Starts at 2013/12/29 04:00:00 PM Ends at 2013/12/29 05:00:00 PM Duration 60 minutes Location

We (bunnie & xobs) have finished the core hardware for an open source laptop. The hardware is open, so you can build it yourself. The source for the kernel, drivers, and other firmware is also open, so you can build that yourself too.

It's working. We use it every day to do development work. We even produce it in quantity for OEM customers. It's also much more than a laptop: it's a router, a server, a signal analysis platform, a general purpose hardware hacking tool. It's a quad-core GHz ARM plus FPGA dev board.

The problem is, we are hackers. We want to keep hacking and developing. We aren't business people who want to start a company selling and supporting laptops. Also, as a laptop, it's not as good (fast/thin/supported/compatible) as the closed-source Intel laptops out there. We can manufacture the hardware no problem, but it's not particularly cheap, nor is it what most consumers would expect. So we're hesitant to market this platform to the general public.

But, we want other developers who are interested to get their hands on the hardware, and we think maybe there are people who would like to use this, but we're not sure who and why.

If you have an interest in our platform, please come to this session so we can have a discussion about how best to meet your needs.

Find bunnie and xobs at the fail0verflow table, and then we'll migrate the session to a nearby free hallway or table depending on how many people show up.

http://bunniefoo.com/novena/novena-4q13.jpg

Link above: photo of Novena in laptop chassis form, driving its primary internal display (2560x1700) and an external HDMI display (1920x1080). In this photo it is running debian.