Well, not trying to change the status quo won’t help. I know it’s a huge challenge, but that’s not a reason not to try. An Italian guy got Lenovo fined 20k€ because their lawyer didn’t even care to present proper argument. It’s nothing for them, but still it’s a precedent.
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Good luck finding a shop that will allow you to do that.
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If they don’t let you test their stuff, then they probably don’t want your money. Some company votes themselves out of business, but hey we live in a free world, so they are free to pick their preferred way to go bankrupt, i think.
Good day,
@mmu_man, I never used Lenovo products, I used Apple for quite some years though with similar experiences, so I never buy Apple again.
It’s interesting to note that Apple’s business model has been copied by almost every other company, I mean, the “no repair, no upgrade, buy new” model. When I found Louis Rossman Right to Repair a couple of years ago I understood what had happened with my devices.
Building your own desktop is quite easy. What is hard is to build it without blobs. Building a laptop… that is another league. The closest thing that I know of is the Framework. And the closest thing that I know of “blob free”, in laptops, is the Purism 14. Not sure about other linux laptops like the Slimbook, Tuxedo or System 76, and if they have some hack to avoid those blobs or whatever.
I did some research because I am trying to build a laptop to my liking, and the closest to blob free one can get is with Rockchip, or so it seems if I read correctly. I presume that is why the Pinephone, and Pine 64 devices, use it? I could get a Pinebook Pro, disassemble it, and build a new laptop with it as base, but AFAIK, Haiku doesn’t run on that yet. Also eMMC is a no go atm, I can’t yet install Haiku on the Asus T102H, which has an eMMC [Asus, another piece of c*ap]. I could go with a Raspberry Pi, but it will be thick, and I want a mechanical keyboard on the laptop too, so it would be way too thick… Like the first laptops back in the late 80’s 
The idea is to do with a laptop the same as with the desktop, but it’s way much harder to achieve. If succeeded, repairment would be easier and cheaper than any branded laptop. Then again, the Rockchip chips seem to be a bit short of processing power and max RAM atm is 4GB. The Pinephone OSes [UBPorts, Manjaro, Arch… regardless of the interface] are a bit slow on the Rockchip [I have the 2GB RAM model, which also affects performance].
So we can complain whatever we want, but I still don’t see manufacturers removing blobs or disclosing stuff so open source projects can create drivers for whatever device. I had great expectations with the Risc-V thing, but then again, I read something and, bah… better keep fingers still… way too many AI out there
Regards,
RR
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Darn industrial-grade soldering robots…
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what’s new? Microsoft is in monopoly and it hurts gnu/linux fans’ 45535. worse, all the vendors are in complicit and keep providing drivers for the OS, that >90% of their users would use. what bastards! such a refreshing reading. 
honestly, it surprises to see a serious person producing such cliche, cartoonish even views. this sh1t is almost 20 years old. it’s the time to realize, a long time ago, the industry, commercial organizations, earning money from making computers and software do not give a flying p3n1s about RMS “phylosophy”, “ethics” etc. nor they are morally obliged to. it’s just a lunacy, and at the best, that “love of lunix” by corporations is exploting it and using the community as useful fools. for offloading spendings (sacrifying quality). they will write drivers for that OS, that is going to be used by their users, be it Windows, macOS or Android or TempleOS. and it’s not only normal, it’s the only viable variant. they will release that documentation, that they see benefit (possibility) to release. and it’s normal (even if sometimes pissing off) and should be understandable, have no idea why it’s not. they do as the do, because they work, not play silly games of gnu/freedom(C). if they start to satisfy what RMS or mmu_man wants, they all go bankrupt the next day. remember, all corporations consist of people, that need to earn money for living. and they also have passion to their work and they create things just as enthusiasts do. but they do that better, because they are smarter, exactly why it’s them who got a job at those “big, evil corporations” and because they can spend more time on their work. if you will look at lenovo, microsoft, ibm this way, you maybe stop seeing them the gnu/way. which has little to do with the reality.
it’s spelled “its”, not “it’s”. “It’s” doesn’t make any sense. You wouldn’t say “but that doesn’t mean it is name should be inserted”…
Keep in mind that not everyone here is a native speaker here, and while we work on Haiku we’re not linguists. Please allow this word crime. 
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Actually the native speakers are the worst in this respect I’m no native speaker myself either.
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As an American, I can confirm 
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I am just curious, what has China done to you for you having that much bias. Have you verified that the information you are reading is true? Hope people will stay out of geopolitics here.
Re:Chinese government
Not without going off-topic. Start a new thread and see how long it lasts.
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Thanks for this great post that covers many important topics from free hardware to OS choice and more.
@mmu_man is it okay for you if I write a German version of that and publish it at https://gnulinux.ch ?
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Sure, as long as you point to the original 
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I will do, we always name the original sources.
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I won’t mind opening a new topic, but it will go against my own advice, that is not talking about geopolitics here. Talking about geopolitics is like talking about religion (religion can be argued to be geopolitics too), subjected to a lot of mind manipulation and faith, henceforth leading to a “discussion de sourds” that is "deaf people talking to each other.
It is geopolitics on many fronts including persecution of religious minorities. Before my previous post I tried briefly getting more specific but when I cited my sources, the system flagged the post as off-topic and immediately deleted it.
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Please inform us German readers about finishing your translation.
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Just to clarify, “the system” is users signalling things they consider off-topic, and moderators manually making a decision. It is not an automatic censoring artificial intelligence.
If your posts were deleted, it’s probably because off-topic messages led to users and moderators being annoyed by it and deciding you should find a better place for such discussions.
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