Librem 14 begins shipping
puri.sm
puri.sm
I mean, how dare they try to make some money, right?
- reduce engineering costs by adding telemetry to make all your customers debug for you.
- conveniently save all telemetry forever, just in case you can sell it for money.
- pop-up advertising. I think those videos that play at the gas station would look good on the bootup screen. If the bootup is too short, then lock the desktop until it is finished.
- take away features, then sell them back as upgrades. adjustable volume? $5
- fortune command interstitials
- busy-loot-box
I don't think oracle equity will match my monetization, but maybe I can partner with them for an ogrep idea I've been mulling over.
I have an original librem 13. It is quite refreshing. No proprietary drivers, works with every linux distribution without fiddling (I run arch). wifi/bt+mic/camera switches. Barrel jack for power. standard screws, standard memory, standard m.2, standard ssd.
The cost of creating a new design from scratch is enormous. It is understandable that small company would like to recover it, but also apply a margin high enough to have funds to work on future models.
Don't forget that the cheap laptops also have factored in your data in their price (e.g. they come with malware and other software that assumes you will sign up and give up your privacy) - the GDPR largely applies only to websites and native applications don't seem to have the same T&C regarding privacy.
Especially with hardware the definition of “freedom” is rather nonsensical such as that by the F.S.F.'s definition, which many follow, destroying a microcontroller such that r.w.-memory becomes r.o. can actually make hardware change from not-free into free. — removing functionality from the user to replace proprietary software with free software makes it freer based on the F.S.F's definition that read-only memory is not software, but hardware.
It's about equal rights. For instance, if the manufacturer can provide security updates, but you can't, they can notify the NSA about security holes first before providing the update. Whereas if it is r.w. for all, anyone can provide security updates.
In fact, a literal reading of the F.S.F.'s definition would make a computer with Windows on it, provided that it be burned into r.o. memory meet the terms of their Respects Your Freedom mark, though perhaps they would refuse in that case due to a clear violation of the spirit of the rules.
The problem is that by the F.S.F.'s definition, one can sidestep it all by simply burning any proprietary software into r.o.m., as then it is hardware, not software.
This paradox is the result of the F.S.F.'s insistence that the world can be neatly partitioned binarily into products that are entirely composed of “free software” and those that are not, and a want of such a binary partition often creates such bizarre paradoxes.
There is no such insistence by the FSF. They simply chose such boundary for giving their certification. It does not mean we should not go further than that, and FSF would of course encourage you to make even more freedom-respecting hardware.
If FSF would demand absolutely free hardware, there would be no devices to certify.
Rather, the F.S.F. should offer a description of checkboxes on devices of which important things they do and do not do, allowing users to easily select the devices with the checkboxes they value.
Arguably if Alexa's AI was burned onto a ROM, you could argue the entire Alexa speaker was a hardware appliance.
The alternative is requiring a microwave's control software to be fully free.
My current computer is a Lenovo X200s bought new. So that’s basically the baseline for my expectation of longevity for a linux daily driver
What I'm looking for in a laptop has also evolved, it's no longer (just) raw power but battery life, how noisy the fan is, how hot it gets under load, etc... Not sure how the intel chipset handles all this. I'll wait for more in-depth reviews.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/laptop-reviews/hp-spectre-x360...
I’d take it a step further and suggest 3:2. Yes, more pixels (for matching X-dimension pixels) means more power draw, but you get a slightly increased height which is valuable real estate. And that small bump won’t be that much more noticeable when watching media full screen compared to 16:10. 4:3 offers much more, but it gets a bit silly and letterboxing would get pretty heavy, and if you want to HiDPI the display at 2x, that’s a ton more pixels compared to the sibling ratios.
Examples:
- 1920x1080: 2160 (16:9)
- 1920x1200: 2400 (16:10)
- 1920x1280: 2560 (3:2)
- 1920x1440: 2880 (4:3)
Maybe 1:1 is what you really want, but I've never seen such a laptop :)
Been around a few Surface models, and the 3:2 is pretty nice. I chose to stick with the traditional 16:9 FHD resolution width marker as it’s arguably the most common width for online content in the consumer video space, most common display width, and makes downscaling from 16:9 UDH rather easy. I’d rather have some extra horizontal padding than have the video "squished" or "stretched"(not literally) to fit the display appropriately as it won’t be 1:1 pixels.
Of course, you can always go the Apple/Microsoft way and choose a non-preexisting 16:9 based resolution. But as one who has previously dealt with a lot of video work, I much prefer getting those 1:1 visuals, no resizing needed. Personal preference, and yes, no such display exists to my knowledge in a consumer device. Most people don’t notice or care about this specific topic.
