Gift ideas for FOSS enthusiasts

Nikita Gusarov

Personally I have rather mixed feeling towards the wishlists. Even though having a list of gifts is convenient, it somewhat reduces the joy. However, after some recent discussions I’ve realised that probably creating some sort of wishlist may be not such a bad idea. But making this “wishlist” useful for some other people may be an even better idea.

So, what can be interesting for people who adore gadgets and tinkering, preferring at the same time to stick with some Open Source solutions? Well, first of all I’ve looked through some suggestions and gift-lists over the Internet, but was astonished by sometimes ill chosen ideas. Mugs with UNIX memes? Tee-shirts with TUX? FOSS based symbolic and sometimes absolutely useless accessories? Evidently, it’s only my point of view, but such things are rather boring and uninteresting.

As I see it, the gift should always have at least some utility and giving a mug has sense only when you know that the person has nothing to drink from. But what are the alternatives?

OSH and near-OSH phones

There are two different categories of phones on the market. First of all, there are brand new OSH or near-OSH phones, that were designed to run open source software. Secondly, we face a number of after-market solutions: phones with reinstalled OS and de-googled phones (among the most popular devices for this purpose now are Google Pixel phones).

Brand new phones

For full list of Open Source Hardware phones one may look at this wikipedia page. Here are some examples:

Not all the examples in this list are completely OSH. Most of them have some non-OSH components, but they will be still quite interesting for the enthusiasts.

After-market phones

There is quite a number of companies who develop and reinitialise the devices to better suit FOSS enthusiasts:

OSH laptops

Identically to phones this category may roughly be into two parts: (1) new OSH or Linux certified laptops and (2) refurbished and reconfigured machines. The second category includes mostly Libre- or Corebooted devices. Take in mind that it is more cheap to install the required software yourself and that someone who is interested in FOSS can probably do it.

New machines:

Refurbished solutions:

Identically to previous category not all the examples are completely OS, some of them are simply Linux certified hardware. This particular list was inspired by this “It’s FOSS” post.

Single board computers

The single board solutions can be very interesting if one has some projects in mind (otherwise it risks collecting dust).

However, it may be more exciting to look at the prebuild packs instead of the standalone boards. For example, the retro-gaming Recalbox solutions.

Security Keys

In 2021 it becomes a plain necessity to use more elaborate security measures than a simple password. The two-factor authentification is now strictly indispensable. Here is a short list of hardware password managers inspired by this techradar post:

Have in mind that the cheapest devices do not support as many applications, which can lead to a discouraging experience. It is good to know that for better reliability it’s suggested to buy two devices at the same time in order to avoid resetting all the credentials in case of loss or damage to the key.

OSH gadgets

As you have probably remarked, all the products except some of simplest single board computing modules are rather expensive for casual gifts. Moreover, many of these options are rather controversial when it comes to making a gift: can you be sure that the person will be ready to switch the hardware? For example, I cherish my X220 ThinkPad and would doubtfully replace it with something else.

This section regroups some more ideas of various tech items, which may be interesting.

Smart Watches

This category becomes more and more popular, with only disadvantage being the lack of OSH products. Here is one of them, which will be a nice replacement for any non-OSH alternative:

Privacy oriented Home Servers

Even though such devices are usually based on available single board computers, they are usually bundled with all essential setup materials and software. This makes the installation more easy and makes such solutions much more attractive for casual users. For example:

Tablets

I rarely use my tablet and do not see any particular advantage in them. For me they are mostly a product filling the gap between the phone and the laptop.

Smart Home

Open source alternative to Google Home or Amazon Echo? It exists!

Keyboards

For many of tech enthusiasts a good keyboard may be as interesting. Although here I can no means to confirm the OSH behind the proposed items.

For ThinkPad enthusiasts a keyboard with their preferred layout and a TrackPoint may be particularly interesting:

More alternatives can be found in this LaptopRetrospective post. Unluckily nearly all of the keyboards in this post can be found only as after-market.

For other users, who prefer standard layout:

And finally, a full spectre of foldable or other types of portable keyboards.

E-ink notebooks

Once again a category represented by Pine64 produced specimen. Probably somewhere other alternatives exist.

Not OSH but may still be interesting

The last category regroups non OSH (or not fully OSH) gadgets. There are always more fascinating things for tech-lovers over the Internet.

And a lot more interesting tools not directly related to tech: