Manufacturer 'make worthless' users devices after some stolen from a warehouse - <AUTHOR> https://phasenoise.livejournal.com/5612.html <comment><USER2> I can't bring myself to be bothered by this - and wouldn't be even if I were using these devices.

For crying out loud, equipment with unique recorded serial numbers was stolen, so the company is blocking the _specific_ stolen devices. That makes perfect sense to me. Objecting to how they do it (bulking up software with a list of serials, requiring software to phone home, whatever) is fine and their customers have a legit basis to be unhappy if it's impacting their use, but people with the stolen devices? _Those aren 't SDRPlay's customers because SDRPlay hasn't been paid for those devices._

Quoting from the article: _In a PR disaster the manufacturer gives "Because we can" as an explanation to make end user devices worthless._

I'll note that this complaint very carefully leaves out a key word: STOLEN. I'm not seeing the PR disaster except that it's going to seriously hurt their image in the community of people who steal stuff from warehouses. _tiny violin plays sad music_

If you've purchased one of these, as I said above you're not a customer of SDRPlay or one of its distributors because payment is part of a vendor- customer relationship. You're someone who bought "Bose" speakers out of the back of a white van in a parking lot. Get your money back from the seller - you may even be able to get the police report from SDRPlay if you need it for a chargeback - and tell SDRPlay where you bought it so they can try to track down the thieves.

Edit: reading the original SDRPlay forum posts, they ID the specific ebay sellers, note that this is the _third_ time they've had things stolen like this and sold by the same accounts, and note that "We will NOT penalise innocent people so that assumption that this is our intent is frankly WRONG!!" Basically they're likely looking for anything like saved packaging, shipping return addresses, etc. to be turned over to the police. Also, this whole thing is about (in this case at least) a total of 39 devices. We're not talking about thousands of people affected.

SDRPlay: [https://www.sdrplay.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3225](https://www.sdrplay.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3225)

<comment><USER3> How far can we take this? Theft is a big deal for manufacturers. They spend good money on preventing it. But will they continue to spend good money on prevention if instead they can just brick any lost devices? The nightmare is a manufacturer turning to a whitelist model, one where post-purchase the consumer must legitimize their purchase before use of the device. That DRM. There is massive overlap between the community of people who purchase SDR products and the group that will riot in the streets in protest of DRM.

Anyone who purchases tech devices owns some "pirate" content. When you buy a motherboard you don't know the pedigree of its hundreds of components. Trace each one and you will find a licensing or counterfeit issue somewhere. Should everyone be able to automagically brick counterfeit or stolen devices when those devices have been integrated, resold three times, and are now in the hands of innocent consumers? There are policy-based principals in western law that have long prevented such behavior in other arenas.

See: [https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/2-403](https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/2-403)

Not exactly on point, but an example of how we protect good-faith purchasers, even black-market purchase of "stolen" goods.

<comment><USER4> While I agree with you mostly, this is really a basic issue - devices stolen from the manufacturer are still owned by the manufacturer. They are, and should be, free to do with them however they please. It's a basic question of ownership and control over one's property in here.

<comment><USER3> I'd have to know more about the "theft". I suspect that this wasn't a robbery in the dead of night.

UCC § 2-403 states: When goods have been delivered under a transaction of purchase the purchaser has such power even though ... the delivery was procured through fraud punishable as larcenous under the criminal law.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/2-403](https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/2-403)

Basically, if an employee to other person who was "entrusted" with these goods by the manufacturer sells them, then innocent purchasers take full legal title. The good-faith purchaser is now the legal owner even if they purchased the goods from someone who wasn't a legal owner. The goods don not belong to the manufacturer. This is specifically to protect innocent people from debates between manufacturers and distributors, even where those distributors have stolen goods.

The knock-on effect of this is that people who buy things in good faith from distributors don't have to worry about manufacturers (or police) raiding their homes ... which appears to be exactly what this manufacturer is doing by bricking these devices.

<comment><USER5> That's not what the law states.

It actually says:

(1) A purchaser of goods acquires all title _which his transferor had or had power to transfer_ except that a purchaser of a limited interest acquires rights only to the extent of the interest purchased.

