I wanted to start by saying that it seems to be a great atmosphere here, and I applaud the MNT team for not only working hard to produce fantastic products so far, but also in building what appears to be a great community around them.
This might fall to an abrupt awkward silence, but to take that risk, I thought it might be nice to have some introductions of sorts… (as much or as little as one is comfortable with)
How did you first find out about MNT Reform and/or what brought you here?
What do you do / want to do with your Reform Laptop most?
Are cats or dogs better, (or robots)?
Personally, I found about MNT in the early days of the MNT Reform Laptop, and did follow it with keen interest, although it was just a little too expensive for me at the time to justify it, although the mechanical keyboard, esoteric clear panel, and modular structure was very much appealing to me (in a slightly cyberpunk way).
However, certainly when the Pocket Reform appeared, I really had to have it (although again, I wish I had the money to have justified the “ultra” version…)
My other laptops are old Thinkpads (which are also really robust and maintainable), and a Framework one, which is my current daily driver.
Thinking the Pocket might take over as a more handy one to take around to do coding/hacking on, 3D printing projects, and language study…
We have a dog, and I like the idea that Reforms (from the photos) are being built in an office with at least one cute dog assisting - and did have cats until recently. So both are great to have around (although I’d argue that cats are more relaxing and cute in general).
I was made aware of the Reform by @erle who even has one of the first generation Reform (the Reform 1, what we common plebs have is the Reform 2). We both are using the Neo keyboard layout and the Reform offered that option on its shop page. I think at some point Lukas mentioned that overall only 3-4 keyboards with the Neo layout were shipped. This is also part of my first interaction with the MNT community on the IRC channel back in May 2020: 2020-05-08.log
In November 2021 I then ordered my Reform because my thinkpad t440s was starting to fall apart and I needed a new laptop and I saw this shell script
And I thought OMG no way this is all wrong! I have to fix this! And thus I started my first contribution to MNT in December 2021, making the build bit-by-bit reproducible by exporting SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. The big commit that allowed to run everything without superuser privileges was then in February 2022. And then I finally threw my thinkpad into the bin and switched to the reform as my main and only laptop.
No dogs and no cats here. But there is a small minion causing trouble in the house.
I’d been keeping an eye out for an open source laptop for a while. I’d seen the EOMA68 and the Novena on Crowdsupply and passed on both. When MNT started their campaign, I was finally ready. Didn’t hurt that I was already familiar with Lukas’ work on Interim OS.
My Reform replaced a Thinkpad T400 flashed with Libreboot that’d begun behaving strangely.
I program, admin servers, and do all the usual email checking and web browsing via my Reform. These days I’ve been spending most of my time getting Guix (via Nonguix) running on the modules I have (IMX8MQ, LS1028A, and A311D). I may wind up porting my work on NixOS support over to the lix.systems fork too, once I’m happy with where my Guix support is. This laptop is a hobby unto itself for me.
In our house there are 4 cats, divided between me, my wife, and our housemates. Dogs are great, but they’re a lot of work and I live in a city anyway. If I lived out in the country, I suppose it’d probably be worth getting some dogs.
That brings back memories. I’d actually paid for an EOMA68 and case, and for a long time I believed they still might deliver (and I don’t think it was any fault of the creator).
I am also on the waiting list for a pre-ordered Pyra handheld, which also kind of led me in the direction of the MNT Laptop, and the Pocket has quite a bit in common with the Pyra, although I see myself doing slightly different things with a Pyra if/when it finally arrives…
I wish I had more time for “coding for fun” - it’s what I do for work, and it can be hard sometimes to motivate doing even similar things for fun these days, so I do really enjoy the retro scene for that much needed escapism.
So I might also use the Pocket for emulation also - old point and click, strategy, rpg type games, etc…
I honestly can’t remember now how I came across it. I think I saw an ad for it, and it was saying that it was a completely open source laptop. I was skeptical that such a thing would amount to even wanting. I have been turned off by the attitude in the open source community for a long time. However coming here has really helped me to change that opinion. Anyway, I looked at the website and saw the Reform. I watched a couple youtube videos of it being built (man these videos were terrible for showing the actual Reform). I was just struck by how good the Reform looked. The designed screamed Thinkpad 90s design, and I loved it so much. The idea of replaceable batteries also really appealed to me. This was before Framework was a thing.
I originally justified the rather steep price for the Reform so that I could fiddle around with ARM development of sorts. What I came to understand after getting it, is just how capable it was, and what all you could actually do with it. The Reform, for example, is an amazingly good DOS platform. Great to work on documentation with. Also great to use for programming duty, either locally or via VNC.
Completely subjective, but my answer is a resounding DOGS! Tina at MNT is a great dog, and I can say that even though I have never even met her! Dogs are more work for sure, as they are far more dependent on you. However, they make up for that by becoming a real member of your family / pack. If they are able to, they will defend you with their life. There are some exceptions of cats who have done extraordinary things, but in general dogs just operate this way by default. They bring so much more to the table than a cat, but this is just my opinion.
I’m glad people are kind to all animals, even cats.
I think robots would be cool as well. I mean a robot is a pet you design.
I’ve known Minute for a while through social media and I think we even met once many years ago (although that was in a different life for me, because it was pre-transition). The original Reform was interesting as a project to me but I didn’t have a use case for it. The Pocket though could hopefully fill a need for me as my mobile computing device at university.
I will not answer any question that puts cats, dogs or robots against each other.