I run my 4K 27" desktop monitor at 150% scaling, and usually snap two windows side by side, sometimes up to four windows with corner snapping. It's like having two portrait mode monitors side by side.
On my laptop, the 1366x768 screen lacks the resolution to do this. Vertical resolution is the key, no matter the form factor.
Swivel/tilt/pivot and multi-monitor brackets make for great flexibility, though. I've seen setups with a 4K monitor flanked by two smaller vertically oriented screens. Or you could stack monitors on top of each other, or a combination.
The biggest setup I've seen at a desk was six 4K monitors, arranged three wide and two tall. When you've got a lot of monitoring to show at once...
all this 1x1 and 4:3 business just sounds like hipster nostalgia to me. granted I'm not a programmer, but we're not all programmers either. it's almost as if there's some virtue signaling going on there. oh the desire to be different in a mass produced world.
Two windows side by side on 1280x1024 are 640 pixels wide each, on 1920x1080 three windows are the exact same width each, plus you get an additional 56 pixels of vertical resolution, so in fact more lines of text.
And of course once you go to 2560x1440 or 3840x2160, you either get oodles of space or sharper text, thanks to display scaling.
20 years on, and there's no chance I'm buying a 1080p laptop no matter the other ideals behind it. If they're targeting the higher end laptop market with lower end specs, I don't think there's not going to be much of a market for them.
Now, I run Linux on a Dell XPS 15 (3840x2400 with a 1.5 fractional HiDPI scale) and it’s acceptable, but still feels a little vertically cramped.
Give me as wide as they come!
But I don't have a square monitor (I think it's 16:9) I don't see why that would be an improvement. If anything surely we want it wider for side by side use, so more 'lanes' can fit?
As for fonts, I always make my text size as small as possible on every device I own (well, the ones primarily used by me at least).
Having a split under your nose feels like reading a book but putting the page you’re currently reading past your ears
These are also very important factors for me as well. That's the reason I run my laptops with the cpu governor set to battery saving mode. Since for the work I do CPU is rarely the bottleneck, I get better battery life and I can never hear the fans.
Just like 1080p vs 1440p. 2k vs 3k vs 4k. Just like the material of the chassis, the brightness of the screen, the weight, the stiffness, the depth of keytravel, the color scheme of the background, the placement of buttons on your window, using usb-c for charging...
I mean, I could ramble for pages about ideal features. Some of those features are important to enjoying a laptop long into the future. But a lot of them are purely whatever the latest craze is. 16:10 screen imo is of the later category.
Brightness of screen is important if you're not always in an optimally-lit environment. I work from home, I like moving around and going to work at cafes for 1-2 hours. My 250 nits thinkpad, for all the great things it has, can be a pain to use in some circumstances.
Telling me I want 16:10 because the fanzy macs have it is belittling. I want 16:10 because I want to see more lines at once when coding on emacs. Depending on what I work on, I even split my windows horizontally.
Even bundling together usb-c for charging with the color scheme of the background is... puzzling. Surely you can see how some people would like to have only one charger to carry around for all their electronic?
If I had to guess, you have a dedicated desk and don't use any computer outside of it. That's a cool setup, but not everybody can or want to do that.
[1] https://hackaday.com/2020/06/16/disable-intels-backdoor-on-m...
"Less binary blob firmware and disabled manufacturer backdoors" on https://puri.sm/products/librem-14/
Than its a perfect laptop to have if you care about your privacy.
Src: https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/581?autostart=fa...
In this 2016 thread, they state that "ARM doesn’t offer high-enough power." I believe they mean processing power.
They chose Intel in anticipation of a possibly ME free chip in the future.
Src: https://forums.puri.sm/t/intel-ime-alternatives/235/8
In this more recent 2020 thread, they mention the lack of a GPU. When referred to the Apple ARM line, they state that the chip is not available to them;
Src: https://forums.puri.sm/t/alternative-cpu-for-a-librem-produc...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processo...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#Commer...
I guess it could still have access to keyboard and could read the password or if you used the usb key with authenticator.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_ring#Hypervisor_mod...
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-PSP-...
Edit: But have a look at this reddit comment: https://teddit.net/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/7i6kl7/amd_lis....
If you decide you really want Ubuntu, like I did when I got my Librem 13, it's really easy to install. If you want PureBoot that might take some extra doing. I can't tell from a cursory read of the docs whether it works for Ubuntu. Coreboot should work fine though.
Try Qubes OS and it won't be enough.
* 3140x2160 or better resolution
* No discrete graphics card
Good luck with that when you want to copy some large files, or do anything network intensive, and your speeds max out at 65 Mbps between laptop and AP. As compared to the easily 300-450Mbps you can do in a 40 MHz channel with a 2x2 802.11ac connection. (Not even going to get into 3x3 and 80 MHz channel speeds here).
looking at the librem 14 product specs page I can't even find any details on what exact chipset and antenna configuration it is.