The part you're quoting refers to the recipient being the fraud, not the seller. The recipient never acquires more rights than the seller had. This is why stolen goods can be seized by police, even from innocent purchasers.

[ _Edit:_ ] Actually more complicated than that. The provision contemplates the middle-man acquired the rights to the goods sold through fraudulent means. In this case, it still requires the middle-man to have acquired the rights from the original seller in a transaction in which the seller gave up the rights to the goods. I.e., theft by fraud would suffice but mere theft would not. It's hard to explain theft by fraud. In a nutshell, the original seller is deceived as to one or more details of the transaction itself, such as price, identify of the seller, or even as to what they are exchanging. The UCC expects all parties to a contract governed by the UCC to exercise due diligence with respect to a contract, so if the transaction includes the "stolen" goods, the UCC doesn't provide any relief. Generally in a situation like this, it would happen where the language of the transaction clearly would include the goods at issue, but the middleman misrepresents to the original seller that those goods aren't included in the contract.

<comment><USER6> The seller doesn't have to give up their rights:

"Suppose Ed takes his bicycle to Merv, a bicycle dealer, for repairs, but instead of making repairs Merv sells the bicycle to Betty. Who now owns the bicycle? Section 2-403(2) states that "[a]ny entrusting of possession of goods to a merchant who deals in goods of that kind gives him power to transfer all rights of the entruster to a buyer in ordinary course of business." Ed has entrusted possession of goods to Merv, a merchant dealing in goods of that kind. Assuming Betty is a buyer in the ordinary course of business (BIOC), Merv now has the power to transfer all of Ed's rights in the bicycle to Betty. Betty now owns the bicycle, and Ed cannot validly assert any ownership claim against her. Ed's only remedies would be against Merv."

[https://scholarship.law.campbell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...](https://scholarship.law.campbell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1144&context=clr)

<comment><USER5> Guys, the UCC isn't the only law that applies to the situation...

Ed might not have rights under the UCC, assuming it applied to the transaction, which is questionable since Ed does not appear to be a merchant. He would have rights under state laws that override the provisions of the UCC.

[Edit] Most states actually override this provision of the UCC to define entrusting narrowly. See, e.g, California's provision:

3) "Entrusting" includes any delivery and any acquiescence in retention of possession _for the purpose of sale, obtaining offers to purchase, locating a buyer, or the like_ ; regardless of any condition expressed between the parties to the delivery or acquiescence and regardless of whether the procurement of the entrusting or the possessor's disposition of the goods have been such as to be larcenous under the criminal law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like a reasonable thing for any manufacturer to do if your supply pipeline is prone to large-scale theft and your goal is to deter further incidents. The best option obviously is to fix the pipeline, but that takes time and not always doable in practical terms.

Caveat emptor. Buying from a 3rd party and presumably at a deep discount always carries a risk of goods being stolen.

PS. FTDI case is of no relevance here - they were bricking devices of _other_ vendors, not their own.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, the burden is on the buyer not to purchase stolen goods. The manufacturer is certainly under no obligation to support them. In many states even unknowing possession of stolen goods is a crime, so many of the "users" here are in fact getting off lightly.

<comment><USER9> > Yeah, the burden is on the buyer not to purchase stolen goods.

1 party has 100% of the information, 1 party has 0% of the information, and the burden is on the party with 0% information. That's absurd.

> The manufacturer is certainly under no obligation to support them.

Not support and bricking are two different things.

> In many states even unknowing possession of stolen goods is a crime

Generally the state has to prove the defendant took receipt of the items for an unlawful purpose. Ohio is an exception, but I'm not sure if there is another one.

> so many of the "users" here are in fact getting off lightly.

You use "many" incorrectly here: Very, very few are. Because very, very few jurisdictions make it a crime to unknowingly receive stolen property and even fewer would actually press charges even if allowed.

Your post is nonsense.

<comment><USER10> His post is mostly nonsense, but not entirely. First while the burden of proof is not necessarily on the purchaser, if you have in fact purchased stolen goods, you must still forfeit them to law enforcement. There are no jurisdictions that let you keep stolen goods. In most jurisdictions you then need to get restitution from whomever sold you the device, and they can obviously face charges.

