Review: MNT Reform laptop has completely open hardware and software – for better or for worse

If you’re a Linux aficionado or open source looking for a decent laptop, you really do have some good options right now – at least a lot better than buying a Windows laptop, installing Linux on it, and hoping for the best.

Dell has been offering Ubuntu versions for some of its XPS laptops and other PCs for years, while Lenovo sells a respectable collection of Linux desktops and laptops. System76 sells a range of Linux-compatible laptops preloaded with Ubuntu or its own Pop!_OS distribution. The repair-friendly Framework Laptop doesn’t come with Linux, but it can be configured without an OS, and Framework promises solid Linux support from multiple distributions.

But all of these laptops have something in common with regular Windows PCs: a reliance on closed-source hardware and, often, proprietary software and drivers to make it work. For some people, this is an acceptable compromise. You put up with proprietary hardware because it works well and supports the standard software, development tools, and APIs that make the computing world go round. For others, it’s anathema – if you can’t see the source code for these “binary blocks”then they are inherently unreliable and should be used with care or not at all.

The MNT Reform is the laptop for the latter group. It’s a crowdfunded, openly developed, well-documented device that cares more about openness than literally any other aspect of computing. Perhaps, as you might expect, this makes the laptop ideologically pure but functionally compromised.

As openly as possible, for better or worse

In a moment we’ll talk about the Reform as a real physical entity, but to understand why it is the way it is, you need to understand the mindset of the people who designed it. For them, Reform’s lack of a microphone and webcam is an argument in favor of privacy. Its weak ARM Cortex-A53 based processor was chosen because it was “simpler”and “much easier to understand than regular laptops”.

Since I’ve been browsing the MNT community forums, it’s fair to say that this is a branch of the open source community that is inherently skeptical about things like TPM modules, an Intel Management Engine, or an Apple T2 chip – these are, thinking goes, incomprehensible black boxes, the opposite of selling points. You can’t be sure they do what they say because the source code is not public and they may contain security vulnerabilities at best or deliberate loopholes at worst.

I’m not bringing this up to ridicule or discount these concerns (or confirm them, for that matter), but to demonstrate how different the concerns of MNT Reform’s target audience are from those of the general public buying computers.

Here are the questions I usually consider when reviewing a laptop: how fast is it? Is it loud? Is it too hard? How does the keyboard feel? Is the screen good? How is the battery life? I can judge the Reform by these criteria too! But all my comments have to be filtered through the limitations of the Reform project that he imposed on himself and the priorities of the people who funded it.

At the same time, this isn’t a $35 Raspberry Pi board – it doesn’t benefit from being so cheap that its quirks and flaws are forgivable. The base Reform model (which will go on sale in late April 2022 at the time of this writing) is a $1,299 do-it-yourself kit that you need to fully assemble yourself, and to which you will need to add a trackpad or trackball module for $59 dollars. The fully assembled Reform costs $1,550 plus shipping, almost $200 more. Neither version includes a Wi-Fi module, antenna, or internal SSD.

To MNT’s credit, the build process is fully documented (PDF) and you can do it all with a small Phillips screwdriver. Our overview module has been pre-assembled, but the process seems simple enough that anyone with an interest in reform can probably put it together.

But it’s still the same price for one very good high-end MacBook or PC laptop (or a pair of mostly good PC laptops). Such a price comparison seems to miss the point of the reform, which should be as open and transparent as possible, and not a replacement for the XPS 13 or the MacBook Air. But even hardcore FOSS enthusiasts should stop and consider what they need a computer to be able to do before shelling out a grand and a half on this thing.