I'll have to rewrite what I said a bit.
People use free software for different reasons.
- Not having arbitrary limitations is one.
- privacy from companies and from governments in case they start going
insane, like in Turkey.
And in all this, some need more power, in order to compute as they did with
proprietary software. Most likely, they'll ave to make some degree of
concessions, else have another computer for work, and really separate both.
So the best machine (in performance) for free software and PRIVACY as the
focus in my case (with Libreboot, or at least with a computer where AMT/ME
and the like is too complicated to setup, thus with a non-free BIOS) most
likely costs either lots of money or lots of time.
But it most likely would be something like the latest supported Libreboot
Thinkpad for a laptop, and that super mobo (something something 16, check the
Libreboot wiki for the details).
I spent so much time (and still a decent amount of cash setting up free
machines... It's the opposite of efficiency.
Plus the whole education on privacy is bits here and there, and again a whole
lot of work.
This has ZERO chances to work that way.
That's why for now, I'd invest in EOMA68-based cards (with Debian, insisting
on not allowing non-free repos), and suggest that for personal use, and any
other machine for work, if it's a necessity.
Hopefully one day, we will have super powered EOMA68-based cards, but I
somehow doubt it because you have to take heat into account. More power means
more heat, right? It's still a good solution for normal computing. And maybe
it's possible to build stuff with fans/heatsinks around the card, so, the
sky's the limit, in theory.
Of course, GPU compatibility is probably out of question. That would require
some external PCI-E adapter.
That's for the hardware and software. Sure, most people want a Mac, or a
monster gaming tower (which are horrible in terms of privacy and general
software freedom), because:
- it's trendy (no comment...)
- it's beautiful out of the box (can't argue with that, thought beauty is in
the eye of the beholder, and trisquel is not so bad out of the box. Maybe
Faenza icons would be better ;) ).
- it's easy to use (drag and drop install and delete maybe, but mostly no
ERRORS all the time (though it happens, but still much less than both Win and
OSX)
So yeah, plenty of bugs. Well, pro support and perfect hardware integration
does that, I suppose. Also lots of automated stuff, but again, for the same
reasons.
Though the bugs happen when you want to tweak the system. A standard Trisquel
install has bugs, but not that much. They're still hugely annoying from a
normal user's point of view.
For education about data protection, this is complicated. The wiki is good,
but both incomplete and too complex.
For example, about the browser addons: how many are really needed, how to
configure them, why aren't they pre-configured, etc...
I tried to write here a down and dirty guide to privacy, but it has too many
approximations due to my lack of knowledge.
But I really think something like that is needed.
End of the rant.