The manufacturer can definitely brick, or do whatever they want. The devices are still their rightful property, this isn't a gray area, they were stolen, no one has rightful claim to them except the owner, who was the manufacturer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this really that different from blocking stolen mobile phones from connecting to mobile networks via their IMEI number?

The database behind that is apparently shared internationally between mobile networks, and most people would find a phone unable to connect to anything but WiFi useless.

<comment><USER12> There's a big difference, the owner requested the bricking not the manufacturer.

<comment><USER13> If they were stolen from the manufacturer, then surely the manufacturer is the owner - and is therefore entitled to block them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to always be pro-consumer in cases where the manufacturer does something like that to clones (Salae and FTDI cases)

After slowly getting into the manufacturing game myself and after USPS auctioned some of my cute early engineering samples that ended up on ebay, I definitely think this is totally reasonable from the manufacturer. Also the title of the article is already attacking the manufacturer. If you brick the devices, you hurt the person stealing and indeed it seems that this wasn't the first time it happened to them. On the consumer side maybe a discount would also be a nice gesture.

<comment><USER15> i'm curious to hear more about your story!

if i'm understanding you correctly, the postal service somehow ended up in possession of your early prototypes and they sold them to somebody who then re-listed them on ebay. was this a lost parcel situation?

<comment><USER14> We sent the prototypes with USPS, within US, and down the line they said they couldnt deliver and we asked them to re-route it to another address because of that. They even gave us a tracking number.

After a month went by (adding to the already another month of delay) they said its on its way, etc. We randomly searched ebay with our brand name and saw an active listing with our prototypes in it. Other things in the box like our gopro were gone, but at least we found the prototypes and contacted the seller. The seller said that she got the items at an auction for items that couldnt be delivered a MONTH earlier, while USPS was telling us it was on the way.

Seller ended up giving us the prototypes for a small fee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> People who receive stolen goods have _always_ been kinda screwed over - it's been part of our laws forever. Even if one isn't charged with a crime, one will lose the goods, and likely never recover their money.

The reasons for this are obvious - to make it as hard as possible to sell stolen goods. The effects encourage the innocent purchasers to have some level of caution when looking at buying goods.

</comment><comment><USER17> I had to re-read each sentence three times.

<comment><USER18> I'm glad I'm not the only person who found this piece weirdly dense/obtuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _Those that do and assist us in tracking down the thieves will be treated > VERY sympathetically._

Does that mean they'll unbrick their hardware? That's about the only sympathy I'd expect after purchasing a product in good faith, and discovering that it was bricked or disabled by the manufacturer.

<comment><USER10> [https://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2014/08/can-you-get- arrest...](https://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2014/08/can-you-get-arrested-for- buying-stolen-goods.html)

If you buy stolen good, you don't get to keep them. These are stolen goods, why would you ever expect the company to simply allow you to use it?

<comment><USER19> I take issue with the fact that the company has any say in the matter at all, tbh. I dislike devices that phone home and can be disabled remotely as a matter of principle.

But you're right, in the end they are stolen goods.

<comment><USER10> > I take issue with the fact that the company has any say in the matter at > all, tbh.

What? How does that make any sense. Someone stole their property, it's still theirs, of course they have a say in what happens to it. "Finders Keepers" is not how the world works...

<comment><USER19> But they can also brick non-stolen equipment. I don't want a company to be able to remotely disable a device I own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sony offers to block stolen PlayStations. It's a similar case - you may buy a used item that may suddenly stop working. Moreover, Sony does cooperate with authorities re locating those devices. You may have a surprising visit.

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems totally acceptable to me. The comparison with the FTDI incident is not really applicable here because those were not stolen parts, just replica/clone parts.

</comment><comment><USER22> Those who bought stolen devices should return them and ask for a refund from EBay. You are generally not allowed to resell stolen goods, although I am not sure if EBay is liable here.

> Back in October 2014, the FDTI manufacturer shipped a device driver that ... > would make any operating system stop seeing the device by setting its USB > product ID to 0 , basically killing the USB device.

Well, if that id can be set to 0, it can also be set back to original value, isn't it?

<comment><USER23> If I recall correctly, it didn't get recognised as a USB device anymore so you couldn't reflash it.