At that price it needs to be 802.11ac/ax 3x3 MIMO dual band.
Overall it makes me wonder what other shoddy stuff might be used as various subsystems/components of the laptop, if I sat down with one and did "sudo lspci -v". For this "Gigabit Ethernet Adapter with Integrated RJ45 Connector" am I going to find a realtek chipset that belongs in a $430 laptop you can buy at Best Buy?
And then they have the gall to sell the power adapter separately from the laptop, for an extra $59? What brand new laptop on earth doesn't come with an AC wall adapter/charger in the box?
[1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/3223865/purism-librem-15.htm...
Offering as much freedom as possible comes at a price. A price paid in money, in one-generation-older hardware of some components, and in making compromises that some components are not as free as they ideally would be, but which don't have alternatives.
You don't fit that niche, apparently, but just don't go buy it then. Instead of ranting, go buy an overpriced macbook and leave other people to their own choices.
As comparison, it's like saying that current EVs are not totally carbon-neutral, too slow and too expensive so you don't see the point and keep buying cars with ICEs. You are free to have that opinion, but it's not the only one around.
What GPL zealot freedom is gained on this thing over taking an ordinary reference-design Intel chipset business class laptop (such as from ASUS or MSI) and installing pure debian or arch on it, and never enabling a non-free repo?
OP wasn't rejecting the basic philosophical underpinnings of the Librem project, but merely noted the inconsistency with which they applied those principles.
Librem could have developed a pure FOSS machine if they'd chosen to do so. However, it'd have a RISK-V based chip and a bunch of other exotic components that would have rendered impractical for regular use.
Instead, Librem took the pragmatic route and chose to adopt a number of proprietary components including an Intel CPU. Despite this, they chose to bypass Intel when choosing a WiFi chip at the cost of being unable to support modern WiFi standards.
It doesn't really make a lot of sense.
Not sure what you mean. Are you aware of any other WiFi adapters supporting free firmware?
If you don't care about that, that's ok you are in majority, but not target audience of this product.
If I still cared about laptops/notebooks I would be interested in this precisely because of it.
And sure intel (and AMD) need to have binary blobs for their cpus. Which obviously is not good. But if nobody even tries and works toward this goal, nothing will ever get done.
I doubt we will ever see x86 fully open computer. But now that Apple have led the way with M1, in 3-6 years when the rest of the industry catches up, there is at least chance of librem and others building a decent binary blob free laptop.
But you need to start somewhere.
This is like writing an article that a Macbook Air can't play the latest Call of Duty Game
Your analogy is also a poor one because it's well known in the "thin and light" class of laptop that all of them use CPU integrated/low TDP graphics, designed first and foremost for 2D desktop performance (plus H264+HEVC encode and decode acceleration), and none of them are particularly capable of playing intensive 3D games.
If you want to game at 1080p and anything close to 60Hz with high texture details it's a fact that no matter what brand/model of laptop you buy, you're going to be buying something thicker, a bit heavier, with a discrete GPU on the PCI-E bus.
Fact is that laptops in the $1300+ class were shipping with 802.11ac 3x3 capable interfaces seven years ago. The wifi performance of a mid-2014 macbook pro will run circles around this thing.
What a weird detail to make so much noise about.
Most WiFi products these days never go to an RF lab for fine tuning.
If that is something that you need, then you obviously are going to select hardware for it, just like you would for gaming.
I never ever found myself, or any other person in the need for urgently copy some large files over the local network.
This is a good thing IMO, since I already have two AC chargers which are compatible with the Librem 14: One from a Librem 13 and another from a Tuxedo laptop. Chargers stay alive a lot longer than laptops, so it's more sustainable of I can keep using them.
They could price it in and then say “oh hey, if you already have a charger just tick this box and save yourself 50 bucks”
The Librem line of products are targeting a market niche of Free Software/Hardware, transparency and security.
If you're comparing to the offerings available in Best buy, you're probably not in the target audience.
Not sure why they sell the power adapter separately though. Judging by the Librem 14 page, the adapter is not sold separately, it's something you select while setting up the order..? Cf. https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-14/
And I admire what they're trying to do with this laptop. Being a start-up small hardware manufacturer in the same ecosystem with 500 pound behemoths like Microsoft selling Surface Books, and Dells and such, is a really hard position to be in.
But I also believe that on the x86-64 platform, hardware will either stand on its own merits or it won't. There's no glossing over that some components on this thing are really not a good value for the money.
I'd happily pay a premium and accept older hardware if it gives me more openness.
