Planning to buy a new computer in the future? This is essential reading.

beachboy2 · 05-26-2024, 03:25 AM

For the benefit of anybody planning to buy a new computer in the future, it may be worthwhile considering Turbocapitalist’s post #30 which is found in the General section of Non-*NIX Forums:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post6503781

I feel that this important post, which includes serious ramifications for computer users in general, deserves a much wider audience. hence my reason for repeating it here in the Hardware section.

Pluton:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...rity-processor

business_kid · 05-26-2024, 06:01 AM

Fortunately, I think I have bought my last X86_64 box. Surely everyone should have learned from hotmail & other debacles. M$ can't do secure. Pluton will be hacked, especially in these days of Quantum pcs.

wpeckham · 05-26-2024, 09:32 AM

I find great value in older enterprise class laptops that have been refurbished.
If I were in the market for a new desktop or server, the building from parts option looks VERY attractive!
(My first desktop machine was made from parts ordered from a company I found in the back of a (BYTE? or COMPUTE?) magazine, pre-internet.)

boughtonp · 05-26-2024, 10:16 AM

Linking to "page2" will go to different places depending on a user's page size preferences.

You must include the "#post6503781" fragment to allow the link to work with different page sizes.

Or directly link to post #30 with https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=6503781

Alternatively, simply quote the post and save people a click...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turbocapitalist

Quote:

Originally Posted by rclark

All my laptops came with Win OS too.

None of mine have, for ages and ages now. It's entirely avoidable. Furthermore, not avoiding OEM Windows has a much, much higher cost in the long run.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rclark

I simply just wiped and installed Linux over the top. That was that.

Not any more:

The new ones have UEFI / Restricted Boot and no BIOS, so any distro wishing to even boot must pay m$ for that privilege which was once taken for granted now that third party UEFI certificates have been disabled. The era of general purpose computing is drawing to a close if enough of us don't act.
The newer ones have TPM 2, so that the distros which have paid Danegeld to m$ won't even boot until a factory reset because the hardware is thus tied to Windows in general.
- As this thread is on the topic of surveillance, it should be pointed out that there are also things like Management Engines to provide hardware-level back door access
The newest ones have Pluton, so the hardware is immutably tied to a specific version of Windows and contains "chip-to-cloud" surveillance complete with its own TCP/IP stack and backdoor, hardware level access.

Buying hardware with Windows on it only feeds the problem and hurts the rest of us. However, at this point small groups making even smaller purchasing changes aren't going to change anything. The vendor lock-in situation has gotten bigger than that. Wintel is over, the only question is can we rid the market of it before the final stages of lock-in are complete.

There is potential with Linux on the new Arm chips, which out of necessity have to have full Linux support. If enough people and businesses move away from Wintel then we can finally relegate the duopoly to its rightful place on the dust heap of history, albeit about three decades late.

tldr; Pluton is being rolled out by OEMs and puts the surveillance in at the firmware level.

fatmac · 05-26-2024, 11:43 AM

Well, I said it before, jokingly, that we need to use ARM, or maybe Risc V....

So now it is more necessary than ever before...

Thankfully, I use old computers, & they are more than capable for my usage.

rclark · 05-26-2024, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Thankfully, I use old computers, & they are more than capable for my usage.

There was a time when 'old' computers were 'old' and one 'needed' to upgrade to the latest. Now we are in a phase where 'old' computers are more than capable of 99% (used loosely) of performing the needed tasks of our day to day lives. The only reason I upgraded was because I 'could' to the AMD 5000 series of processors... Not a 'need' too. I am seriously thinking of staying with AMDs 5000 series for quite some time. Snappy, very fast, etc. Even the VMs are quick. I can't see where AM5 and DDR5 is going to be of any 'tangible' benefit nor the NPUs they are going to add to the new processors. No, I'll just use what I have until something breaks, or unable to maintain the platform.

frankbell · 05-26-2024, 08:31 PM

I have purchased only native Linux machines for over a decade.

pan64 · 05-27-2024, 01:53 AM

hm. Probably we will have windows only boxes, but I think we will still have OS free hardware. It is just impossible to force Windows to everywhere. But we will see.

beachboy2 · 05-27-2024, 02:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rclark

I am seriously thinking of staying with AMDs 5000 series for quite some time. Snappy, very fast, etc. Even the VMs are quick.

That is exactly my experience with my AMD 5600G with built-in graphics. I used to use Intel CPUs exclusively, but no longer.
I generally find that for a given price point the AMD CPUs are both faster and cheaper than their Intel equivalents.

business_kid · 05-27-2024, 04:27 AM

You can't force windows on Arm boxes - windows is a small player there. And you can't force windows on servers for obvious reasons. So I find it hard to take that they're going to pull some other imperfect encryption stunt for hackers to hack.