like:

- Disabled IME

- Coreboot EDK or Heads

- Removed Camera and Microphone

- Buskill kit

- Privacyscreen

- Tamper-evident Screws and Packaging

Re: NovaCustom – Framework Laptop alternative focusing on privacy

#38

Post by exiguus »

marssaxman wrote: post #32
speedgoose wrote: post #11

A maximum of 8GB vRAM in 2025 is quite limiting. You can only run the smallest large language models on those laptops.

Your world must be so different from mine! It would never occur to me to care about such a thing. I was content with 8GB of main RAM in my dev laptop until about a year ago.

The vRam for example limits you running local llms. Basically, the formula for this is: 1GB of vRAM can handle 1B parameters. There are ways to overcome this, but the easiest way for the best performance, is just to have enough vRAM.

Re: NovaCustom – Framework Laptop alternative focusing on privacy

#39

Post by transpute »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #29

Note that the coreboot that NovaCustom uses is not the same coreboot that Purism or System76 is using. It's Dasharo coreboot. This is not free (as in price). NovaCustom has to pay for a license. How much of that cost is reflected in high price tag for NovaCustom. Maybe it is not much. If the purchaser does not want Dasharo, they can usually compile their own non-Dasharo coreboot and flash it themselves.

> not the same coreboot that Purism or System76 is using

Usually each laptop OEM ships a unique downstream tree and release build of firmware (UEFI or coreboot), optimized for their hardware, similar to the relationship between RedHat/Debian and mainline Linux kernel. Since coreboot is GPL, each Clevo OEM should provide source for their firmware.

Re: NovaCustom – Framework Laptop alternative focusing on privacy

#40

Post by dheera »

I don't really understand what's privacy-focused about it that Framework isn't. Isn't privacy mostly a software problem, other than hardware switches on camera/mic, which Framework already has?

> We do not use Google Analytics

Why do I care if you use Google Analytics? Doesn't affect the laptop I get. You're free to analyze your site traffic with whatever tool you want. (I block Google Analytics on the client side personally so I really don't care if you use it or not, it's all the same to me.)

> We use Signal and you can reach us via Protonmail.

Again, why should I care what you use within your business? Your business is a black box to me, and the right privacy assumption is to assume the worst about what's inside that black box, rather than try to audit what's used inside that box, and not send privileged information to you in the first place.

> You can buy your laptop with Linux preinstalled.

Yeah, no, I don't trust you to install an OS for me. Since I care about privacy, I would of course install my own OS.

> We setup your operating system with the most privacy-friendly settings. Even if we install Windows!

Nope nope nope

Post reply on HN