When it comes to open hardware, choices are not exactly abundant. Truly open source hardware – open down to the firmware level of individual components – that also has acceptable performance is rare, with one of the few options being the Talos II and Blackbird POWER9 workstations from Raptor Computing Systems (which I reviewed). Another option that can be fully open source with the right configuration are the laptops made by MNT, which use the ARM architecture (which I also reviewed).
Both of these are excellent options, but they do come with downsides; the Talos II/Blackbird are expensive and getting a bit long in the tooth (and a possible replacement is at least a year away), and the MNT Reform and Pocket Reform simply aren’t for everyone due to their unique and opinionated design. Using an architecture other than x86 also simply isn’t an option for a lot of people, ruling out POWER9 and ARM hardware entirely.
In the x86 world, it’s effectively impossible to avoid proprietary firmware blobs, but there are companies out there trying to build x86 laptops that try to at least minimise the reliance on such unwelcome blobs. One of these companies is NovaCustom, a Dutch laptop (and now desktop!) OEM that sells x86 computers that come with Dasharo open firmware (based on coreboot) and a strong focus on privacy, open source, customisability, and repairability.
NovaCustom sent over a fully configured NovaCustom V54 laptop1, so let’s dive into what it’s like to configure and use an x86 laptop with Dasharo open firmware and a ton of unique customisation options.
Hardware configuration
I opted for the 14″ laptop model, the V54, since the 16″ V65 is just too large for my taste. NovaCustom offers a choice between a 1920×1200 60Hz and a 2880×1800 120Hz panel, and I unsurprisingly chose the latter. This higher-DPI panel strikes a perfect balance between having a 4K panel, which takes a lot more processing power to drive, and a basic 1080p panel, which I find unacceptable on anything larger than 9″ or so. The refresh rate of 120Hz is also a must on any modern display, as anything lower looks choppy to my eyes (I’m used to 1440p/280Hz on my gaming PC, and 4K/160Hz on my workstation – I’m spoiled). The display also gets plenty bright, but disappointingly, the V54 does not offer a touch option. I don’t miss it, but I know it’s a popular feature, so be advised.
While the V54 can be equipped with a dedicated mobile RTX 4060 or 4070 GPU, I have no need for such graphical power in a laptop, so I stuck with the integrated Intel Arc GPU. Note that if you do go for the dedicated GPU, you’ll lose the second M.2 slot, and the laptop will gain some weight and thickness. I did opt for the more powerful CPU option with the Intel Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, which packs 6 performance cores (with hyperthreading), 8 efficiency cores, and 2 low-power cores, for a total of 16 cores and 22 threads maxing out at 4.8Ghz.
Unless you intend to do GPU-intensive work, this combination is stupid fast and ridiculously powerful. Throw in the 32GB of DDR5 5600MHz RAM in a dual-channel configuration (2×16, replaceable) and a speedy 7.400 MB/s (read)/6.500 MB/s (write) 1TB SSD, and I sometimes feel like this is the sort of opulence Marie Antoinette would indulge herself in2 if she were alive today. It won’t surprise you to learn that with this configuration, you won’t be experiencing any slowdowns, stuttering, or other performance issues.
Ports-wise, the V54 has a USB-C port (3.2 Gen 2), a Thunderbolt 4 port (with Display Alt Mode supporting DP 2.1), a USB-A port (3.2 Gen 2) and a barrel power jack on the right side, a combo audio jack, USB-A port (3.2 Gen 1), microSD card slot, and a Kensington lock on the left, and an Ethernet and HDMI port on the back. Especially the Ethernet port is such a welcome affordance in this day and age, and we’ll get back to it since we need it for Dasharo.
The trackpad is large, smooth, and pleasant to use – for a diving board type trackpad, that is. More and more manufacturers are adopting the Apple-style haptic trackpads, which I greatly prefer, but I suspect there might be some patent and IP shenanigans going on that explain why uptake of those in the PC space hasn’t exactly been universal. If you’re coming from a diving board trackpad, you’ll love this one. If you’re coming from a haptic trackpad, it’s a bit of a step down.
