Comment on Asus and Dell announce new mini PCs for Windows 365 | Goodbye local OS

terrific@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  These definitely could be pretty solid headless Linux serverboxes for microservices.

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• mycodesucks@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  You say that based on 30-40 years of companies not really knowing what they were doing, but we live in a world where hardware manufacturers ABSOLUTELY know how to make nearly unhackable, locked down hardware. Smartphones are already like this - if the manufacturer decides you don’t get to install a custom OS, unless you’re lucky enough for there to be an exploit, you don’t get to. Same goes for game consoles. That knowledge can easily be applied to these to make these, if not completely unhackable, so unstable and inconvenient as to be almost the same.

  We are absolutely entering this nightmare phase.

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  • terrific@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I don’t know, I don’t share your pessimism. In my personal experience, most hardware isn’t unhackable. Apart from iPhone / iPad (where hardware and software are non-standard, and also made by the same vendor) I struggle to find any examples.

    I have installed Linux many times on Chromebooks, where there is some BIOS module that checks for OS “authenticity”, but that can be disabled. I have flashed ROMs on android devices many times too. It’s sometimes a bit inconvenient, but nothing remotely close to impossible.

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    • mycodesucks@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      That BIOS feature can be disabled… now. But there’s nothing keeping a manufacturer from just not providing that functionality, and requiring only signed firmware updates. Now the machine is more or less locked down.

      The fact it can be disabled now is a convenience feature based on historical availability, but that’s absolutely no guarantee it will continue to be there in the future.

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  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Buy some 3D-printed kit to offline-overwrite a memory chip. We did this with consoles too, the pain just isn’t big enough yet.

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• laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Probably at least as powerful as a raspberry pi

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  • EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Far more, in fact.

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• artyom@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I think they are just Intel N-series mini PCs, which is what I already use with Linux.

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• Bakkoda@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I’m hoping this flops and I’ll have a bunch of micros for proxmox

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• FosterMolasses@leminal.space ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Upvoted for jiggery-pokery

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