Libreboot Founder's 'Minifree' Sells Free-Software Laptops with Libreboot Preinstalled

Slashdot reader unixbhaskar writes: A company in the U.K. calling itself Minifree has started to ship old Thinkpad (specifically the X series and T series models) with Libreboot firmware. Which is based on coreboot firmware.
More specifically, Libreboot is the free-as-in-speech replacement for proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware, the site notes, "offering faster boots speeds, better security and many advanced features compared to most proprietary boot firmware." Those advanced features include the GNU project's multiple-OS-booting "grand unified bootloader" GNU GRUB directly in the boot flash, along with several other customization options. "The aim is simple: make it easy to have a computer that was made to run entirely on Free Software at every level, meaning no proprietary software of any kind. That includes the boot firmware, operating system, drivers and applications."

The Libreboot project's founder is also the founder of Minifree, and the profits from Minifree's sales directly fund the Libreboot project. (The whole Minifree web site runs on Libreboot-powered servers, on a network behind a Libreboot-powered router...) Their site points out that Minifree Ltd has also privately funded several new board ports to coreboot, including 90,000 USD to Raptor Engineering for ASUS KGPE-D16 and KCMA-D8 libreboot support, and 4000 AUD to Damien Zammit for Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L and Intel D510MO libreboot support.

The installed OS on the laptops is either encrypted Debian (KDE Plasma desktop environment), with full driver support, or "other Linux distro/BSD (e.g. OpenBSD, FreeBSD) at your request... Advanced features like encrypted /boot (GNU+Linux only), signed kernels and more are available." And the laptops are also shipped — worldwide — with "your choice of 480/960GB SSD or 2x480GB/2x960GB RAID1 SSDs, with good batteries and 16GB RAM. Free technical support via email/IRC plus 5-year warranty."

But judging by their FAQ, the support is even more extensive. "If you brick your Minifree laptop when updating Libreboot, Minifree will unbrick it for free if you send it back to us. Even if your warranty has expired! However, such bricking is rare."

Pff it sucks

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

It's not even Windows 11 ready...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

For only £498.00 you can have an old shitty computer running a useless operating system. What a bargain.

Free - whether it means price or freedom - is meaningless if the product is crap.

Re: Pff it sucks

[1s44c]

The T440P's are great hardware.

Re:

[Alain Williams]

Nice .... a laptop that i can buy without paying a Microsoft tax. For me that is s/ware that comes pre-installed on laptops but is never run as the first thing that I do is to install Linux onto the machine.

Re:

[aRTeeNLCH]

I suppose the Microsoft tax has already been paid by the first owner... What would interest me more is the battery runtime, the CPU is 22nm so quite old, I'd expect similarly outdated WiFi, and if the battery runtime is likewise outdated (or in Free software style not optimised), I'll pass. Otherwise, it could be a nice laptop, and considering the price a good value.

Re:

[jma05]

> a laptop that i can buy without paying a Microsoft tax

Not really. It's a laptop with a 10 year old processor, sold at 300 British Pounds. You are paying Microsoft tax without getting Windows. You are able to buy T440p machines on EBay for $100-$150. Then you are paying a much higher Libreboot installation convenience fee on top of that.

I like the idea of FOSS laptops, but without a cheaper price tag actually removing the MS tax, the economic argument ("tax") does not exist.

Re:Pff it sucks

[AmiMoJo]

We are already seeing a massive amount of discounted hardware on the market due to lack of Windows 11 support. I only just upgraded from 8 and now my scanner is headed to landfill because there is no driver for later versions and I literally can't give it away.

There are loads of cheap laptops and workstations on eBay that can't run 11. When 10 goes out of support it's going to be even better/worse. Better in that there is loads of cheap but good hardware available, worse in that landfills are going to be overflowing.

We need to make a real effort to get those machines reinstalled with Linux, or Chrome OS, and get people to use them. It's an environmental disaster.

Okay, I need more sleep...

[What'sInAName]

Was trying to figure out what procedures would be contained in a reboot library.

Re:

[war4peace]

Free hardware??? WHERE???

Re:

[fermion]

Free is only free if you donâ(TM)t pa shipping. The computer get bricked in the US. How much does it cost to get to Essex?

Re:

[fermion]

Or 0.85 of the world population. Must every story be about the only meaning 1%.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

There's no way to move any object through space without cost.

open source firmware is a good idea

[fred6666]

Trying to cram as much features as possible such as grub isn't.
The firmware shouldn't have to be updated often. Features should be minimal, being able to load the boot loader from the hard drive, and be able to update itself.