Why I Use Old Hardware

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • me_cleaner

    Tool for partial deblobbing of Intel ME/TXE firmware images

  • If you are sensitive about the Intel Management Engine, the original Core 2 Duo/Quad systems are the last where it could be fully disabled.

    Anything later will forcibly shut down after 30 minutes if (at least a fragment of) Intel's closed & bug-ridden monitoring code is not present.

    I ran me_cleaner on a few of these systems, and I do all my finances with them running OpenBSD (usually on q9550s).

    Yes, this effort to run old hardware is worth it for me. Below are the bios images that I was able to produce:

    https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/issues/233

  • linux-surface

    Linux Kernel for Surface Devices

  • The mainline kernel works but I think the linux-surface kernel (https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface -- I misnamed it in my previous comment) should be used. I accidentally booted one of the SP3s with the mainline kernel and saw some WiFi driver problems, though I can’t say I’ve tested this extensively.

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    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

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NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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