I’m getting the impression that the only certified machines are from Europe.
I have no idea what purchasing one for someone in the US would entail.
The PrivacyBeast X230 by Insurgo is to my knowledge the first / original certified machine. It ships from Canada. I value both the ThinkPad X230 and T430 based machines due to the fact that they are Ivy Bridge based and the ME can be completely removed. Obviously this comes with a performance hit.
Thierry / the Insurgo Initiative is the current maintainer of heads, so purchasing a certified laptop from them supports the heads project. Another good reason in my book.
This newly announced certified laptop in contrast is an excellent option for users requiring higher performance and being content with (a disabled?) ME. One also needs to mention that there are recent reports of some X230 and T430 users including myself experiencing performance and stability issues with R4.1. These have not been root caused and fixed as of yet.
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TopTon S600 is a very nice desktop computer. You get 64Gb/1Tb/i9 12th gen for sub-$1K money!
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Wondering whether he Framework laptops will be certifiable. Waiting for their AMD 16-in LED UHD, might be some time coming.
Hi Sven, would it be possible for you to add the NV41 Series to the list now this laptop is a Qubes-certified model?
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@novacustom: it’s a Wiki post, please update the field describing the number of USB controllers (not ports!) available.
@pietrushnic: please do the same for the Z690. Also: does it have PS/2 ports for keyboard/mouse … if not it appears that requirement was dropped for certified machines, in which case we should drop it from this page to (and continue to list the Z690).
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The Z690 only has a single PS/2 port. I don’t know if it’s possible to use mouse and keyboard at the same time, but you can use a PS/2 keyboard.
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Perfect! That way the user can’t log themselves out of the system when configuring sys-usb.
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@pietrushnic I’m looking for the number of USB controllers available on the board. Just realized that you submitted a HCL report so I’ll get the number from there. No action on your side needed.
@novacustom please submit a HCL report.
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For some reason Thinkpad T16 (and maybe other modern Thinkpads too) have non-usb keyboard and touchpad. So, even if everything went south with sys-usb - user still has ability to type and use mouse, it’s awesome. Does it mean it’s like PS/2 inside?
About PS/2 as a requirement - I think it can be outdated for 2 reasons:
- Even if something wrong with
sys-usbor other usb qube, one can boot without qubes autostart (adding kernel parameter via the boot menu) and have mouse and keyboard back for fixing stuff. - Having 2-3 USB controllers is more valuable than having PS/2, especially if one can use one of them exclusively for input to
dom0, like for keyboard and mouse. My opinion.
So, that means: everybody, please provide information about number of USB Controllers (as @Sven asked) and even better if you can provide information which is what - “like first controller is USB2 with keyboard, touchpad, fingerprint and wifi, second is USB3 for 2 usb ports on the side of the laptop” and etc.
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@Sven I’m having trouble updating the list.
Would you be so kind to update the NovaCustom NV41 Series on the list, please? It is Qubes OS certified and we ship it pre-installed. The HCL reports mentions the number 3 under usb:
Qubes-HCL-Notebook-NV4xPZ-20230510-100826.yml (851 Bytes)
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Can you provide full output of lspci -vv and lsusb -v from dom0 and information about how usb ports, wifi, bluetooth, touchpad, keyboard, other stuff are connected to these USB Controllers?
Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but lsusb -v doesn’t give any output.
You can find the lspci -vv output here: lspci-v.log (12.8 KB)
… information about how usb ports, wifi, bluetooth, touchpad, keyboard, other stuff are connected to these USB Controllers?
- I think you need the schematic diagrams of the hardware. Even though we’d love to publish this, we are only allowed to share this with customers on request. If you bought a NovaCustom laptop, please write us an email with the request for the schematic diagrams.
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Not diagrams. My point being that 3 USB Controllers may mean actually 1 for the purposes of using it in Qubes OS. I saw situations like that: when all usb ports on the laptop are connected to a single controller, that it is also responsible for “wifi/bluetooth/touchpad/keyboard” - it is like having 1 controller after all, because other 2 controllers can do some internal stuff (thunderbolt/pci), that user cannot physically use anyway.
To match connectors and devices (wifi, bluetooth, touchpad, keyboard) with USB Controllers you can use manual tests like @unman proposed here: How to figure out which USB port goes to which USB controller? - #28 by unman
I am so insistent about this because it does matter for Qubes OS users, and users should definitely know what will they get as a certified laptop to avoid disappointments (congratulations on certification, by the way!).
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Done.
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Quite unfortunate that no information about what USB controllers and USB sockets can be used separately on NovaCustom NV41 Series was provided. I described the way to check and why it may really matter.
I would like to propose adding the Framework laptops to the recommended list. I have been using one (original 11th Gen Intel) for more than a year with QubesOS and have gone through all the growing pains with it. I have posted my suggestions and guide here on GitHub for new users to Qubes OS on Framework. Initially there were some challenges with hardware recognition in the Xen kernel for wifi and s3 sleep especially, but at this point from my experience and the HCL reports, it seems that even the newest 13th Gen Intel version is working nearly perfectly.
I’m happy to test any needed functionality or other things that might be needed to recommend it. In general, I think the philosophy behind the company is admirable and compatible with the majority of the audience of Qubes. Really the only drawback I can think of at this time is that they are NOT supporting Coreboot likely for the next couple years 
, though it is something they have stated publicly they would like to support and likely will when AMD OpenSIL comes to fruition.