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Comment by nottorp | Hacker News Reader

I suppose this is a case of where filling in the text field when you pressed submit would have helped.

What is a Purism and why should I care?

Purism is a company in California that sells Linux computers and other privacy-focused devices and services. Their Librem 5 phone is probably the most famous product they've had; it was originally crowdfunded and had a lot of delays with production and delivery, but on the other hand, it resulted in a lot of contributions to the GNOME project (specifically the current GTK and Adwaita combo, which has incorporated a lot from Purism's libhandy project).

Purism also had/has this AweSIM cellular plan offering. Shortly after I signed up (a couple years ago), their backbone provider went bankrupt or dropped them or something; don’t remember. The outage lasted months, and during that whole time they kept charging the monthly fees! I sent a pointed message to support and they said “oh, well we promise we were always planning on refunding these charges later.” They offered to refund me individually because I’d called them out.

Thanks. I know about the Librem phone actually. Had no idea how the company making it is named though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purism_(company)

Well seeing how hackernews is a tech site we kinda expect you to know tech.

Count me as another person who had (had) no idea what this company is. They have 32 employees and < 10M revenue.

They kind of punch above their weight in terms of name recognition and development influence within the desktop Linux ecosystem. I currently work at System76, and we're kind of the same way; anyone following the /r/Linux subreddit or reading OMG! Ubuntu for more than a month probably knows of us, even though we're not actually that large.

But if you don't use Linux or don't actively follow desktop Linux development, then it would be quite easy to have no clue.

> But if you don't use Linux or don't actively follow desktop Linux development, then it would be quite easy to have no clue.

I don't, and that's probably why.

Okay, but as a person reading a tech forum, it is assumed knowing how to look something up on the internet is something that is known. Unless you're just so fundamentally afraid of rabbit holes that you just don't use the web like that.

It's not the size. They have (had?) one well known product but the fanbois expect everyone to know how the company is called, what US state it's registered in and the CEOs shoe size...

> I currently work at System76, and we're kind of the same way; anyone following the /r/Linux subreddit or reading OMG! Ubuntu for more than a month probably knows of us

Funny, in this case I know of your company name but have no idea if your products have names and what they are.

famous for linux desktops with wood-grain paneling, if memory serves! (and it maybe doesn't!)

Purism is mostly known for its laptop and smartphone products. You might be thinking of System76 Thelio.

Yeah, that's why I said "of us," lol. We have our fingers in a lot of pies, also similar to Purism (but not a 100% overlap, and with some differences in philosophy).

My point wasn't that everyone should know Purism already, just explaining why it seems completely obvious to those of us in that niche. I really think it's a legitimate feeling of "they're in the news all the time" and forgetting that not everyone is exposed to the same news, rather than just a "fanboy" thing. For some people, they're right up there with Red Hat and Canonical in terms of presence.

> we kinda expect you to know tech.

Technology is a vast field, you can't expect everyone "in tech" to know all corners of "tech". This one is well-known if you're looking for alternatives to the current smartphone duopoly, but if that's not your technology niche, there's a good chance that it didn't enter your radar.