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My problem isn't that they couldn't pull off a fully open laptop, it's that they lied and said they would, knowing from the start they were dealing with chips t

My problem isn't that they couldn't pull off a fully open laptop, it's that they lied and said they would, knowing from the start they were dealing with chips that were impossible to open source. Then, they doubled down and lied again. If I contribute to a campaign that says they will give me something, and they fail to come through not once but twice, I expect my money back. They are scam artists as far as I'm concerned. If one guy[1] can pull off a truly, fully open hardware and software laptop, you'd think a fully funded startup could do better. It's embarrassing. [1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena

ploxiln 9y ago
They're not malicious, they're just not smart about software (even if their heart is in the right place). I ordered the Librem 13 as soon as the crowdfunding for it started. I received it about 10 months later I think. It's real, it works. But yes, all the software parts they were really supposed to focus on and get right, were a joke. In one of their first updates, they talked about working on touchpad driver, and releasing it as GPLv3. I emailed them saying they probably had a typo, the linux kernel is GPLv2 only of course ... nope, they just didn't know what they were doing, they were like "hmm we'll ask the FSF about that". How could you not already know this if you are working professionally on this. Their touchpad driver was not finished and integrated upstream until over a year later. This is the easiest software part they had to do any work on. During that time, they didn't have good instructions for installing it as a separate module for an arbitrary kernel - some guy from another org set up a github repo with that. And after everything, they couldn't get the touchpad model detection working well enough (it looks like a plain ps/2 mouse to the system) so it doesn't even work by default with an upstream kernel, you have to echo "byd" into a sysfs file to tell the system it's this crappy model of touchpad, and then it mostly works, as a plain mouse (no two-finger scroll, just edge scroll, and no touchpad config/adjustment). EDIT: by the way, their latest laptop models use a different touchpad with a good driver (which they didn't have to do any work on) Up next, "PureOS", their debian based distro. I don't really care, but I was trying to use it for a bit so I could easily use their kernel with their touchpad driver while it wasn't upstream yet. My laptop came configured with nothing in the apt sources.list, it got no security updates. I had to figure out how to put debian stretch sources in there on my own. I later figured out how to add a source which had their custom packages (kernel, and useless old firefox variant). This wasn't written anywhere on their website! And it stopped working and moved to different URLs! I don't think their PureOS had proper stable apt sources for updates and general package installing, for 6 months after users started getting their laptops, which was long after their crowdfunding got going. I guess their "debian developer" can maintain a couple of packages for debian, but setting up some standard repo mirrors for their OS took about a full year longer than it should have. (I still wouldn't bother with their distro. They should have just installed plain debian stretch and avoided all this stuff they suck at.) And finally, the firmware and ME. All the updates for the first 6 or 9 months talked about the progress on coreboot, and then that was paused for experiments on neutralizing the ME. But there was nothing to show for it until January THIS YEAR when they hired a new guy to pick up the work on it again. One and half years with empty hands, two years before delivering on the original coreboot promise. It turns out this new guy is smart and gets stuff done. Coreboot is ported, ME is neutralized. But it seems that everyone else Todd Weaver hired before that was not really capable. Or maybe their efforts were terribly mismanaged. Both are believable - Todd is a hardware/manufacturing guy, he doesn't really know software much. This laptop isn't too bad, I'm not bitter about it. Just disappointed and frustrated about the missed potential. I really don't think Purism did anything malicious - they're just kinda dumb and unaware and simplistic. I agree, free/libre software on modern devices is important. But you have to have more than the ideal which you read about in some essay on the internet, you have to also know a thing or two about software, and they just don't. They're total newbies playing a rather difficult game.
- sanbor 9y ago
  "Here's to the crazy ones". Maybe dumb and newbies are naive enough to get into this. Maybe suboptimal but they are getting things executed. Let's hope they can make this phone and have gained enough experience to make it usable.
jancsika 9y ago
bunnie didn't pull that off. I don't remember the exact details, but there was some piece of hardware on that machine that kept the FSF from endorsing it, as well as an additional piece of hardware (perhaps the GPU?) that bunnie said the FSF hadn't even considered such that he didn't pursue the endorsement any further. Also, the Novena isn't really a laptop, but more like an all-in-one with a hydraulic arm that raises the screen while exposing all the innards to the open air to accommodate tinkerers. The laptop bunnie offered was somewhere around $5,000 with an enclosure made of wood that was designed by a guest artist. I don't remember the final tally but I think there were less than 10 built, and that was it.
- davexunit 9y ago
  The Novena has a Xilinix FPGA that can only be programmed using proprietary software. I own a Novena and only run free software so I don't use that component at all.
  - jancsika 9y ago
    Do you use the GPU?

