[Arm-netbook] System 76 - Entering Phase 3

[Bill Kontos]

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 6:25 AM, Lyberta <lyberta at lyberta.net> wrote:

> Bill Kontos:
> > No, don't worry. I don't call names on anyone. As RMS said, I'm not glad
> > that he died, but I'm glad that he's gone. I believe in the value of
> human
> > life above all else. It would be immoral( imo) to apply crude logic to
> > this. I do not celebrate the death of any human being no matter how
> savage
> > or harmful that person might have been to humanity. And I sure won't
> > celebrate Linus' death because you might hate him but it won't change the
> > fact that we 100% rely on his work and we don't know how his death could
> > affect future development of linux and free drivers in general.
>
> There is a line that you may cross after which there is almost no
> return. If the whole world is extremist and fascist, then you fix it
> with extremism and terrorism. An eye for an eye makes the whole world
> blind but by that point you don't care. You've given up on life. You
> want blood. You keep the last bullet for yourself. You choose free
> software so that intelligence agencies can't spy on your activity. So
> that they are unaware of your plan that you've been plotting for the
> most of your life. So that you are free from belief, trust and law. You
> never forget and you never forgive. You are anonymous. You are the
> judge, jury and executioner.
>
> ...
>
> Fuck. I hate this world, I hate myself. There go 2 hours without suicide
> thoughts.
>
> > And anyway something that is not widely known: when arm netbooks started
> > becoming a thing OEMs were putting linux on them( of course). Microsoft
> saw
> > a very threatening market emerging and raged hell upon them that if they
> > kept doing this the sales of their other models would suffer due to them
> > removing the OEM discount on the windows license. After that they
> proceeded
> > to change the model so instead of charging per machine they charge per
> > model. So basically even if you buy e.g. a Dell Lattitude with Ubuntu
> > preinstalled and then wipe it and replace it with an FSF approved distro
> > YOU ARE STILL PAYING THE WINDOWS LICENSE. Now some people might disagree
> > with me, but for me libre software is a war against oppression and is
> > directly competing with microsoft etc( disagree as in that we do not
> > compete but exist to fulfeel our own needs). So just for this reason, if
> > you need to buy an x86 computer and a libreboot model is not an option it
> > is better to buy a system76 instead of e.g. a dell or a thinkpad and then
> > install gnu/linux on it.
>
> Interesting observation. I have bought Dell laptop with Ubuntu
> preinstalled as it was the only model with GNU/Linux distro I could find
> quickly.
>
> > Anyway I guess there is also another big difference for me: Some people
> > might think it is ok to have a binary blob e.g. on the firmware for their
> > wifi card as long as you don't interact with it via userland and the OS
> and
> > the applications are libre. I'm on the exact opposite position: I
> consider
> > blobs and an operating system that limit or obscure my access to hardware
> > to be of the most unethical nature and less so the programs themselves.
>
> Yes, the closer the program to the hardware, the worse it is if it's
> non-free. Therefore, proprietary BIOS/UEFI and kernel blobs are the worst.
>
> > I am not e.g.
> > buying nvidia hardware, even though it's the only 100% libre gpu with 3d
> > accel. I don't care. I'd much rather support amd in their free driver
> > efforts and instead hope that someone will pick the fact that they do not
> > need to write any gallium3D stuff but just reverse engineer the (small)
> > blobs that still exist, resulting in a much easier way to write a 100%
> > libre driver compared to nuveau.
>
> I have AMD CPU+GPU or APU on most of my PCs. I've heard a lot of bad
> stuff about Nvidia. But now AMD Ryzen CPUs contain PSP backdoor. And my
> suspicion is that they've intentionally shipped faulty CPUs which lock
> up during FMA instruction so that they can plant another NSA backdoor
> into the microcode update.
>
>
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>


I'm a college student on medicine. I haven't given up on life yet. And I
don't believe in the an eye for an eye idea. And besides no, the entire
world is not extremist. Not at all. There are people who care about freedom
and share the same values as you do. And the free software movement is
constantly progressing. At the end of the day for most people their
computer does not define their lives( or at least  they think so). It's
just another tool to do something. But today, when a computer is basically
embedded in everything, people start to realise the problem and understand
how important it is. So now we have the best opportunity we ever had to
make the libre community big enough so that it is much more viable with
much more options. Rms and the fsf did the big mistake of not focusing on
libre hardware early because it used to be easier to liberate a proprietary
piece of hardware. But now we are slowly recovering from that( and eoma is
part of that effort). So please, don't have suicidal thoughts, there is
still light in this world :)
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