That's not to say that an old, slow wifi card doesn't bother me - but I don't think I will get a new gats wifi card with open firmware unless I pay the people who will work on it.
Did you make the same amount of noise when Apple stopped include the phone charger? "What brand new phone on earth..."?
For the two first points, having an Open Source firmware helps a lot.
Where did you read this? I don't think it's the case. AFAIK you can order a second power adapter for $59.
"Power Adapter $59.00 Power adapter for Librem 13, Librem 14 and Librem 15. These ship separately from your main laptop order."
There are no wifi cards supporting free firmware except this one. With such card, you can have fully free OS without any binary blobs: https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-5-wifi-specs/5900/2.
Why it matters? See here:
Why FSF Endorsing PureOS Matters
161 points | 4 months ago | 129 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25504641
By the way, you can easily replace the card if you want and install the binary blobs.
Upd: Power adapter is included in laptops: https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-14-questions-and-wonder/1059....
I think this one doesn't have free firmware either, it's just that the firmware stays on the card and thus is not loaded from the OS.
IMO the driver is free, but the firmware isn't.
The one in their phone Librem 5 has proprietary firmware which stays on the card. And it supports more bands.
No, it hasn't. You're confusing driver and firmware, again. What it has, and what you are showing me, is a free driver.
The former is executed on the main processor of your computer, the second on the various chips of your card / device which can run various forms of code. The second can be loaded either from the main CPU (computer), or from some flash or some (P)ROM located on the board or directly inside the chips.
Genuinely curious, I know next to nothing about this space.
One that's $59 cheaper than if it included a charger?
https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-14/
So you have the option to not have the wireless card installed (it's $29 cheaper), and buy your own wireless and install it.
Oddly enough, the only way to get your "$1470" figure I see if to remove the wireless card, so you had to have seen that.
That implies I can upgrade the wireless card. I am typing on a Thinkpad x200 (yes...from 2008) and I can (and have) upgraded the Wifi Card.
Here I found a Intel AX200 (Which supports WiFi 6):
https://www.newegg.com/fenvi-ax200ngw-pcie-half-mini-card-m-... (this is not the same card I have in my laptop, I forget where I bought the one in here).
You are free to buy it and install it (I sincerely doubt coreboot enforeces a PCI whitelist), And it looks like you will come out $10 ahead.
To be honest, I wish I could buy all of my laptops without a HD, wireless card, RAM, etc and put that all in myself (I did that for my Thinkpad x2100, and I am very happy I did)
> And then they have the gall to sell the power adapter separately from the laptop, for an extra $59? What brand new laptop on earth doesn't come with an AC wall adapter/charger in the box?
???????????????
https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-14/
I see "Power Adapter Plug", and no option to ship without one. No option is more expensive. I don't think they are only shipping a "Power Adapter Plug" without a "Power Adapter".
Is that the same chipset you have? Because I read it wouldn’t run 802.11ac. But I also read only 4GB of ram was supported and found some fringe thread that had a specific chip that worked fine too.
I’m on the fence about upgrading and have been for years now. The x200s has served me well and I really spend most of my time either in a browser, on a terminal or using audacious...
Ive got paralysis by analysis at this point because the x200s has served me SO well
> Because I read it wouldn’t run 802.11ac.
Why not? It has a miniPCI express card, you just nedd to find a compatible one:
https://www.newegg.com/intel-7260hmw-mini-pci-express/p/N82E...
You need to make sure that you mod the whitelist so it will accept it.
(Ok so I mixed up my x2100 and my x200, my x2100 has a AX200, sorry!)
Ultimately..not really a huge deal for my use case really.
The cost comes from: - having core boot pre-installed - CPU backdoors disabled by default - being guaranteed to run the OS of your choice
Probably someone else knows this better than me. But other than buying this the approach would be to buy an older or slightly older Thinkpad. Maybe upgrade CPU, SSD. Do a lot of complicated and potentially dangerous flashing of BIOS. This would take you weeks in terms of lead times of delivery. Also it would take hours of hours of work, in which you might damage components or even get the wrong one.
I would like to do this, but where am I to find the time. I would also be able to pay someone to do it, but it is not as your local computer shop will be likely to deliver. I bet that if you where
I have also heard the argument that for instance smartphone producers should not ship power adapters. Since all phones can charge via USB. This is by law in the EU at least. This means that there is an enormous waste when you are creating and shipping power adaptors to people who already have four or five at home.
This is not taking other family members into account
So if you where to buy a state of the art laptop today, and would want to change the wifi when there is a new wifi standard. So hypothetically speaking, what if there is a new WPA3 that requires hardware support. Then you wouldn't be able to change it without rewriting and flashing the BIOS. Something that might be next to impossible if the BIOS is signed.