A standout on the V54 is the keyboard. The keys are perfectly spaced, have excellent travel, a satisfying, silent click, and they are very stable. It’s an absolute joy to type on, and about as good as a laptop keyboard can be. On top of that, at least when you opt for the US-international keyboard layout like I do, you get a keyboard that actually properly lists the variety of special characters on its keys. This may look chaotic and messy to people who don’t need to use those special characters, but as someone who does, this is such a breath of fresh air compared to all those modern, minimalist keyboards where you end up randomly mashing key combinations to find that one special character you need. Considering my native Dutch uses diacritics, and my wife’s native Swedish uses the extra letters å, ä, and ö (they’re letters!), this is such a great touch.
The keyboard also has an additional layer for a numeric pad, as well as the usual set of function keys you need on a modern laptop, including a key that will max out the fan speed in case you need it (the little fan glyph on my keyboard seems double-printed, though, which is a small demerit). I especially like the angry moon glyph on the sleep key. He’s my grumpy friend and I love him. Of course, the keyboard has several intensities of illumination, too.
Finally, we come to the battery, which is a 73WH unit that can be charged through either the included charger with the barrel plug, or through the USB-C port with DC-in. I never quite know how to rate battery life, since everyone’s usage patterns are different, and I don’t review enough laptops to create an internally consistent comparison table. NovaCustom claims 7 hours of battery life “based on a mix of light tasks in Windows 11 such as web surfing and watching videos”, with identical numbers experienced on Linux. My own personal experience definitely seems to align with this claim, running Fedora KDE; when working on OSNews without any video playing, the laptop basically keeps going forever.
Build quality seems excellent, with little to no flexing on the keyboard deck or the display. The bottom cover and display lid are made out of metal, and the keyboard deck and bezel around the display are made out of some plastic variant that feels sturdy. The laptop weighs about 1.6kg, measuring 317×235×18 mm, which seems about on par with everyone else on the market.
Unique customisation and configuration options
Much of what makes NovaCustom’s laptops unique compared to the competition revolves around decisions you make during the purchasing process. NovaCustom – as the company’s name implies – offers a wide variety of customisation options most other laptop makers simply do not offer. All of this starts with one of the most unique aspects of NovaCustom’s computers: it uses Dasharo.
Dasharo is a coreboot distribution, which means it’s a fully open source replacement for the firmware, or BIOS, on the laptop. In theory, if you have the skills, nothing is stopping you from building your own version of coreboot with your own changes, and flash it onto the laptop. This is not something most other OEMs will allow you to do, and such insight into exactly what your BIOS is doing could be vital in some industries or professions.
On top of the usual benefits of being open source, Dasharo also offers other benefits that really should be standard by now on every BIOS, even proprietary ones, but often aren’t. First and foremost, Dasharo has seamless online updates, a feature which uses a wired Ethernet connection – I told you we would come back to the Ethernet later – to perform an iPXE boot to load an extremely minimal Linux environment to download and flash newer versions of the Dasharo firmware automatically. The norm in 2025 for BIOS updates still consists of downloading firmware blobs from the crappy websites of motherboard makers, copying them to a USB stick, booting your BIOS into flash mode, point it to the USB stick, and hoping for the best. It’s basically the stone age out there.
Dasharo on the V54 also offers fan and temperature controls and battery threshold settings (which is not common on laptops), the usual set of BIOS options every BIOS has, as well as a whole slew of security and privacy features to protect the firmware from tampering. During the configuration and purchase process, you can further choose to enable secure boot, disable the Intel management engine, or choose to use the Dasharo coreboot+Heads option. This option replaces the default TianoCore EDK II payload with the Heads payload.
Unlike EDK II, Heads firmware ensures the system’s firmware and boot integrity at all stages. It does this with measured boot technology. Measured boot provides cryptographic hashes for each boot component. This covers the main SPI (BIOS) firmware itself and all of the important boot files in the /boot directory, including the disk encryption setup files, the kernel, the initrd file and the GRUB configuration. The hashes are securely stored and attested in the independent TPM hardware.
↫ NovaCustom’s explainer on Dasharo coreboot+Heads
I did not opt for Dasharo coreboot+Heads, because NovaCustom warns that it is only for advanced users who require the utmost in security, preferably in combination with Qubes OS (you can always switch to Heads later if your needs change). The point is: Dasharo offers a lot of flexibility, from a reasonably secure baseline, up to extreme firmware and boot security for those that need it. I really wish more PC makers defaulted to coreboot or other possible open source BIOS replacements.
