backscratches 2 days ago

Can't recommend starlabs enough, fully replaceable everything, coreboot, modern specs, Linux compat, firmware over lvfs

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  • walterbell 2 days ago

    Thanks for the rec, didn't know they had moved on from Clevo designs to their own board design made by Quanta/Compal/Wistrom etc.

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    • backscratches 2 days ago

      Didn't know they were rebadging in the past, they've been using their own hardware designs for at least 6 years.

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onli 2 days ago

I looked into that category (of small and lightweight laptops, for travel) earlier this year, without the coreboot requirement. I ended up with a Panasonic Let's Note SZ6-CF. Also cheap - imported from Japan via eBay - I think it is better than the X200 series in almost every way, newer, faster, lighter. It might also have a better display than the default of the thinkpads. Only drawback: soldered memory (a crime against the longevity of those machines).

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ux266478 2 days ago

If you're interested in something of an even higher degree of robustness and are fine with an ARM device, check out the MNT Reform Next: https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next

I really wish we could get an MNT device with upstream support, if not an x86 processor. Having used the Pocket Reform, I think about it quite often. It's almost perfect.... but the ARM chip and all the warts that come with SoC crap basically is the one single thing that keeps me from using one.

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  • walterbell 2 days ago

    Open Arm devices sadly live in the shadow of closed Apple Mac Mini perf and battery life, and Asahi is stuck at 2022 M2 SoC. Some older Arm Chromebooks have mainline Linux support and also run coreboot. Qualcomm and MediaTek/Nvidia are "maybe next year" Linux and closed firmware.

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    • ux266478 2 days ago

      "Open" is a misnomer, I really wish people would stop throwing it around with regards to ARM systems because it's a serious problem. Apple's devices are no better or worse about this. It's just the nature of the SoC ecosystem.

      > Apple Mac Mini perf and battery life

      Battery life? You mean the macbook, not the mini, right?

      Speaking candidly, if both MNT devices and Apple's devices had perfect upstream support, I'd choose MNT every time regardless of battery life or performance. On a trivial level, I like the design language more, I prefer to buy boutique, etc.

      For actual material considerations, MNT overbuilds their stuff to a ridiculous degree. That's what I want out of a laptop more than anything. There's a sense when holding the pocket reform that you could yeet it full send onto the pavement and you'll just scratch the shell. I like that. It might not necessarily be true, but there's a sense of solidity I get from an MNT device that I don't get from an Apple device. I'll take almost any drawback to have something that's overbuilt to hell, and I'll pay a pretty penny for it. The one thing that keeps me away is being locked into a specific distro. If the distribution was minimalist like KISS or Void, or if it was FreeBSD or OpenBSD, this qualm disappears. MNT unfortunately runs a Debian fork, that's a non-starter for me.

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