Description

This computer ships with Libreboot pre-installed, which replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware, offering greater security and fast boot speeds. Debian Linux pre-installed (operating system), or your choice of other distro/BSD. This product is intended for those security conscious people who believe in the ideology of software freedom, and want a truly privacy-respecting computer product that is easy to get started with. *You* control your Libreboot machine, not the other way around. It is your property. KDE Plasma desktop environment provided by default, along with common applications such as web browser, productivity suite, text editors and so on. You can easily install from tens of thousands of available software packages via your Linux distro’s package manager, if you wish, for a given computational task that you wish to perform. KDE is a well-respected and powerful desktop environment, yet easy to use even for novice computer users.

Shipping worldwide! Minifree ships to USA, Canada, South America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and everywhere else, shipping globally from Minifree’s lab in the United Kingdom. Free 5 year warranty provided on all orders. The correct power cable is provided (e.g. USA, EU, UK), for each customer; the power supply is 120-240V auto-switching, so it works in every country. A compatible 65W DC power supply will be provided.

This is a performant, highly compact workstation based on heavy modification of the Dell OptiPlex 3050 Micro, running free/opensource BIOS replacement Libreboot plus Debian Linux (operating system), other Linux distro or a BSD of your choice (e.g. FreeBSD). Full driver support in Linux and BSD operating systems. Libreboot is maintained and funded directly by Minifree; Minifree’s owner (Leah Rowe) is also the founder of Libreboot. Your purchase funds Libreboot. Source code for Libreboot and Debian Linux are provided with all orders.

Libreboot offers many advanced security features that you can’t get anywhere else, such as the ability to boot a *truly* fully encrypted Linux system, where /boot is also encrypted, and the ability to check GPG signatures of your Linux kernel and other files at bootup. More information is available on Libreboot’s GRUB hardening guide. We call this *Secure libreBoot*, and it’s far superior to UEFI SecureBoot, in that you are in full control of it and it provides actually stronger encryption by default. Libreboot also patches the GRUB payload to add Argon2id KDF support (for LUKS2), NVMe SSD support and xHCI (USB 3.0) support, and other fixes unavailable in GNU’s official GRUB releases.

Your purchase will directly provide funding for further Libreboot development. Minifree directly funds the Libreboot project; Libreboot’s founder, Leah Rowe, is also in charge of Minifree.

Thermal efficiency

Since this is a desktop, Minifree also re-lids the CPU; the inner thermal paste between CPU die and IHS is cleaned out, and replaced with high quality liquid metal (Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut) to reduce system temperature. The paste between the larger heatsink and the IHS is also replaced, with Arctic MX-6 or Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, improving thermal efficiency further still, improving overall reliability and longevity.

WiFi upgrade

The Intel AX210 WiFi add-on is optional; you can still get internet with a cat5e/cat6 cable on the included RJ-45 connector, which provides ethernet. You plug this into your router / ethernet switch. If you have no ethernet gear but also don’t want WiFi, but you happen to have a smartphone, you could tether your phone’s LTE/WiFi via USB to get internet instead, where the phone acts as a router for your Libreboot 3050’s internet connection.

Your freedom. Your Libreboot.

Most people use proprietary boot firmware, even if they use free operating systems. Many computers today are known to contain malware, chief among them being Intel’s Management Engine (ME). Our systems are different. Your Libreboot system will *never* spy on you, and it will never leak your data to anyone. Your privacy and security is critical. You are the owner of your machine. We believe free software is a fundamental right, something that everyone *must* have.

Your Libreboot 3050  Micro obeys you, and nobody else! It’s Libreboot inside! The Intel ME is *disabled* on every machine, using me_cleaner which disables the ME after BringUp – this is done for your security, and privacy. You have the freedom to tinker with every part of the machine; full source code is also available, for Libreboot and the installed Linux/BSD operating system of your choice.

Additionally: this machine makes use of the excellent deguard utility, alongside me_cleaner. Deguard disables the Intel Boot Guard, which is the reason why coreboot (and therefore Libreboot) can support this hardware!

Debian Linux is secure, easy to use

*Encrypted* Debian GNU+Linux is pre-installed to keep your data secure, with *full* driver support including WiFi. Other distros or a BSD (e.g. OpenBSD, FreeBSD) can be preinstall on your request, for no additional cost. Libreboot is a Free Software project, which replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware. These sales are conducted to fund development of Libreboot, lead by Leah Rowe who is Libreboot’s founder and lead developer, and the director of Minifree Ltd.

