Cant seem to find a tablet where the wifi can be disabled permamently.
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Wait a little bit longer for the Librem 11 tablet to be formally announced in the coming weeks from Purism, then preorder it if it meets your requirements. I suspect it will have hardware kill switches just like their other products.
If you are feeling particularly ambitious, consider disassembling mainstream consumer tablets yourself and see if you can accomplish your objective that way.
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Or, for permanent disabling, if it will be like the Librem 5 then you can simply remove the WiFi card.
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Or the Librem 14 and the rest of the older laptop models for that matter.
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OK, so the Librem 11 doesn’t have kill switches, but shouldn’t blacklisting (and maybe deleting) the associated drivers/modules be close enough for most use cases?
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I don’t think anyone can answer that on behalf of someone else.
I think the Librem 5 and the laptops have spoilt us. It has set expectations that kill switches exist and will kill the card stone cold dead even if the operating system is completely compromised.
In terms of messing around with drivers and modules … that is not very convenient to substitute for a kill switch i.e. where you want to kill WiFi for a period of time and then re-enable it later (which is my use case for the Librem 5). For a permanent change, removing the card can’t be beaten.
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Saying a generalization doesn’t apply to a specific doesn’t negate the value of the generalization.
^This unless you count not having a spot for a wifi module to begin with and/or physically removing the spot on the mainboard.
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Well, OK, … for me, messing around with drivers is not close enough. It is neither as convenient nor as restful.
It is important to take into account that the WiFi card should be assumed to be a hostile card. Unless you cut power, it is a radio frequency transmitter / receiver that is inside your device and which is running software that you can’t audit, control or alter.
(Likewise you would ideally only ever use secure protocols to communicate over WiFi in this scenario because the card can intercept everything you send or receive. In other words, the edge of the internet is not the next hop, the edge of the internet is inside your device - and you should plan accordingly.)
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You can install Qubes OS on Librem 11 and not attach the WiFi card to any VM. It will be isolated by hardware-assisted virtualization, which is virtually impossible to escape.
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Yes but for me personally I also want to be able to turn it on again.
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This is exactly how Qubes OS works: whenever needed, you attach the WiFi to the sys-net virtual machine and it starts working, without getting full access to your system.
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I understand that but a simple on-off switch (kill switch) is easier.
Bear in mind that the OP asked for “no WiFi. period.” so removing the card would seem to be the sensible option. For many integrated devices that wouldn’t be possible at all. For the Librem 11 it should be possible if that’s really what someone wants.
But I personally wouldn’t want “no WiFi”.
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In principle, yes. But haven’t there been problems with the L5 kill switches? (Not the switches themselves, but switching between enabled and disabled.)
For the Librem 11, one would have to be willing to make or otherwise obtain a replacement for the back cover.
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