The privacy options NovaCustom offers don’t stop at the firmware, though. You can also have NovaCustom install a privacy screen, tamper-evident screws and packaging, or a sliding camera cover. If you really want to take it to the next level, you can add a Buskill, or have the webcam and microphone array removed entirely. The only reason I didn’t opt for this removal is that I wanted to be able to tell you about the quality of the webcam.
It’s a laptop webcam. It works. You know what to expect.
NovaCustom also offers a few what I call vanity options: they can engrave your own custom logo on the lid and/or palmrest (or not have any logos at all), and you can opt for a custom logo during boot (or, again, not have any at all). NovaCustom engraved the “OS” of our logo on the lid, and I sent them the ASCII OSNews logo from our Gemini shirt to set as the boot logo. Both turned out absolutely great, and NovaCustom will have a back-and-forth with you as the customer to ensure everything will turn out looking as desired.
Yes, you can technically set the boot logo yourself, and even find a local shop that might be willing to laser etch a logo on your laptop’s lid or palmrest (unlikely and probably expensive), but having this as part of the configuration and ordering process is quite nice. This way, my laptop is not acting as a billboard for some faceless corporation like Apple or HP or whatever, but instead shows either no logo, or something that matters to me. The downside could be that it might make your laptop more difficult to sell in the future? I don’t know.
One other configuration option I’d like to highlight is the keyboard. NovaCustom is clearly a Europe-first company, because the list of keyboard layouts you can choose from is more extensive than anything I’ve ever seen before. There’s over 30 different layouts, as well as one that’s entirely blank, and the option to create your own custom layout (you’ll need to supply an Inkscape file for this one). Of course, you can also customise the Super key – the Windows logo, Tux, the Qubes OS logo, something custom, anything is possible. I opted for the the plain “Super”.
There’s a few more configuration options you can choose from, like a choice of operating system (or none at all), specific Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip (or none at all), and so on. You get the idea: NovaCustom allows you to really make your laptop yours, which is such a breath of fresh air in a world where so many brands try so hard to have their users’ laptops act as marketing billboards. Add in the truly extensive privacy options, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a similar combination of configuration options anywhere else.
NovaCustom is also fully on board with repairability and serviceability. They offer replacements for almost every part of the laptop, from the motherboard down to the screws used to keep it all together, and everything in between, for seven years after purchase. Of course, possible repairs and parts replacements can be performed for free under the three-year warranty. I honestly wouldn’t spend money on any laptop that doesn’t come with extensive parts availability like this.
My particular configuration, including the laser etching, cost €1986, with a starting price of €1420 for the base configuration without any additional customisations like the laser etching or boot logo. This is not a cheap laptop by any stretch of the imagination, but with these specifications it should be able to serve as a powerful, capable laptop for at least a decade, and probably more.
Missing options
As many configuration options as NovaCustom offers, I do miss a few things that I would love to see in a future follow-up. The obvious one is adding AMD processor and GPU options, especially as AMD GPUs are the more optimal choice for Wayland. Sadly, this is unlikely to happen, as coreboot simply doesn’t support Ryzen chips very well or at all.
I already mentioned the lack of touch support for the display, as well as the diving board trackpad which I’d love to see replaced by a haptic model, even as a more expensive option. Something like a Linux/BSD-friendly fingerprint reader would also be nice, especially if it can be easily configured to perform elevation requests (NovaCustom does offer optional Windows Hello support, so Windows users do have a biometric option to go for).
Lastly, while I don’t mind parts of the device being made of plastic, I do think having the entire shell made out of metals can improve the overall feel of the laptop. As I’m putting the final touches on this review, even Arctic Sweden is experiencing a heatwave, and the plastic keyboard deck does not feel as cool as the metal ones or the carbon fibre deck on my old XPS 13. The plastic can get a little sticky when the living room temperature hits 27°, and that’s just not pleasant.
