[sf-lug] Fwd: Why buy a Libreboot X200 laptop?

[Akkana Peck]

Bobbie Sellers writes:
>     Well your understanding of my problems is not quite correct.
> But the LibreBook X200 while a step toward easier use is rather
> backward on hardware specifications.  Particularly on the display
> screen resolution but also on ram capacity and processor.

Not to mention the graphics. I have an X201 (newer than the X200)
and discovered last month that I can no longer run Qt programs like
Stellarium, because Qt5 has discontinued support for a lot of
graphics cards, apparently including a lot of fairly recent Intels.
(Is there a way to determine which Intel GMA chipset is in my machine?
X201s didn't all come with the same hardware, and I haven't found any
way to tell. Programs like lspci just say "Intel Corporation Core
Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)".)

Lately Xorg has a lot of bugs on this graphics chip, too (display
going wonky when rendering fonts or changing desktops). The support
for graphics chipsets in Linux is sadly very short; this wouldn't
be the first Linux laptop I've had to replace solely because the
graphics chip was no longer supported, even though the laptop was
plenty fast and working perfectly otherwise.

I love the idea of open BIOSes, but if they have to run so far
behind that the hardware is already orphaned by FOSS libraries by
the time the machine is available, then as a user it's not worth it.

        ...Akkana