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ThinkPads Nanonymous No.10110 [D][U][F][S][L][A][C] >>10158
File: 2698efd45552018ec6f17c3ecbdeba54f09ed0b6c2d14d3ef7800af28023e124.jpg (dl) (87.02 KiB)
After years of resistance against ThinkPads, I am finally falling for the ThinkPad meme.
I am planning to buy a used one on eBay next year, I am open to any kind of suggestion from the model to what kind of price I should look for as I don't have any experience with ThinkPads.
As the final setup I was thinking of the ThinkPad X60, librebooted, with Parabola, which would make for a fully open source system. I don't really care about having incredible performance cause I have already another laptop for that kind of stuff.
Are ultrabases, extended batteries, battery docking stations memes or should I look into them?
What is some hardware I should change? I heard I have to change the wireless card to make it work with Parabola and that I can put an extra HDD.

Discuss ThinkPads in general I guess.

Nanonymous No.10122 [D]
An SSD would be nice. You won't have to worry about shock issues nearly as much and probably get better battery life in the process.

Nanonymous No.10128 [D] >>10167
I agree about the SSD. Look into a mSATA SSD, it's cheap (usually 60GB or 120GB).
>what kind of price
$100 maximum.
>ThinkPad X60
Good. The older ones have much better quality, though. The only reason for x60 instead of x40 is the coreboot support.
>librebooted
Use coreboot instead. Libreboot was made by people that don't know what they are doing and wanted a "FSF Approved" logo on their products.
>Parabola
If you put SeaBIOS, OpenBSD will run on it. And that's a much better choice.
>Are ultrabases, extended batteries, battery docking stations memes
All memes, unless you can find a brand new lithium battery that has the same specs as the original.
>have to change the wireless card
Yes. You need to open and physically remove the original card (I would also remove other shit from there, particularly the microphones).
Then you buy a WLE200NX or any atheros cards using 9K microcontrollers. If you're going to use with OpenBSD, I highly suggest you get a miniPCIe card instead of a USB one.

Nanonymous No.10129 [D]
T400 master race

Nanonymous No.10138 [D]
!!!!! NOTE !!!!!

THE PACKAGES FOR 32BIT PARABOLA ARE OUTDATED

!!!!! NOTE !!!!!

Nanonymous No.10150 [D]
Is there a way to make sure that a Thinkpad has unlocked BIOs before purchase?

Nanonymous No.10158 [D] >>10167
>>10110
>I am planning to buy a used one on eBay next year, I am open to any kind of suggestion from the model to what kind of price I should look for as I don't have any experience with ThinkPads.
so you dont even know what you want and you're just after a certain brand. fuck outta eere

Nanonymous No.10167 [D] >>10172 >>10219
SSDs and OpenBSD are good ideas I may look into.
>>10128
>Use coreboot instead
I don't care about the FSF approved logo, but Libreboot has the difference of being completely opensource, isn't that a good thing?
Someone confirms it works with OpenBSD?
I've found this https://libreboot.org/docs/bsd/openbsd.html
>>10158
>hurr durr you don't know anything about ThinkPads
Why do you think I've made a thread asking for advice you focking retard.

Nanonymous No.10172 [D][U][F] >>10173
File: 5ff35f95622856bebef6929d8dae5036283e24faa965144a0ecb9bc6eb18bf8f.png (dl) (213.04 KiB)
>>10167
>>hurr durr you don't know anything about ThinkPads
that's not what i meant. i meant you're just looking at thinkpads because they're a meme. you dont actually have some criteria of what computer you want

Nanonymous No.10173 [D] >>10219
>>10172
What i am looking for is a secondary portable and durable laptop that can be made fully open source.
I'm looking forward to use it to do privacy requiring tasks and to take it in the outside world without constant fear of breaking it.
>you're just looking at thinkpads because they're a meme
>you dont actually have some criteria of what computer you want
wow much assumptions

Nanonymous No.10192 [D][U][F] >>10219
File: 2fc642aabd5b62126c6806baa3f37c94c01edaa9168a5f6953b504bd62af5919.jpg (dl) (107.54 KiB)
You might shirk at the constraints of the X60 nowadays. If you want to stay with the "X" series, the X200 — upgraded with ssd and more ram, as others suggested — should be the minimum spec you look at. I've run several X200s hard for work and travel the past few years, and they're outstanding machines for the cost.