Conclusion
Other than that, I have very little to complain about with the NovaCustom V54. It’s an extremely configurable, privacy-oriented laptop that takes Linux and open source seriously, with an extensive, seven-year parts availability promise. It has a no-nonsense design focused not necessarily on thinness or minimalism, but on getting things done and offering a good set of ports you actually need out in the real world, so you don’t have to mess around with dongles.
Operating system support is obviously excellent, and my distribution of choice, Fedora KDE, had zero issues with the hardware in this machine. In that sense, the NovaCustom V54 fits right in with a growing number of Linux-first laptops by a variety of smaller OEMs, with NovaCustom’s unique selling points being customisability, configurability, and a very strong focus on privacy in particular.
It’s a great time to be a Linux user in search of a laptop, and NovaCustom should definitely be on your shortlist. Out of all the options currently on the market, for me personally it’s the Dasharo coreboot firmware and extensive hardware customisation options that would make me choose NovaCustom over the competition. As I highlighted, there are definitely some areas where there’s room for improvement, but overall, this is an excellent offering.
- NovaCustom is a previous sponsor, but they had zero editorial control over this review, and will be reading it the same time you are. ↩︎
- For fairness’ sake, the perceived legacy of Marie Antoinette is disputed. The famous quote “let them eat brioche” was not said by her, either. ↩︎
@Thom
> AMD GPUs are the more optimal choice for Wayland
Is this really true?
First, Wayland and Xorg effectively use the same drivers. What I assume you are talking about are the flickering and tearing issues before NVIDIA added support for explicit sync. But that was quite a few driver releases ago. Mesa has supported explicit sync for a while. Plasma 6, GNOME 46 or higher, and newish wl-roots compositors or Hyprland all support explicit sync as well.
Depending on the card, NVIDIA offers the best performance and of course is the only game in town for CUDA and other things.
I was going to say that maybe using NVIDIA on Debian might still be a problem but, after a bit of reading, it seems that perhaps NVIDIA drivers on Fedora are also an issue (requiring the RPM Fusion non-free repositories). But that drama is not Wayland specific.
For what it is worth, the computer I am typing on runs Wayland on an NVIDIA 3060 (currently Plasma 6 but frequently Niri) . Flawless. And upgrading kernels just works without intervention. Perhaps I do not know how good I have it on EndeavourOS.
Just yesterday for example I had to change launch arguments for the minigalaxy flatpak because a weird interaction between wayland and my NVIDIA GPU caused it not to render the login screen. (the fix was to make it run with X11 as GDK backend.
I did not have this issue on my 2 other devices running Linux minigalaxy on Wayland using an integrated GPU from my intel CPU.
[I used this source](https://github.com/sharkwouter/minigalaxy/issues/647)
I am quite price sensitive and my baseline prices are always against the backdrop of a lifetime of buying used laptops, so the price is too high for me, but that’s a “me” problem. The reality is you’ve got to pay more for a niche linux laptop.
IMHO where most laptops fail regardless of price is the keyboard. I cannot touch type when control and navigation keys get crammed too closely, or even worse become overloaded with function key modifiers (the pictured keyboard fails on all counts). I’ve been a fairly proficient touch typist my whole adult life, and yet so many designers apparently give no thought to touch typers at all. It’s upsetting because 20 years ago more laptops at least had marginally usable keyboards (probably because they were copied from desktops), but over the years everybody seems to have joined this race to make laptops keyboards much worse for touch typers – focusing on minimizing keys and fitting them between other keys over usability. A keyboard is meant to be functional though, not pretty. I genuinely struggle to find laptops that I can touch type on these days since nearly all of them have gotten so bad.
I guess keyboard editing has become a forgotten art in favor of editing via a pointy-clicky device. It’s a shame though because keyboard editing is quite a bit faster than constantly having to switch to the mouse or worse yet a touchpad. I guess that making the keyboard worse was one way to even the playing field, haha.
> IMHO where most laptops fail regardless of price is the keyboard.
This. It has gotten to the point where I am considering my next “laptop” to be a desktop keyboard with a pi zero 2w + mobile screen + power bank.
Mote,
I you are serious, it’d be cool to see a picture of it once completed 🙂
@Alfman Don’t imagine anything fancy; given my elite maker-skill, it would probably be a pi in a flirc case taped to the power bank and monitor, with a tex shinobito type on.
