My father always said he would never buy anything off a store shelf if there
was no price tag, even if he really wanted it because it angered him that
someone would advertise something that looks appealing but they would always
rip you off when you got to the counter to buy it.
In the case of this computer system, not only will I not buy one if there's
no price tag, I also won't buy one if there is no specs and you just simply
cannot find any. If you cannot find a good specs then your best bet is to
look for a different machine.
Thunk Penguin has nice machines and they all have hardware that support free
software. If I were to get a machine from them I'd probably get this:
https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/korora-penguin-gnu-linux-notebook
I also drool over this one:
https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/snares-penguin-gnu-linux-notebook
However if you insist on buying another system (like I did since I cannot
afford a ThinkPengiun with the hardware setup I wanted) then you need to pay
close attention to specs, particularly graphics and wireless. If you can't
get the specs for a machine, move on, it's not worth risking it as you always
get burned that way. I am speaking from experience, that's how I ended up
with a laptop with Broadcom Wireless, which does not work with free software.
One thing I've done before was I've trolled ebay for a machine. If you use
ebay, and typed in the search something like "laptop atheros intel" and check
the box include description, then, any laptop listings on ebay that have
atheros and intel in the system will show up. You don't necessarily have to
buy from ebay but you can search for the laptops listed that elsewhere too.
I've never had any issue with sound systems if you get just a generic laptop,
however, if you get one with fancy speaker setups (subwoofers, etc) then you
might run into trouble. As such, I don't bother with such fancy sound
systems, I just plug in my own set of decent sounding speakers.
For Wireless, get a system with Atheros wireless as they relased their
firmware, I have in the past had to compile my own firmare and driver for
atheros wireless systems, as the distro I had did not have the firmware built
in and I wasn't about to use the non-free firmware, but it can be done.
For Graphics, get something that a.) Does not have dual graphics anything.
You're wasting your money on these. and b.) Stay away from AMD graphics and
nVidia. While there are some older systems that work with nouveau nvidia
drivers, the newer ones may not work if I recall correctly. Intel does a good
job releasing all the firmware and drivers for their integrated GPUs, and if
you aim for a system with something like the Ivy Bridge GPUs they'll be
decent. Odds are you are not going to do hard core gaming on a free software
system, anyway.
However if you do want a really decent GPU, get a system that has the Intel
Iris Pro Graphics. I read it's just about on Par with the nvidia 640m
discrete card (slightly better), and it works with free software. I wouldn't
suggest getting really new hardware however as you will run into issues with
many of the free software distos hardware support being too old (I had this
issue with my system) and it's hard to overcome unless you know how to handle
a command line well and use another distro, so go for Ivy bridge or Sandy
Bridge systems if you can. They are really fast and work.
Alternatively you can get the Gluglug, I don't know the specs of it though.
It has a free BIOS as well. I would love to have one simply for the reason it
has a free BIOS.
If you get hardware that works with free software and if you do not install
any non-free software, it's pretty safe to assume you wont be spied on. The
bios in systems are pretty low level parts that typically are not changed
anyway, so I don't think it's that big of an issue.
So lots of options, it takes a bit of studying. Hnode is a good place to
check on hardware to see if it works, so if you do get the specs you can
check there, I think they also list some laptops that are known to work.