Nanonymous No.10204 [D]
I loved my x230, though it wasn't compatible with OpenGL on Linux.

Nanonymous No.10205 [D] >>10215 >>10219
Is ME cleaner placebo?
xx20 and xx30 series would be great without ME spyware.

Nanonymous No.10215 [D] >>10217
>>10205
I don't think it's placebo, but I wouldn't trust it and rely on it, it might not remove everything
it's better to use stuff that didn't have ME in first place, so there is no need to remove it

Nanonymous No.10217 [D]
>>10215
>it's better to use stuff that didn't have ME in first place
Like what?
I am not aware of any laptops like that, except maybe that one ARM chromebook. Even librebootable Thinkpads come with ME. Then there is also ASF, DASH, etc.

Nanonymous No.10219 [D][U][F]
File: 7afdd6938141bd9e097072948ff62f894ad1f47ce05ef1398854c28ea72bd221.jpg (dl) (29.52 KiB)
>>10167
>isn't that a good thing?
You have to understand what the proprietary bits removed do in the first place. The microcode in coreboot is there for a reason.
Microcode basically runs instructions as software instead of hardware. This has the benefits of reducing power consumption and manufacturing costs. But what happens when you get a security vulnerability in the microarchitecture or even the ISA? You patch with microcode. Coreboot maintains the microcode because we don't live in a perfect world where x86 is completely invulnerable. They know these processors are full of bugs and that companies will need to patch these bugs or else they can leak private information.
What people from Libreboot did was just copy the repository and simply remove these binaries from there, without any knowledge about what they were doing.
Another disadvantage is that coreboot is always improving, while libreboot doesn't update regularly (they say because it's meant to be a "stable" coreboot, which is quite a bullshit as coreboot is very stable already).

If you want to use libreboot, that's fine. I understand why you would want it. I thought about doing the same with my two previous x60 (I failed, btw). But make sure you understand the implications of it first and who are the guys that really understand firmware programming.
A good argument for libreboot is that many of the ISA-level vulnerabilities are now fixed on the operating systems itself (Meltdown and Spectre, for example). Some are not. For example:
http://www.emsec.rub.de/media/crypto/veroeffentlichungen/2010/09/07/ches2009_trojan_side_channels_slides.pdf
https://spqr.eecs.umich.edu/trojansc/
https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-17/thursday/us-17-Domas-Breaking-The-x86-Instruction-Set-wp.pdf
http://web.archive.org/save/https://www.shakacon.org/continuing-to-break-the-x86-instruction-set-by-christopher-domas/

>Someone confirms it works with OpenBSD?
Yes. Go to the openbsd-misc mailing list (marc.info) and search for "coreboot". Some users reported it's working on x60.
>>10173
>can be made fully open source.
x86 is not a good start then. I would 'trust' ARM-based laptops more than intel stuff. See TERES, from Olimex (a bit overpriced, if you ask me).
>>10192
>You might shirk at the constraints of the X60 nowadays.
It depends what you need, I think. I have on x40 and it even runs firefox well enough. If you need to do graphic works or play games, then x60 will not be enough. But you're using openbsd to browse with Links and watching videos using mpv, then it's more power than you actually will need.
>>10205
Not placebo. But you can expect some weird bugs from removing ME on newer processors. If you guys are interested, here's some other related projects:
https://github.com/bol-van/me-disable
https://github.com/platomav/MEAnalyzer
https://github.com/chipsec/chipsec
https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/sandsifter
https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/rosenbridge
https://github.com/hardenedlinux/firmware-anatomy/blob/master/hack_ME/me_info.md
https://github.com/cwerling/psptool

Nanonymous No.10273 [D]
See Lenovo g505s. Not from the thinkpad line, but has AMD processor and coreboot support.

Nanonymous No.10316 [D]
Broke: Why libreboot when you can coreboot?
Woke: WHY COREBOOT WHEN YOU CAN GAIN ACCESS TO THE BACKDOOR IN YOUR OWN PC AND FUCK WITH THE PEOPLE TRYING TO USE THE BACKDOOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????