I was looking for an opensource hardware & software laptop to counter the advanced persistent threats the x86 platform amounts to nowadays. I joined the forum as the information on the webpage was too scarce.
I just want to do all daily work I currently do on my x86 laptop but in a way that gives data sovereignty a chance. Currently I’m waiting for an MNT board supporting ARM’s latest CPU which they claim to be more powerful than Apple’s M4 (and can only hope this is not wishful thinking).
Actually I prefer a well disciplined pack of velociraptors
I learned about MNT Reform on fedi. I had bought a Purism laptop in 2017 and wasn’t happy. On a blog post in 2021 the MNT Reform laptop got mentioned. I still use the Purism laptop as my main laptop, but with one of its hinges broken, I needed something else to take on trips. That’s why I started looking for an extra small laptop. I wanted something that was energy efficient, that would allow me to use all my Debian stable tools for system administration, to edit files using Emacs, to browse the web using Firefox, to ssh into my server and do maintenance work from hotel rooms and the like. The Pocket Reform landed on the list.
As it stands right now, I’m still using Debian testing but I’d love to make that switch to Debian stable one day. My secret idea is that I just have to wait and one day I’d be able to do it using /etc/apt/sources.list sorcery. I managed to switch from PureOS to Debian stable doing that, so I don’t doubt that there is a way to do it from Debian testing to Debian stable. Painfully, maybe, but doable.
I’d love for battery and wifi to be no problem. Right now, battery life is good enough for my evening sessions if I have to move to the couch, and wifi seems to be working fine now that summer is over. I have an ethernet connection for the Pocket Reform, however, and that’s very nice. The cable is 3m long or something. But in a hotel, wifi still works, as I said.
I recently had some emergency sysadmin stuff to do in the evenings while on holidays and the Pocket Reform did exactly what I needed it to do.
Finally, cats are bird murderers and dogs are our best friends. No question, dogs are better! But also, I don’t have time in my life for a dog, so I think I’ll vote for little Internet people in my computers, on forums, IRC, Discord, Fedi, newsgroups and elsewhere.
Instead of doing /etc/apt/sources.list sorcery in the future, you could replace “testing” by “trixie” today. That way, at the point in time where “testing” becomes “stable” you do not need to edit your /etc/apt/sources.list. The updates and security mirrors also exist already for trixie but are of course empty but this means that you can also add those today already and have things set up for the future:
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie main
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie-updates main
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security trixie-security main
The one point of pain may be that after the trixie release, the MNT repositories will continue to build packages for unstable which will work for a while but will break after new uploads of glibc and friends. So in the future, you might want to switch out the MNT repo for the Debian stable repositories on reform.debian.net which are currently only serving packages for bookworm and not trixie.
I found the Pocket announcement on some news site. It immediately clicked; the whole combination of standard, open, repairable, replaceable and upgradable hardware was almost unbelievable. Mechanical keyboard? Trackball? 7 inch? To say some things.
For me, a 7 inch laptop (which has replaced my old 7-inch laptop) is both a means and and end at the same time. I use it as a tool for my hobbies, and I find joy in using it on my sofa or anywhere else. Wasting two afternoons writing some random daemon that notifies me using the keyboard LEDs? Sure! There’s no better plan.
There’s something else I enjoy about the Pocket: working within the constraints of its CPU. I enjoy having to adapt to it. Upgrading the SOC will make me lose that, but it’s something I’ll eventually do.
Good point. I’m planning to upgrade mine as soon as I can, although having constraints can be a positive thing for development, optimisation, and motivation for getting to know the system on a lower level in more detail.
I still use some retro computers / systems for that purpose too (well, when I get some precious time to do so, that is).
Upgrading the SOC will make me lose that, but it’s something I’ll eventually do.
I’m planning to hold off for as long as possible!
I like the (imagined?) pressure it gives me to look for text ui solutions. I rediscovered the Midnight Commander; I found that toot tui gives me a complete text user-interface for the Fediverse; I’m experimenting with nncp and mail on the command-line…
I am a diehard Thinkpad user, but the ones I like (x200 - x220 series, x61) are seriously starting to show their age and become unusable for what I want to do. I got a Framework and I like it, but while it’s very repairable it’s not very “hackable”. I remember just wanting basically a Raspberry Pi that I could throw into a laptop case with a nice keyboard and solid battery life. Needless to say the Reform fit the bill perfectly. My partner showed me a video of someone reviewing it on YouTube and I placed an order for one the next day.
Someone on Mastodon boosted the MNT Reform Pocket CrowdSupply, and I started to look into it and MNT in general.
1A) What brought me here, specifically, was to get more in-depth information about some queries I had pre-purchase, as this will be a significant investment for me.
If I end up getting a MNT Reform/Pocket/Next, it will be as my daily-driver Work-From-Home computer, where I mainly do documentation, support, emailing, and some light office/telecommute work. Infrequent gaming to keep sane, and perhaps some processing of sUAS data, if I can spend for the RKCore upgrade.
2A) I would love to be able to just keep a single laptop and continually upgrade/fix it as needed, as this inability to do so has kept me from having a personal laptop pretty much my whole life, sticking just with desktop systems which I typically keep as my main machine for 8-12 years before retiring them, usually due to needing significantly more power/RAM than available in that platform due to change in school/work.
(almost) All animals are awesome and unique. Goats are what I currently want to raise. I’ll never raise geese again.
