Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

This appears to be similar to the open source hardware Novena laptop (<a href="https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crowdsupply.com&#x2F;kosagi&#x2F;novena-open-laptop</a>), but closed source hardware.<p>From the Purism crowdfunding campaign: &quot;The Librem 15 is the first high-end laptop where you are in control and have complete visibility into the kernel, the operating system, and all software.&quot;<p>It seems like the Novena came first and is substantially more free&#x2F;open. A laptop running all open source software is still good, but it&#x27;s not as pure as claimed.

Partially offtopic, but looking at the case of that laptop I wondered if I am the only one that slides them to the right to have the touchpad and the spacebar aligned with the central symmetry axis of my body? That means having 2&#x2F;3 of the screen to the right of my eyes, which is a waste because I end up piling windows with important information to the left, for not having to tilt my head to the right.<p>I believe that the reason for that (IMHO) ergonomically poor design is the will to include the numberpad. With the exception of Macs it&#x27;s difficult to find any 15+&quot; laptop without a numberpad. Is that feature so important? My numberpad lies there unused since I bought my zbook 15 one year ago. Maybe if I were playing games I would find a use for it. I write specs or code, so there are no many numbers I must type and it&#x27;s easier to reach for them on the row above the letter keys.<p>How about optional cases without a number pad and centered keyboard and touchpad? I&#x27;d pay an extra for that (plus another extra for a 16:10 screen, but that another story). Or maybe people wanting a number pad should pay an extra. I wonder what are the numbers for the two groups of people &quot;I must have a number pad&quot; and &quot;I don&#x27;t use it&quot;.

You may also be interested in a project a number of us have been working called lowRISC, aiming to produce a fully open-source SoC in volume using the RISC-V instruction set architecture. <a href="http://www.lowrisc.org/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lowrisc.org&#x2F;</a><p>I&#x27;m giving a main track talk on it at FOSDEM next weekend: <a href="https://fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/lowrisc/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fosdem.org&#x2F;2015&#x2F;schedule&#x2F;event&#x2F;lowrisc&#x2F;</a> so say hi if you&#x27;re there. My speaker interview gives more background on the project and our motivations <a href="https://fosdem.org/2015/interviews/2015-alex-bradbury/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fosdem.org&#x2F;2015&#x2F;interviews&#x2F;2015-alex-bradbury&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m surprised no one has said this yet but I can testify that a numpad keyboard on a laptop is like the worst ergonomic design that is somehow currently still popular. It&#x27;s one of the things where I literally cannot comprehend how someone would think that it is ok.

On a similar note, I&#x27;ve recently become very interested in buying a Lemote laptop. It&#x27;s exactly the tiny form factor I&#x27;m looking, runs an open MIPS chip, and comes preinstalled with some version of Linux, though I&#x27;d probably load Gentoo as it&#x27;s said to work quite well. The various models run $150-300 in USD depending on the supplier, from what I can tell.<p>Unfortunately it&#x27;s very hard to buy these computers in the US, and I will probably have to pick it up on some future trip to China. I would definitely a Massdrop or crowdfunding campaign to send purchase a set from the Chinese distributor.

&quot;...uncontrolled by outside forces...&quot;<p>Who validates the silicon and how is this accomplished? We&#x27;ve known for quite some time about the potential for rogue circuits hiding amongst the millions of transistors.

What CPU is it running? Because last time I checked the Intel microcode wasn&#x27;t open source

I&#x27;m excited about a company that will ensure a good, compatible experience with linux on a laptop. I develop on mac osx and linux vms (vagrant). I want to move to linux but the linux desktop experience just isn&#x27;t there yet.

A truly philosophically pure laptop would, among other things, guarantee absolutely no involvement of slave labor&#x2F;abusive practices in its supply chain. Everyone from the mines to the assembly plant to the retail store would have secure, middle-class employment. Revenue would not fund political corruption or violence related to labor, natural resources, or environmental impact.<p>But it would not contain binary blobs either, so this is a positive step. The branding is a little grandiose for the extent of its &quot;philosophical purity,&quot; though.

Wow, that price is not justifiable, the spec at System76[0] is way better and cheaper.<p>0. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/System76-Galago-Ultrapro-Processor-120GB/dp/B00QQOU5FY/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1422112938&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=System76&amp;pebp=1422112964036&amp;peasin=B00QQOU5FY" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;System76-Galago-Ultrapro-Processor-120...</a>

So what about this company? What is their reputation? I&#x27;m in the market for a Linux laptop with about those specs, but how can I easily compare this to a more established brand in terms of after sales support and overall build quality?

Add hardware switches for the mic, webcam, lan, wifi and bluetooth and you have my money.

How do they do Wi-Fi? Bluetooth?

For that price the components seems rather inadequate. 4GiB RAM for $1800? Come on.

So, does it really offer something that this doesn&#x27;t: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GIVX0FM/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;B00GIVX0FM&#x2F;</a> ?<p>Except for silver casing...

The future of anything we wish was built out of philosophical purism is to be built on crowdfunding.<p>As for this particular case, SSD &gt; liberty for me. I&#x27;d rather boot at a reasonable speed than die waiting to copy files.

This looks pretty cool to me. I&#x27;ve been happy with the Ubuntu&#x2F;Dell efforts over the years, but it&#x27;s really, really good to see people working on nice Linux machines.

They talk about ensuring that open source works on the machine, anyone else concerned if they will try to inhibit close source software? Like this whole shitstorm around GCC?

The 10^6$ question is whether Richard Stallman[1] would use this?<p>[1]<a href="http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;richard.stallman.usesthis.com&#x2F;</a>

Can somebody explain the intel processor freedom thing. They say this is the first intel processor that doesn&#x27;t rely on a signed bios.

Call me a skeptic, but there&#x27;s nothing philosophically &quot;pure&quot; about a locked down hardware platform where discrete components are all dependent on each other and NOT user serviceable.

Stallman, I remember that he used a Loongson computer

Start purism by removing the numpad ...

I wish it was more Thinkpad-y rather than Macbook-y; especially since Lenovo -I&#x27;ve heard- is well on its way to ruining the former.

Nearly $2000 for a laptop I could have bought for that price in early 2008?<p>Sorry, call me a stickler, but I just don&#x27;t see the value here.

A good idea but tainted by association with Stallman and therefore with Stallman&#x27;s made-up, non-empirical, false morality.