On Saturday, January 14, 2017 at 3:26:04 PM UTC+4, [email protected] wrote: > 26 December 2016 г., 18:00:43 UTC-5 [email protected] написал: > > Lenovo is a shitty company if you care about security, they have stuck > > irremovable rootkits their BIOS 4 separate times and they are partially > > owned by the PRC government > > Having a PRC backdoor is better than NSA one! (most laptop companies are > American, so...) By the way, why not to get a Lenovo G505S laptop? > 1) It is the latest AMD-based laptop which is supported by coreboot open > source BIOS (so no closed source BIOS backdoors), and it does not have Intel > ME backdoor. G505S's APUs are Richland - the last generation before AMD > started to embed their own version of Intel ME, "AMD Security Processor" or > PSP ( > http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AMDRoadmap-Mobility.png > ) Although a closed source vga blob is still required for working graphics, > luckily a coreboot's YABEL prevents the possible undocumented accesses of vga > blob to other PCI devices > 2) Supported by Qubes 3.2 - see HCL, > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/qubes-users/TS1zfKZ7q8w/JQFkVF4xBgAJ . Most > likely to be supported by Qubes 4.0 ( HVM=y, IOMMU=y, SLAT=y) and seems to > meet its certification criteria so far - > https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2016/07/21/new-hw-certification-for-q4/ <-- > webcam could be covered, speakers and wireless card are not soldered and > could be removed, and just checked the last concerning thing - embedded > microphone is a PCI device, not USB connected ;) > 3) High end version of G505S has a top of the Richland generation A10-5750M > APU, 3352 score at Passmark cpu-benchmark. If to compare with i5-6200U of > Lenovo T460s, 3933 score - 17% faster. But i5-6200U is dual core, while > A10-5750M is quad core. Also, despite being three years older, A10-5750M > integrated graphics is faster than of i5-6200U. According to Passmark: Intel > HD 520 - 844 G3D score, AMD HD 8650G - 950 G3D score, 13% faster. > 3) In contrast with many modern laptops, G505S has two slots for RAM (instead > of one) and its RAM is not soldered. That means: when your RAM fails a > memtest after some years, instead of paying a fortune for the RAM chips > replacement you could just remove RAM and install a new one. Also you could > easily upgrade to 16 GB RAM (2x8GB), which helps not to think of RAM usage > while using Qubes (currently running 14 VMs at the same time, with a lot of > applications started, and they eat just 13 GB out of 16 GB) > 4) G505S has either integrated or both integrated and discrete graphics > (depends on G505S version). In any case, it is AMD only - which has great > open source drivers for Linux. No need for NVIDIA closed source proprietary > drivers with telemetry... > 5) Almost all the components could be replaced by user, even a CPU is not > soldered. Easy to tear down a laptop and assemble it back. Thanks to open > source BIOS, no WiFi card whitelist, so possible to install any wireless card > which has open source drivers for Linux (such as AR9462) > Currently it is almost impossible to buy a new G505S, but the used ones are > selling for cheap (e.g. 3 auctions currently at eBay for G505S version with > A10-5750M APU, 1 UK and 2 US-based, one of them with buy it now price $250 - > half of the original $500)
I have an old G505 kicking around somewhere, will give it a go with Qubes 3.2 and then try Coreboot. Thanks for the reminder ! Wonder if this means I can get the KDE Desktop Cube animation to work. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "qubes-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/f4c06106-90b7-48eb-bf16-a4c758faaa78%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
