Description

**CLEARANCE SALE!!! Minifree will discontinue this product after all stock has sold, to make way for two new products to be announced in November. Don’t miss this great bargain! — Leah Rowe, the founder of Libreboot, is also the owner of Minifree.org and uses sales to fund the project. This clearance sale is being conducted to quickly raise funds for new Libreboot work planned in November. Libreboot is funded exclusively by Minifree sales! The new products will be at a much higher price. Minifree still has about 40-50 of these 9020SFF, as of 14 October 2024, so we want to get rid of them. They’re quite nice machines with decent performance.**

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. 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.

This is a high-performance workstation based on heavy modification of the Dell OptiPlex 9020 SFF, running free/opensource BIOS replacement Libreboot plus Debian Linux (operating system), other Linux distro or a BSD of your choice (e.g. OpenBSD, FreeBSD). Full driver support in Linux and BSD operating systems, including WiFi. 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.

An NVMe SSD is installed if choosing 1TB SSD or 2TB SSD via PCI-E adapter card (see photo), for better performance, fully bootable in Libreboot on all payloads (SeaBIOS, and also GNU GRUB which Libreboot patches for this purpose by re-using the code from SeaBIOS’s NVMe driver). This is one of many benefits of Libreboot, because the *original* Dell UEFI firmware cannot boot from NVMe; only Libreboot can! NVMe is much faster than SATA.#

If choosing 240GB SSD, it will be a *SATA* SSD instead of NVMe.

The benefit of Libreboot is that since it’s a free/opensource project, releases can be audited so you have a greater assurance that there are no firmware-based backdoors in your system; coreboot, which Libreboot uses for initialisation, is regularly audited. The coreboot port for this machine is *entirely* free software, including memory controller initialisation (Libreboot merges Angel Pon’s raminit patches and does not use Intel MRC). The Intel ME is *disabled*, using me_cleaner (only BUP/bringup remaining in flash, disabled during early boot). Libreboot has other benefits such as faster boot speeds and greater customisation, and advanced security features you can’t get anywhere else, such as the easy ability to boot LUKS2-encrypted systems directly, even if /boot is encrypted, by using the GNU GRUB payload included in flash.

Video ports

DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA ports are available, with the included Intel HD 4600 graphics. HDMI and DisplayPort if you choose the RX 6400 card (much higher performance than Intel graphics).

Upgrades available

As this is a desktop computer, it offers a lot more flexibility than the laptops that Minifree provides (and better performance). The next sections will talk about these upgrades, and some of the work that goes into everything.

WiFi upgrade available (Intel AX210 card): available for a fee. High speed, at least 500Mbps speeds in our testing. It supports the newer 802.11ax, 802.11ac and 802.11n standards. See: https://minifree.org/product/intel-ax210/

*Stock* Dell fans installed. The machine runs relatively quiet, but quieter Noctua fans are available. See: https://minifree.org/product/noctua-fans/

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 9020 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.

Your purchase will directly provide funding for further Libreboot development. Minifree directly funds the Libreboot project.

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

Many of Minifree’s customers wish to use Qubes. Minifree is happy to provide this, on your chosen hardware configuration.

Intel ME disabled!

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

Fully free memory controller initialisation

The main benefit of the Intel Haswell platform, present in this product, is that it has *completely free/opensource* initialisation in coreboot; many newer platforms currently rely on binary blobs. Free software can be fully audited and adapted for your own needs, allowing far greater control of the machine, and the *memory controller* is one of the most technically difficult parts to handle in coreboot. Libreboot provides SeaBIOS and GNU GRUB as options, in the boot flash, for loading your operating system; these are coreboot payloads, provided by Libreboot, which makes use of coreboot for initialisation.

Minifree ships with *libre* raminit written by Angel Pons, instead of Intel MRC. The MRC is a binary blob that can be used for memory controller initialisation, on Haswell machines. Angel (a coreboot developer) reverse engineered the MRC and has written free replacement code. This is called Haswell NRI (Native RAM Initialisation).

This means: aside from neutered ME (Minifree uses me_cleaner to disable ME after early bringup) and CPU microcode (required for stability), all of the critical initialisation code in the boot flash is fully Free Software; a recent update to Angel’s NRI code, as shipped by Minifree, fixes S3 suspend/resume (sleep mode), so now the machine is fully stable in this configuration.

CPU re-lidding

Minifree de-lids *every* CPU so that the inner thermal compound can be replaced with higher quality *liquid metal*, for greater thermal efficiency (~10c reduction under stress conditions). The photos show a de-lidded CPU, followed by a re-lidded CPU:

The adhesive residue is fully cleaned, and the old thermal paste removed. Then liquid metal is applied on the die, and the IHS (see photo) is re-applied and glued down (around the sides).

Less is more. After re-lidding, the IHS is adhered, with special care taken to ensure that it does not go on the IHS top surface or spill over the sides. Once the adhesive has cured, the CPU is ready to use and will run at lower temperatures.

Between the IHS and larger cooler, Minifree uses high quality Arctic MX-6 thermal paste. This is because the liquid metal is conductive, but safe to use underneath the IHS. MX-6 provides thermal performance that is almost comparable to the liquid metal that Minifree uses (Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut).

Minifree does this on *every* CPU. NOTE: The CPU pictured is an i5-4590. Minifree provides this or the i5-4570 (virtually identical performance).

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.

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).

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).

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 and last much longer.

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.

Information about the product

As this is a desktop, de-lidding (and subsequent re-lidding) of the CPU’s integrated heat spreader (IHS) will also be performed, replacing the inner thermal compound with a higher quality liquid metal (Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut) for greater thermal performance. This, in addition to replacing thermal paste between the CPU’s IHS and larger heatsink. Laptop CPUs don’t have IHS on them, so the heatsink goes directly on the CPU die, but desktop CPUs have an additional heatsink (the integrated heat spreader, or IHS) between the die and much larger heatsink, for spreading heat efficiently.

Included accessories

• Correct power cable provided; the internal power supply is 120/240V auto-switching, so it will work everywhere (e.g. USA, Japan, Europe, Asia – every country). US/Japan and a bunch of others use split-phase 120V in homes, whereas most of Europe uses single-phase 240V.
• UK, EU or US power cable included, depending on country. It is a standard kettle lead, also called an IEC cable.

Workstation specifications:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-4570
• CPU socket type: LGA 1150
• 1TB or 2TB NVMe SSD of your choice. Brand/vendor is random, but you can ask/request the brand.
• Memory: 16GB DDRL3 (PC3L-12800U, 1600MHz)
• Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4600
• Gigabit ethernet as standard (RJ-45 slot)
• Wifi sold separately (Intel AX210 installed on PCIE to NGFF adapter with two antennas)
• Chipset: Intel Q87 Express
• 3 SATA ports: 1x optical, and 2x SATA SSD possible (NVMe SSD possible via x4 PCI-E adapter card). 3rd SATA SSD possible if you exclude the optical drive.
• Ports: 4x USB 3.0, 6x USB 2.0, 1x RJ-45, 1 serial (RS232), 1x VGA, 2x Displayport, 2 PS/2 (keyboard and mouse), line-in(audio) and line-out(audio)
• Power connector: standard kettle lead. The correct one is supplied for your country (e.g. USA, EU, UK power cable)
• This is a reconditioned Dell OptiPlex 9020 SFF with Libreboot and your choice of Linux/BSD system. More specifications shown here: https://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/optiplex-9020-micro-technical-spec-sheet.pdf

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