By default, Minifree ships with *encrypted* Debian (KDE Plasma desktop environment).

Debian is a solid, robust OS with a strong security team and release engineering team behind it. It’s the bedrock of the Linux world, upon which many distros are built. It has a proven track record of reliability, and it’s easy to use for most new people while being extremely flexible for advanced users. It’s an all-round good default choice, which is why Minifree ships it.

More info about Debian can be found here: https://www.debian.org/

Qubes is also compatible; please request this specifically, in the textbox on the checkout page.

WiFi upgrade available!

WiFi upgrade available (Intel AX210 card): available for a fee. Offers much faster speeds. Select this in the drop-down menu, if you wish. The machine still has 1Gbps ethernet, so you can use that if you don’t want WiFi. Adding a WiFi card is useful if you don’t want to run cables for your internet.

Intel ME disabled! Intel Boot Guard also disabled!

The Intel Management Engine is entirely *disabled*, using me_cleaner. See: https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/wiki/How-does-it-work%3F

Intel Boot Guard has been disabled, using deguard. The Intel Boot Guard normally prevents coreboot, because it enforces cryptographic signature verification on the bootblock; vendors can choose whether to enable it during manufacturing. The *deguard* utility disables it on MEv11, by exploiting a known bug that permits unsigned code execution on the ME. You can then lock your flash, if you wish, which offers a greater security guarantee in our opinion. Security is a good thing, but only when it’s under the user’s control. Libreboot is under *your* control.

Why use *these* machines?

These machines are provided because we in the Free Software movement believe Free Software is a *right* that everyone must have; free refers to freedom. It is software for which source code is available that you can freely use, study, modify and share without restriction. These machines are intended for security-conscious people who value the ideals of the free software movement, and want something easy to use that is in the control of the *user* (not the vendor). Free software is a global movement that started in the 1980s with the BSD and GNU projects, but its roots go all the way back to the very early days of computing; free software is used and developed today by millions of people, and it runs some of the most critical infrastructure on the internet.

Many people nowadays use bloated, inefficient software, a description that often applies to proprietary software; Free Software isn’t beholden to corporate greed, and many of the people who work on it care passionately about writing the most well-audited, high quality code. Modern versions of Windows use *gigabytes* of RAM, whereas a Linux/BSD system with a lightweight (yet modern) desktop environment will use far less than that, aswell as few CPU cycles and disk I/O; in other words, Linux systems can have much lower system requirements. Minifree shares in this *lightweight* software design philosophy. Libreboot itself (lead by the same person who owns Minifree) is designed to be as simple as possible, in terms of project infrastructure, build system, and actual coreboot configuration, providing firmware that boots as quickly as possible, and with a simple user interface (SeaBIOS and/or GRUB payload) that most people can just use, intuitively. Libreboot *heavily* patches the various upstream projects used, such as coreboot and GNU GRUB, fixing various upstream issues and providing more reliable operation for the user.

Libreboot releases focus on stability, providing well-tested firmware that is rock-solid on all of the supported hardware, and with a unified user interface across (where possible) all boards. That means, if you learn to use one Libreboot system, you can most likely use another with little fuss. Libreboot does away with nasty anti-features such as UEFI SecureBoot (nasty because it makes using free operating systems harder), instead implementing its own optional security methods that are completely within the user’s control, such as GPG signature checking of your Linux kernel from GRUB, which runs directly in the flash (which you can write-protect, if you wish), or the ability to have *true* Full Disk Encryption, including /boot. In *most* setups (on x86 hardware), Libreboot directly boots GNU GRUB from the flash (with its own config file), which is configured to automatically find and boot your distro’s own GRUB, EXTLINUX or SYSLINUX configuration (and manual configuration is possible), even in cases where it resides in an EFI System Partition (ESP), or a btrfs sub volume – GRUB is extremely powerful in this setup, as a *coreboot payload*, more flexible than any standard BIOS- or UEFI-based setup, and it works because Linux/BSD systems are able to run directly on bare metal, without calling into BIOS/UEFI. Libreboot provides a direct video framebuffer, that any operating system can use if it supports Kernel Mode Setting (all Linux/BSD systems do nowadays). This is a much cleaner way to boot your operating system, and GRUB is highly efficient.

