A nitpick: The Mac mini doesn’t have an external power brick right? So this isn’t really smaller than a Mac mini, it just moves the power supply outside the computer.<p>I like what Purism is doing in regard to disabling the Intel ME and having more open source boot components, but there’s something about the company that rubs me the wrong way (especially with the continual overpromising on the Librem 5, and really, releasing it in its current state at all).
I wholly support projects like these but I wonder if wanting to do the right thing is enough.<p>Large hardware companies have lots of resources to invest in reviewing and testing their products, even though they don’t prioritize the ideals of Librem.<p>Is this really a net win?
Hmmm.... I definitely need a "secure", separated computer like that. The presented form factor is ideal, but the price is meh. 1,177 USD for 32GB RAM and a nice 512GB NVMe storage. That's too much. It's the same problem like with that German company that sells workstations with Coreboot, also for a little bit too much.<p>I need at least 24GB RAM and a good NVMe drive for Qube OS. The processor isn't that much important, though. I could live with i5 as well.
The best solution I came up with for now is an old Intel Core 2 Quad processor + old Asus motherboard (Coreboot supported) that supports 32GB of RAM. Plus an NVMe drive on a PCI slot. The good side is that it's commonly known Core 2 Quad was the last "secure" Intel processor. Yet it's old and will be a little bit to slow for extensive virtualization.<p>People know a thing or two about Coreboot and Libreboot, but they don't realize that's still a wild west of computing. You either go with old platforms like the one I have mentioned, or you can choose from the offerings of a couple of quirky vendors that by definition must overprice their hardware.
Those vendors and their new platforms (Purism is one of them) use some custom methods to cripple Intel Management Engine and switch UEFI to Coreboot. I'm not sure how secure the result of that process is to be honest.
With old platforms it's always problem with motherboards supporting more than 8GB RAM. Kinda sad :(<p>The support from Coreboot isn't that great. It fits within the abovely mentioned problems.<p>If you have better ideas than me (complaining for the pricing and security status of new solutions like the one from Purism vs. suffering from virtualization low performance from old processors that are IME free) - please let me know. Maybe I'm missing something.<p>I'd be so happy to be able to get a new mini PC with let's say an AMD processor, deprived of RAM, SSD, etc.,; but also reasonably priced and PROVEN THAT the vendor managed to kill IME and implemented Coreboot properly...
It says Intel i7 and core boot.<p>How does that fit together with yesterday's discussion of coreboot not supporting anything Intel from 2008 or newer?