One thing that doesn't come up here yet: our partners RBZ have developed an open hardware alternative SOM for MNT Reform based on NXP LS1028A with 2 Cortex-A72 cores and 8 or 16GB RAM. This is currently in the first bringup phase, but sources are already released:<p><a href="https://source.mnt.re/reform/mnt-reform-layerscape-ls1028a-som" rel="nofollow">https://source.mnt.re/reform/mnt-reform-layerscape-ls1028a-s...</a><p>I'm also personally working on a Kintex-7 (FPGA) SOM. This will allow us and others to implement RISC-V or other architectures, incl. retrocomputers and carry them around in a laptop form factor.
I am very interested in this, but I am wondering, what is it's mainline support?<p>I had a Novena, and it was not fun to find out since verious things were not mainlined, I essentially had to patch my own kernel if I wanted to use a newer one.
If you've every wanted a laptop that you could customize and assemble yourself this laptop might be for you. I think it looks interesting for the mechanical keyboard alone.
The idea is nice, but <i>wow</i> it's expensive for what you do get.<p>The CPU being a quad-core A53 architecture is basically Raspberry Pi - but the 3B rather than the 4; only 4GB RAM; only Full HD resolution. You pay $999 and that doesn't include any storage or even the wifi card.<p>The comparison with an entry-level MacBook Air is sort of horrifying. Same price but just a completely different league in almost every respect.
+1 on the aesthetic choices with this laptop (and its documentation!). i'm not a backer but have been following along and it's just lovely and thoughtful throughout.<p>i guess one major reason i'd be hesitant to buy is that i'm not sure i'd love a trackball, and i've been spoiled by apple's trackpads. maybe this could force me into practicing more keyboard-only navigation though...
I have a beta MNT Reform 2, and the laptop falls in the "just works" category.<p>It gives a bit of bulk and the setup wouldn't work for everyone, but I downright <i>love</i> the user-replaceable standard batteries.
I love the MNT Reform and almost placed an order, but now I’m sort-of glad I decided not to. I’m not sure I can justify spending over $1k for a machine that struggles to run the Grammarly browser extension.
I would totally get that PDA with ortholinear keyboard:<p><a href="https://mastodon.social/@mntmn/106143465897150489" rel="nofollow">https://mastodon.social/@mntmn/106143465897150489</a>
I had a question about the arm chips used in this project.<p>The shipping version seems to use Cortex-a53 while the development version seems to use Cortex-a72.<p>Does anyone know if these chips have Intel Management Engine or AMD PSP type backdoors built into them? I'm looking for hardware that is free of management engines and hardware and software backdoors.<p>Open hardware doesn't mean anything if the chip is sending your encryption keys and passwords to the NSA (or their Chinese equivalents) over the network.
I have been following the development[0] of these laptops for a while and I am really impressed and intrigued! The freedom to hack and modify your laptop seems amazing and the design decisions should really appeal to the ThinkPad crowd (like myself, writing this on a X201).<p>0: <a href="https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/35156" rel="nofollow">https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/35156</a>