A coreboot payload called *SeaBIOS* is also provided, which you can optionally use (useful for BSD bootloaders, prior to loading the BSD kernels). SeaBIOS implements a standard x86 PC BIOS, whereas GRUB provides *multiboot* functionality to directly boot a Linux kernel (along with drivers for the disk, filesystem, etc – and an often overlooked but extremely powerful user shell, that behaves very similarly to a full BASH shell with many commands available – more info available in the GRUB documentation, though Minifree configures these systems to Just Work so you can simply turn them on and use them).

Libreboot *even* includes MemTest86+ directly in the flash! You can boot it from the GRUB or SeaBIOS payload. No more messing about with bootable USB media. It comes preinstalled! Coreboot is very different than proprietary firmware, in that you can run whatever you want. You’re not restricted to whatever the vendor gives you. You could *even* compile your own OS (e.g. Linux with busybox/musl) and put it in the flash, if you wanted to, and run whatever applications you want, without ever touching your SSD; chainload it from the GRUB payload, or reconfigure coreboot to load Linux directly (from flash).

Jargon aside, one thing that many people will ask is: does Libreboot work with standard Linux/BSD systems, without modification? The answer is yes. Minifree uses *standard* Linux/BSD installer images, provided by the respective upstreams (e.g. Debian, Archlinux, FreeBSD). You can use your Libreboot machine more or less just as you would a typical BIOS/UEFI system; Windows is also compatible, though we recommend that you stick to Linux/BSD, for your freedom. More information is available on the Libreboot documentation.

These are the same machines used for Libreboot development. Leah Rowe, the founder and lead developer of Libreboot, also runs Minifree. Sales fund the project, and these machines are *used* by Leah day to day for all tasks. Many people are surprised when they turn on a Libreboot machine, and it gets to the bootloader (e.g. GRUB) in a few seconds or less, booting faster than even a brand new (non-Libreboot) machine. This is the power of Libreboot, and free software in general, in allowing the hardware to run *much* more efficiently.

Put simply: we want to live in a world where everyone can easily and comfortably use *free software*, liberated from the shackles of proprietary software. We want to live in a world where your property is *your* property; extended to computing, this makes free software a fundamental right that *everyone* *must* have.

Libreboot also provides a U-Boot payload these days on x86-64, present since Libreboot 20241206; it will be further developed in subsequent Libreboot releases. U-Boot provides a sensible UEFI implementation, but it’s very new; Libreboot still recommends the GRUB payload for the forseeable future, as it’s more stable and provides a lot more security features. MInifree ships with the GRUB payload by default.

Information about the product

Several video connectors are available for external monitors; the mainboard has a DisplayPort connector and an HDMI connector.

NOTE: The photos show an add-on card installed for RS232 (serial console), but this is not provided by default, and most customers won’t need it. It’s simply the machine that Minifree had a photo of when launching the Libreboot 3050 Micro.

Included accessories

• Battery included, fully tested
• AC-DC adapter (charger) included (100-240V auto-switching, works in all countries) – NOTE: this is not USB-C, like the Libreboot T480. However, it’s a standard Dell barrel connector and power supplies are easy to find. Minifree will provide one by default, with all orders.
• UK, EU or US power cable included, depending on country (Dell DC power supply).
  

Laptop specifications:

• 3.1GHz Intel Core i5-6500T processor (i7-7700t is possible, but pointless and not offered; it only offers about a 10-12% performance boost – a pin mod is referenced online that could potentially allow use of coffeelake CPUs with more cores, but this is currently untested and should be assumed unsupported)
• Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 530
• Gigabit ethernet as standard
• Ports: Dual microphone/headphone jack (3.5mm), 4x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0, 1x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI, DC power jack. Optional ports via expansion slot not provided; optional antenna slot for WiFi.
• WiFi: None by default — Intel AX210 upgrade available, if you need WiFi
  
• Memory: 32GB DDR4-2400 RAM
• More specifications shown here: https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-uk/optiplex-3050-micro/optiplex_3050-mff_om/processor-specifications?guid=guid-8ca53ab2-a85d-42d5-9106-5214220306aa&lang=en-us

When new Libreboot versions are released, it is possible to update to those newer versions using software (no disassembling required). Full instructions are provided.