As someone that believes that ultimately in the end Stallman is right, this situation isn't great.
I do run a T400 Thinkpad with Libreboot and Triquel Linux, one of the FSF approved libre/free distros.
But... the state of available hardware that is completely open/free is getting worse. That the T400 laptop is the most modern machine that can run fully free form top to bottom says it all, it is 17 years old. Also thanks to Libreboot, it cannot use the inbuilt Radeon GPU.
As much as I wish one could easily get full free hardware, one has to make compromises nowadays just to have anything. It is mostly the low level stuff like the firmware and management engines that you don't have a huge choice on. But you can still have libre operating systems and the driver support without binary blobs is actually kind of ok nowadays.
But the trend is clear. The last decade hasn't been great for libre hardware, it is now just a game of making the least compromises.
Funnily enough, it was Stallman who once said that if you have to use a proprietary system at least use one that is possibly compromised by a government that doesn't impact you. For instance, it isn't too likely that Chinese government is going to actively work with the US, so using Chinese computers is probably a better choice. The same goes the other way. It isn't perfect but I at least get the logic.
As someone that believes that ultimately in the end Stallman is right, this situation isn't great.
I do run a T400 Thinkpad with Libreboot and Triquel Linux, one of the FSF approved libre/free distros.
But... the state of available hardware that is completely open/free is getting worse. That the T400 laptop is the most modern machine that can run fully free form top to bottom says it all, it is 17 years old. Also thanks to Libreboot, it cannot use the inbuilt Radeon GPU.
As much as I wish one could easily get full free hardware, one has to make compromises nowadays just to have anything. It is mostly the low level stuff like the firmware and management engines that you don't have a huge choice on. But you can still have libre operating systems and the driver support without binary blobs is actually kind of ok nowadays.
But the trend is clear. The last decade hasn't been great for libre hardware, it is now just a game of making the least compromises.
Funnily enough, it was Stallman who once said that if you have to use a proprietary system at least use one that is possibly compromised by a government that doesn't impact you. For instance, it isn't too likely that Chinese government is going to actively work with the US, so using Chinese computers is probably a better choice. The same goes the other way. It isn't perfect but I at least get the logic.