Novena to produce open source laptop

The Novena laptop, which is built entirely from open source components and logically runs exclusively open source software, is going into production after the financial goal of a quarter of a million dollars on the crowdfunding site Crowdsupply has been reached.

The Novena laptop consists of several fully documented parts, including the Freescale iMX6 quad-core clocked at 1.6GHz. The motherboard offers space for DDR3-SO-DIMMs and, in addition to the necessary connections, including USB 2.0 and HDMI, also contains a touchscreen controller and mini PCI Express slot. Gigabit Ethernet and an SD card reader are also available. The laptop comes with an 802.11n WiFi module and 4GB of RAM. The builders supply the Novena with an SSD with a capacity of 240GB, on which Debian is installed.

Through the crowdfunding site Crowdsupply, the creators of the Novena project raised enough money to start production of the hardware by crossing the $250,000 mark. However, the laptop with a price tag of 2000 dollars is not cheap. The motherboard will cost $500 and there will be a cheaper ‘desktop version’.

People who have ordered a Novena still have to be patient: the open source hardware will only be available early next year. One of the reasons for this is that the laptop will be built with a limited edition.