@Mote
I keep wanting to retrofit a single-board-computer into an old laptop case. What has stopped me is that, even a 10 year old Intel laptop is still faster and can be had for under $50 at this point (even a Mac).
In this wondrous age of 3D printing and inexpensive PCBs, I am amazed that old laptop retrofits are not more of a thing. I have an old Dell Core Duo laptop that is built like a tank. The keyboard is wonderful, the trackpad is good enough, and the screen is surprisingly high-resolution (I think 1680 x 1050). Someday I am going to put a Raspberry Pi or a RISC-V board of some kind into it. As above, it would still be too slow today. But when RISC-V SBC boards start to get faster than my 2013 Macbook Air, I am doing it.
Retrofit problems are mostly due to lack of documentation and proper availability of SMD flat ribbon connectors for LVDS screen, keyboard and stuff, all different in all laptops, since no standardization. So it’s a mess to setup.
@Alfman
I have a Lenovo IdeaPad with pretty much the exact keyboard pictured and it is my least favourite keyboard to type on. For me, the real deal killer is the undersized left shift key (as pictured). I am also a touch typist and it is a nightmare.
As for the arrows, I love my older Macbook Air laptops.. They position the arrows in roughly the same spot as shown. However, the left and right arrow are even smaller (the same height as the down arrow with nothing above them).. I actually like it quite a lot better like that. It is very natural to position three fingers over the three lower arrows and to move my middle finger up for up. The IdeaPad has tall left and right arrows as pictured in Thom’s article. I hate it because I am always positioning my hand wrong and mixing up and down with each other (unless I pull my hand away to look). On the Macbook Air, i can move my right hand back and forth from the home row to the arrow keys without taking my eyes off the screen.
Anyway, I could not agree more about keyboards. Keyboards are one of the things that keep me using older computers happily. The overall experience is so much better Today, I had the IdeaPad open and running on a desk right next to an old 2013 Macbook Air. The Air is much older but I found myself using it way more because it is a joy to use and I hate the other one (keyboard being a significant reason).
If you are a keyboard guy, give Niri a try sometime if you ever end up on Wayland.
LeFantome,
That’s the issue I have has well. I can adapt to different layouts and although not my preference I can make do with somewhat smaller keys if they are well placed. However I’ve never been able to adapt to keyboards that cram keys together in close proximity even on laptops I’ve used for years. If you can’t reliably hit just the key you want from muscle memory, that’s how you know it’s a fundamentally bad design. Yea we can hit the right key when we look at it, but it needs to be possible to do blindly from the mouse or home row. On the desktop keyboard I’m using now I can reliably locate the nav-keys, page-up/dn keys, home/end keys by touch alone with my eyes closed. This is how touch typing was meant to be.
How awesome would it be if all laptops had a standardized touch typing rating for professionals that’s sortable/filterable just like any other spec. I doubt manufacturers would agree to it, but it would solve so many of my complaints as a consumer if I could instantly weed out all the laptops with a bad typing score. Not only that, but it would reward manufacturers that score well and reverse the obnoxious trend to overload keys.
@Alfman
I agree it’s pricey by any standard.
btw., A new RaspberryPi CM5 based laptop from Argon will launch of Kickstarter soon. Jeff Geerling did a brief review on his Youtube channel. That gadget with NVIM and a few plugins would be more than useful.
In theory I absolutely love this laptop but I am old enough to think about it twice. No AMD option (for a good reason) and the price twice a comparable HP. I give it a pass. Just not worth the premium when I’d rather prefer to exchange my laptop every 2 years instead. Sad reality.
I think what was needed was a proper Waste tax that encourages consumers and industry to keep their devices for much longer. Without it, good things like this laptop computer come with an unfair price handicap.
As Nate Graham wrote about laptops:
– «For professional uses, it also needs dedicated Home/End/PageUp/PageDown keys to enable fast text navigation so you don’t need function key chords to access them».
– «I do have and use a nice docked setup with external screen, speakers, keyboard, and mouse. But […] I like being able to also work from the office, the kitchen, the den, the living room, etc».
I use two of the prior generation NovaCustom laptops at work and love them. Probably wouldn’t buy from anyone else at this point.