<comment><USER24> Linux was able to allow connections to VID:0 PID:0 for usbserial.h about 3 days after the initial reports. From there, it was possible to rewrite the FTDI firmware to restore functionality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wouldn't it be pretty trivial to remove the blacklisting code?

It's not like this is a cellphone sold to my mom. It's an extremely specialist product aimed at a group of users with vast electronics and reverse engineering knowledge. Probably won't be long before one of them reverse engineers the device and releases the code to ignore the blacklisting.

Anyone know the technical details of how the blacklisting works?

<comment><USER26> If you unintentionally buy a blacklisted phone online, do you try to break the blacklist or report the seller and get a refund?

<comment><USER25> The blacklisting code is in every device, even those sold legitimately. That is, the device "phones home." Some users may not be okay with that.

In my experience, the kind of person who buys an SDR is (a) unlikely to appreciate a $400 device that phones home on boot, and (b) likely to reverse engineer the blacklisting code simply for the fun of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Previously owned devices sales next? If they are including blacklisting code like this their software simply cannot be trusted.

<comment><USER10> No. There is a simple explanation too. Once a valid sale happens ownership changes. They still own these devices, because they were stolen. That means they can do whatever they please, the devices are still theirs.

<comment><USER6> Ownership change doesn't magically disable their remote control, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If they can do this before it is sold (eg: theft) and remotely prevent the device from working, how do users defend against having this done later for more capricious reasons?

Everything I've learned, is that for capabilities like this, the good reasons are the justifications, and then the owners migrate to less good reasons. The overall distrust I have with these kinds of systems are that they are Treacherous Software/Hardware. This capability is something that shouldn't be implemented. No user in their right mind would - but the companies that wish to retain ownership rights after sale do.

I would also object to this 'hacking of these devices' as violations of CFAA. Yes, the devices had lost chain of custody, and were reported as stolen. That doesn't allow any entity to then engage in more illegal behaviors exigent to the initial situation. If I am being robbed, I am allowed to defend myself and my goods. However I cannot stalk the robber, and then bash his/her kneecaps in after the fact. 2 wrongs, separated by time, do not make a right.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wasn't this the same company who banned users for leaving bad reviews?

</comment><comment><USER29> I imagine this standardized in a supply chain blockchain

<comment><USER30> Yeah. I mean nobody has ever managed to steal a Bitcoin right?</comment></comment>


Raspberry Pi reveals the final PCB design for the $25 PC - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/raspberry-pi-reveals-the-final-pcb-design-for-the-25-pc-20111115/ <comment><USER2> I'm really excited by this project. I think it's a great idea. I very much hope they sell them to anyone, maybe at a slightly higher price to subsidise the others.

But there's a _tiny_ [1] hint of regret that modern programming is necessarily abstracted away from the hardware. When people were using the popular home computers of the 1980s they would be able to use some version of BASIC, and then also some machine code if needed. And that wasn't something just limited to the brightest smartest young programmers; it was above average but nothing extreme. I learnt Z80 ASM on a suitcase instructional computer, turning fans on and off or stepping through traffic light sequences on LEDs. Then I made a resistor ladder DtoA convertor and pushed data out the parallel printer port for audio. (Something also done by No$GB emulator.)

That seems to be something that children will be missing out on, unless this project gives them enough boost to then investigate things like arduino or similar.

[1] Not a criticism in any way of the Raspberry Pi project.

<comment><USER3> One of the operating systems that may be ported to the Pi is RISC OS, which includes a reasonably decent implementation of BASIC (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_BASIC>) which itself contains a built-in ARM assembler.

A student could quickly and easily start writing graphical programs (plotting randomly coloured circles onscreen, for example) or simple games, without needing to download, install and use a compiler.

We're literally returning to the world of 10 PRINT "Hello" : 20 GOTO 10... in the good "very accessible programming" sense, not the bad "...considered harmful" sense.

<comment><USER4> Also, if you wanted to learn bare-metal programming, the entire RISC OS Api was defined in terms of assembler. It's not open source, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If they think this PCB is "packed" they haven't looked hard enough at a smartphone teardown. Go look at the iPhone 4S teardown:

<http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone-4S-Teardown/6610/2>

<comment><USER6> Difference is the iPhone has insane margins. You want to pay $35 or $100?

