Tech and Gadgets: Old and new.

[simgin]

Hello grillers.
I have been thinking about a thread for a while now, well about the title tbh. We ravage and pillage the internet for news and info about technology in general. So why not show and caress our curiosity with our finds with each other in a dedicated thread.
These will be physical items, ie. weird keyboards, drones, super cameras, rare old consoles, computer chips or what ever.
I think you get the gist :)
I will start out with a kickstarter project that I have never heard of. It's an ARM board, and it is cheap, compared to the specs.

https://www.pine64.com/product

Now let us start.

Cheerio
Simon

[simgin]

Oh dear spamming myself here :)

Just found this other board from Odroid. Why I have never seen these tiny things with fans etc. is tragic. :(
http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php

[elixir]

Beautiful looking laptop. A bit too expensive for me though.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-15

[ivanovnegro]

/Rant mode: Of course they are expensive. I do not get this hype about libre machines. Yeah, it respects your freedom, great! But other than that it is just too expensive.\

Buy a nice Thinkpad and that's it. :)

[pidsley]

^^ Doesn't the i7 require proprietary microcode (or at least only work best with it installed)? The intel-microcode package is in the non-free repo. And that laptop uses ath9k wireless; firmware for that is also in the non-free repo. I am confused.

[franksinistra]

^ I have several i5/i7 machines, none of them has intel ucode installed and is stable enough. Those that will benefit from it are mostly the too-expensive cpus (the K , -E, or X series) i think, as they really need it to work.

and yeah i agreed, the hardware choice aren't that good for the supposed-to-be-libre-machines.

[machinebacon]

^^ good points, pidsley. there might be an explanation:

- Debian's non-free does only mean 'not following DFSG', which is mostly a legal/licensing situation where Debian wants to prevent legal issues. Debian is *quite* anal, as we know, see the Firefox logo story, or even when the (technically) "free and open" source code is missing a reference to the LICENSE file.
- ath9k seems to have an 'Open' version - not for all devices, though (https://github.com/qca/open-ath9k-htc-firmware)
- I am not sure about how important the intel-microcode package per se is. I never noticed a difference (except of warning messages when I had it installed and some update 'broke' it). Of course I don't have a new generation Intel CPU. [edit: frank was quicker]
- PureOS is actually just a rebranded Debian Jessie with backports enabled and apparently without contrib and non-free in the sources.list and Cinnamon on top. The live-build stuff is here, for the interested ones: https://github.com/purism/pureos-build ... seems the only kernel patch they (PureOS) use is for the touchpad. So this is basically a new take on Trisquel or GnuSense (or whatever they are/were called)

[pidsley]

Thanks guys. I have heard a bunch of FUD about the latest intel hardware being non-free, so I was just suprised by the specs. It makes sense that there might be some free alternatives to the proprietary stuff. Personally I don't care, but I know some people do. I think there are a lot of other choices we make in life that are much more important.

[simgin]

I am also perplexed about all these microcode bits and bobs. I have tried to read up on it, but there is no clear definition or anything of the sort of why and when it is needed. I have a couple of newer Intel's, i5 and i7, and I have never bumped into any issues with the lack of understanding what this code is or was or does. But one thing I am sure of too, as Pidsley mentioned (EDIT: and as Julius just said), is that new i7's are not so called open. If I am incorrect please show me where I can read about it, and I will stand corrected.

[pidsley]

One more reason I will be using my older hardware for as long as I can.

[rhowaldt]

just for my info in case i want to buy a new laptop at some point in the future: i wasn't going with AMD because they've only given me shit with Linux so far (fucking Radeon Mobile doesn't help)... so i figured I should do Intel. is that correct?

[wuxmedia]

^ certainly can be. GFX intel is good on the Acer, for the NUC (i5) GFX to work as expected had to install some drivers, no idea if they were non-free.
A fancy Radeon didn't do very well, ubuntu runs OK on it now.

[rhowaldt]

yeah dont really care about non-free or not. just want something that is supported on linux.

[machinebacon]

time for a meme.

CREATES FREE OPERATING SYSTEM

<bad breath richard>

MAKES SURE OSS GFX DRIVERS DON'T WORK

(of course this is bullshit, just wanted to add something useful to this thread /not)

[ivanovnegro]

Yes Rhow. I always go Intel but then I never buy shiny new hardware, only used and refurbished stuff like the Thinkpads. I see no point in buying expensive unsupported UEFI infested crap.

[rhowaldt]

yeah i suppose i should mostly keep an eye out for UEFI, eh. i'll just do some decent research and hope my laptop doesnt break down in the mean time forcing me to make a quick decision.