For those commenters grumbling about price – there’s always a better price to be had if you are shopping for computer devices. There’s no price that you can quote me for any laptop for sale right now where I can’t find something lower. So don’t come in here grumbling about price. For a heavily customized laptop with an outstanding warranty and with free shipping these actually make very good financial sense. In fact it’s pretty amazing that NovaCustom can sell them for the reasonable prices that they do. Learn to do business deductions on your taxes – you’ll thank me later.
For those grumbling about the keyboard –
a) I never really noticed it – it’s a laptop keyboard, and I usually attach mine to a big monitor and a mechanical switch full-sized keyboard whenever possible. I’m not a laptop warrior or a digital nomad, couch surfing my way to fame and glory across the world. I prefer to dock my laptops and use them as portable desktops.
and
b) get over yourselves already. Grumbling about keyboards is the oldest form of trolling, from back when there were flame wars between fans of Remington mechanical typewriters and IBM Selectric’s. Find a new passion to troll about, no one cares about your overly sensitive fingertips.
Oh come on now…
There’s trolling, and there are objectively bad keyboars.
Yes, I type faster on my ThinkPad W530 with the W520 keyboard (classic) than I do on my P1 Gen 4. I also find the ThinkPad W530 less strenuous over log typing sessions.
And yes, I am just like you, I dock my laptop and use a 1987 IBM Model M as my main keyboard at home. But sometimes I spend some time abroad.
HOWEVER…
There are also keyboards that are so bad that make typing very difficult, borderline painful or highly imprecise. PCJr? Cheapo keyboards that one can get for 10 USD? There are also keyboards that feel like they registered they keypress, but didn’t, such as some rubber domes.
And there are keyboards that just fail on the course of normal use, such as butterfly macbook keyboards. These are objectively bad.
So there’s trolling, and there are objectively bad keyboards.
I recommend Marcin Wichary’s keyboard bible – you will see the difference.
andyprough,
“Trolling”, “get over yourselves already”, “overly sensitive fingertips”, good grief man everyone’s entitled to an opinion and free to share it. Ask yourself who’s really being overly sensitive about other people’s opinions.
Aye. People are free to dislike a keyboard.
I don’t buy that people that complain about laptop keyboards ever write much. Hunched over a laptop while sitting on the floor or sunk into sofa cushions is always a productivity killer. Any productive writer has an ergonomic chair and an ergonomic keyboard at the proper height and distance, proper hand and finger and back posture, etc. Just a bunch of laptop review trolls from my perspective. Plenty like them in the tech world.
That turbo-fan shortcut is a killer feature, love that. As far as battery, if I leave it sitting all day and come back to it in the evening it’s still got a lot of charge, even though I don’t put my laptops to sleep. I was impressed by that, as previous HPs and Asus laptops had a fairly specific time at which they would just die, idle or not.
Ethernet AND full HDMI port on a modern laptop??? As a person who uses laptops as portable desktops to be taken from one desk to another, I’m absolutely in heaven. And the thunderbolt USB-C powered port is remarkable – I plug in a dock with a monitor and 8 to 10 peripherals plugged in and everything works perfectly all while charging, all through one tiny USB-C tipped cord. And speaking of charging, the way that Dasharo Coreboot optimizes your charging to conserve battery life is just one more killer feature. And turning off Intel Management Engine with the flip of a switch in Dasharo’s system settings is so cool. I remember when you had to buy special flashing devices for your specific motherboard and risk bricking your system to disable IME.
> I don’t buy that people that complain about laptop keyboards ever write much.
Buy it or don’t, but at the moment I work roughly 4 hours per day at my laptop (mostly sitting on the floor with the laptop on a low table, btw). More than enough typing time for me to get picky about the keyboard.
andyprough,
Hahaha…you cracked me up with that one 🙂
You’ve conceded the point we’re making though! Just because someone uses a laptop for school/work/home/travel doesn’t mean they don’t want a good typing experience. Duh.
I find these useful as well. We all have different opinions. But if someone disagreed telling you to just use dongles and called you a “laptop review troll” for your opinion, that would be childish name calling, right? It’s not better when you say it.
Even if I wanted to I probably couldn’t use a keyboard with a narrow Enter key, I broke my little finger years ago and it bends towards the left, I can just make the left edge of the standard wide Enter key.