<comment><USER7> It's not the PCB that's expensive. It's the components on it.

<comment><USER2> That's often not true; PCBs can be a significant cost on the bill of materials for a gadget.

Amortising the tooling / artwork costs into big volumes helps, but even then the PCB is usually one of the more expensive items on the parts list.

<comment><USER8> Yup, it was interesting reading some of the discussions about the design of the device. PCB cost was a major consideration. They aren't exposing some of the I/O pins on the SoC because it would require a more expensive PCB to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Link to actual blog post: <http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/344>

</comment><comment><USER10> What's their initial production run going to look like? There's a whole lotta geeks who will want this - and at that price, they'll want 10. ($250 for more computers than I'll know what to do with? I'll take 20!)

<comment><USER11> They spoke of 10k initial run.[1] They have also been considering limiting purchases per person.

1 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9cmxoSmOxU>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What would be the best way to interface a 2.5" hard drive with one of these? A USB to sata controller? That seems bulky if you want to have it in one case. I'd like to find a compact way to add some storage to the device as I am interested in using it as a media player.

<comment><USER13> It's got an SD card slot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is quite awesome. I can imagine many great things coming out of this. Such cheap computers, will bring computers (and therefore the internet) within range of many people in developing countries.

One potential problem will be the cost of monitors, which might exceed the cost of the computers itself :-( But hopefully someone can make cheap monitors soon..

</comment><comment><USER15> This is like the best-documented vaporware ever. I hope they prove me wrong soon.

<comment><USER5> What doesn't look legit? The PCB silks look typical, the board size is about right for a small SoC-based design. You just need a _lot_ of space for those large connectors like SD/MMC and HDMI.

There are other designs recently launched of the same size and capability like BeagleBone or the Gumstix line.

<comment><USER16> The part that's suspicious is the $25 price point (the BeagleBoard is $125, the BeagleBone is $90, the Gumstix is $150-$250 depending on configuration). How many products can you name for under $50 (2x the cost of the Raspberry Pi) that approach its specs and capabilities? Also, they're aiming for user- friendliness to the point where it is supposed to be an educational product for young people.

These are both really, really hard to do. The foundation seems to be approaching this goal fairly well; if it is vaporware they have documented it quite well indeed. Having volunteers like their director and trustee Eben, who is an architect at Broadcomm, and trustee and operations director Pete, who is the managing director of a PCB manufacturer, can't hurt on getting this thing spec'ed out. Whether or not those relationships will last once this gets rolling is the shaky part.

Don't get me wrong, the team seems like a great group of people, and I trust them to have good intentions. However, I don't give anything approaching trust to Broadcomm.

<comment><USER17> Actually ...

Roku has something with similar specs for $50 retail (which means they sell it to retailers at $30 at most). And Apple has something called "AppleTV", which has a little more hardware on it (wifi, power supply, ir remote receiver + remote, 8GB of flash), and sells for $90.

<comment><USER15> anyone gotten linux on the roku?

<comment><USER18> It runs Linux, just not a Linux they want you to access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the SD card slot.

</comment><comment><USER19> I can't wait to get few of these.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why don't thes people release their files as they work on them? Why don't they resell the bare SoCs at cost or a slight markup so we can use them for other projects?

Something has always struck me as fishy about this whole thing.

<comment><USER21> You couldn't build one yourself anyway, because Broadcom won't sell you parts or even talk to you unless you're doing volumes like 100k/quarter. And then you'll probably need to sign an NDA to get the datasheet.

I see the Raspberry Pi project as an attempt by Broadcom to build some goodwill - but they seem more interested in doing so among society at large by producing a super-affordable computer for kids, than among nerds by doing an open source project. That's Broadcom's prerogative and I applaud what they are doing for what it is.

Personally though, as a hardware hacker, I am more likely to buy similar products using TI (BeagleBoard) or Freescale (Chumby Hacker Board) or Atmel parts, as those manufacturers have histories of being a bit more friendly to hackers, hobbyists, and small volume buyers. The BeagleBoard in particular is open source, there's development chatter on an open mailing list, and TI sells the same OMAP SoCs to small volume customers (right down to the possibility of a hobbyist buying one or two through a distributor, although at that volume you'll pay $50 for just the bare SoC).

