[INTPenis]

I remember the Loongson MIPS laptop made headlines many years ago. Richard Stallman even used one for a while.

It got a lot of attention among my hacker space fellows, but I don't remember why. Was it an open hw design or something?

[saagarjha]

I believe the BIOS was open or something like that. In general, though, it is hard to have a meaningful consistent position here because you can have most of the software be open and some random peripheral with closed firmware can DMA all over everything it wants :/

[jlokier]

That issue can be dealt with using an IOMMU under host control. Those limit where the peripheral can DMA regardless of its firmware.

[isopede]

Isn't this just an instance of "trusting trust?" How do you know the IOMMU hasn't been backdoored? "Open" firmware doesn't mean open RTL. Where is the line drawn?

[Dylan16807]

Whether you want open firmware in the first place is a significantly different question from how you isolate hardware with closed firmware.

But more directly, worrying about one part having a backdoor is a lot better than worrying about twenty parts having a backdoor.

[saagarjha]

Just an example, DARTs and IOMMUs help close down that line of attack but there are still many proprietary and inscrutable blobs/peripherals/monitors that alter the behavior of modern computers which are almost impossible to avoid in general.

[rixed]

I used to have one as my only laptop for years and I miss it dearly. Built quality was above average, keyboard was great, mate screen (not as rare back then though), easy to open, lack of hardware shenanigans and usable/open source BIOS, no proprietary drivers required, came with Linux preinstalled. Reasonably fast.

It was a MIPS little endian, which is also very good. I can't remember if it was fanless or not.

[tedunangst]

Ten years ago it was kinda the only x86 alternative available in a laptop form factor, but was otherwise unremarkable except for being quite buggy.

[sillywalk]

I don't know if this is statement accurate, but from the (archived) manufacturer's website:

"The world's first fully free software. All system source files(BIOS, kernel, drivers etc.) are free software, no close firmware needed." [0]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160703160118/http://zkml.lemot...