ploxiln 9y ago

They're not malicious, they're just not smart about software (even if their heart is in the right place). I ordered the Librem 13 as soon as the crowdfunding for it started. I received it about 10 months later I think. It's real, it works. But yes, all the software parts they were really supposed to focus on and get right, were a joke. In one of their first updates, they talked about working on touchpad driver, and releasing it as GPLv3. I emailed them saying they probably had a typo, the linux kernel is GPLv2 only of course ... nope, they just didn't know what they were doing, they were like "hmm we'll ask the FSF about that". How could you not already know this if you are working professionally on this. Their touchpad driver was not finished and integrated upstream until over a year later. This is the easiest software part they had to do any work on. During that time, they didn't have good instructions for installing it as a separate module for an arbitrary kernel - some guy from another org set up a github repo with that. And after everything, they couldn't get the touchpad model detection working well enough (it looks like a plain ps/2 mouse to the system) so it doesn't even work by default with an upstream kernel, you have to echo "byd" into a sysfs file to tell the system it's this crappy model of touchpad, and then it mostly works, as a plain mouse (no two-finger scroll, just edge scroll, and no touchpad config/adjustment). EDIT: by the way, their latest laptop models use a different touchpad with a good driver (which they didn't have to do any work on) Up next, "PureOS", their debian based distro. I don't really care, but I was trying to use it for a bit so I could easily use their kernel with their touchpad driver while it wasn't upstream yet. My laptop came configured with nothing in the apt sources.list, it got no security updates. I had to figure out how to put debian stretch sources in there on my own. I later figured out how to add a source which had their custom packages (kernel, and useless old firefox variant). This wasn't written anywhere on their website! And it stopped working and moved to different URLs! I don't think their PureOS had proper stable apt sources for updates and general package installing, for 6 months after users started getting their laptops, which was long after their crowdfunding got going. I guess their "debian developer" can maintain a couple of packages for debian, but setting up some standard repo mirrors for their OS took about a full year longer than it should have. (I still wouldn't bother with their distro. They should have just installed plain debian stretch and avoided all this stuff they suck at.) And finally, the firmware and ME. All the updates for the first 6 or 9 months talked about the progress on coreboot, and then that was paused for experiments on neutralizing the ME. But there was nothing to show for it until January THIS YEAR when they hired a new guy to pick up the work on it again. One and half years with empty hands, two years before delivering on the original coreboot promise. It turns out this new guy is smart and gets stuff done. Coreboot is ported, ME is neutralized. But it seems that everyone else Todd Weaver hired before that was not really capable. Or maybe their efforts were terribly mismanaged. Both are believable - Todd is a hardware/manufacturing guy, he doesn't really know software much. This laptop isn't too bad, I'm not bitter about it. Just disappointed and frustrated about the missed potential. I really don't think Purism did anything malicious - they're just kinda dumb and unaware and simplistic. I agree, free/libre software on modern devices is important. But you have to have more than the ideal which you read about in some essay on the internet, you have to also know a thing or two about software, and they just don't. They're total newbies playing a rather difficult game.

sanbor 9y ago
"Here's to the crazy ones". Maybe dumb and newbies are naive enough to get into this. Maybe suboptimal but they are getting things executed. Let's hope they can make this phone and have gained enough experience to make it usable.

jancsika 9y ago

bunnie didn't pull that off. I don't remember the exact details, but there was some piece of hardware on that machine that kept the FSF from endorsing it, as well as an additional piece of hardware (perhaps the GPU?) that bunnie said the FSF hadn't even considered such that he didn't pursue the endorsement any further. Also, the Novena isn't really a laptop, but more like an all-in-one with a hydraulic arm that raises the screen while exposing all the innards to the open air to accommodate tinkerers. The laptop bunnie offered was somewhere around $5,000 with an enclosure made of wood that was designed by a guest artist. I don't remember the final tally but I think there were less than 10 built, and that was it.

davexunit 9y ago
The Novena has a Xilinix FPGA that can only be programmed using proprietary software. I own a Novena and only run free software so I don't use that component at all.
- jancsika 9y ago
  Do you use the GPU?