<comment><USER11> Rasberry Pi is not a project run by broadcom, just using their SoC (and featuring one of their employees). They are selling the first round to nerds / hardware hackers, and I doubt many others will choose to pay 4x the price to keep using the beagleboard.

<comment><USER21> I understand the project isn't actually run by Broadcom but I think the fact that Broadcom is selling them chips indicates some level of interest in what they are doing. They aren't exactly 'just another customer'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Cool. Portable. Cheap. Can run Quake II.

But what does that get you? Still need to plug into a monitor, keyboard, mouse. So you can only use it where those things are.

For real portability, how about an SD system thumb drive I can plug into any computer, and it boots as my computer. That would be portable. Useful for a student lab, at my Mom's house, in a hotel.

Just a thought.

<comment><USER17> > For real portability, how about an SD system thumb drive I can plug into any > computer, and it boots as my computer.

Linux distributions have been doing this very successfully for the past 9 years (knoppix paved the way, but almost every linux distribution today can run live from a CD/SD/DiskOnKey, and store your data on an SD/DiskOnKey (the same one, if properly partitioned).

And it's unlikely a hotel or your student lab would actually let you reboot into your own distribution; once you have control of the hardware (which you must have), you practically own it from that moment.

CherryPy is actually a much better solution than yours:

Your lab, and your hotel room, is likely to have a screen that can take VGA or HDMI input - so you've got a display; You can get foldable silicon keyboards for $10 or so, and a small travel mouse for $10 more. So, for $45, you have something you can _already_ use at your lab or hotel _room_ , with no one having to fear you're putting viruses on their system.

<comment><USER23> A comment like Joe's really surprises me. Time and again I see brilliant coders who for whatever reason cannot see the path to making their own live USB/SD sticks.

But there's a better solution than beagle's suggestion.

Sell hardware that has no bundled OS. Sell different OS's on removable media (e.g. memsticks). Or users can create their own OS memsticks.

Apple is primarily a hardware company, as evidenced by the value they place on their design team and design patents, and where they derive the lion's share of their revenue.

If I could buy Apple hardware without it being tied to Apple's OS's, I would be willing to pay Apple hardware prices more frequently.

<comment><USER2> uh, you can run other OSs on Apple hardware. It's a little bit trickier because of EFI but it's not hard.

What you can't do (Apple say) is run Apple OSs on non-Apple hardware.

<comment><USER23> I don't want the Apple OS. Remove it completely from the hardware, make the firmware more friendly to non-Apple OS, then I'll buy more Apple hardware.

Other than NetBSD, I was not aware it's "easy" to run other OS's on Apple hardware. Knowing Apple, I'm still not sure I believe it.

But I will investigate. Thanks for the FYI.

<comment><USER24> _I was not aware it's "easy" to run other OS's on Apple hardware. Knowing Apple, I'm still not sure I believe it._

I run linux (arch now, but once ubuntu) on a MacBook5,4. It's somewhat harder to get set up if you want to dual boot (the dual partitioning scheme is finicky, and although linux doesn't need it, OS X forces you to use it if there's a foreign OS, ugh..). See <http://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleMacbook> and <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook> .

Only one proprietary driver (for wireless) is needed - the rest Just Works. (And flash plays smoother than on OS X :P )

<comment><USER13> I tossed a ubuntu cd in my MacBook Pro, rebooted holding down option, and it booted up just fine. Could it be easier?

<comment><USER2> One thing that could be easier is booting MacBook Pro from USB stick. A Unetbootin that works on Mac, and builds usb sticks bootable on Macs, would be good.

Or maybe bootcamp could mention Linux.

<comment><USER23> My preference is to use only the bootloader for the OS I'm booting, as opposed to a "boot manager" that presents a menu of OS's. I avoid using chaining techniques the way something like GRUB does. And I don't use MBR's if I don't have to. Disklabels alone will suffice. So the stick contains only an OS- specific bootloader and the OS, usually just a kernel with embedded ramdisk or a loadable kernel module containing a filesystem and userland. I keep it very simple.

This works well for me with PC's. Would this work with today's x86 Macs?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>