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On 04/04/16 18:42, Tobias Platen wrote:
Half a year ago I baught a libreboot machine from Minifree, which is now my main computer. I own several ARM based computers, with processors from Texas Instruments and Allwinner, which I use for various other tasks. I'm also interested in PowerPC, as a replacement for Intel. Ive heard about a PowerPC notebook[1] as a community effort.
This type of practical feedback and action is really underestimated
If every serious free software developer and user goes out and buys at least one piece of genuinely free hardware and tries to use it for some aspect of what we do then it will make us much more conscious of the fact that these platforms need to be supported seriously, even if we aren't explicitly things developing for them.
The question is, can we make a shortlist of devices that people should consider buying? Such a shortlist would probably consider:
- - price and value for money
- - suitability for specific tasks (e.g. compiling, making presentations, watching movies, office work)
- - warranty and servicing issues, e.g. for laptops - can the battery be replaced, - how easy is it to get it fixed or replaced at short notice if it fails while traveling to a conference
- - which distributions are supporting the device seriously and how many other developers already have something similar, does it have critical mass
Collating these details for various products in each category (e.g. laptop, workstation, home server, embedded development board) will make it much easier for people to overcome whatever inertia keeps them from acquiring free hardware.
Going beyond that, finding a way to gift such devices to free software developers could create even more momentum around support for free hardware.