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Review: Purism Librem13 laptop
- tluyben2 8y agoWhat is up with that battery life... Lenovo X laptops with older batteries I have (i5-i7) run 15+ hours while coding and browsing. And lighter laptops I have with Ubuntu/Debian get well over 20 hours. Does this thing have a very small battery or is it too powerful? So little battery life is a shame so wondering if it is software or hardware.
- visarga 8y ago> GPU: Sixth Generation Intel HD Graphics 520. Every time I see Intel HD Graphics I think weak GPU. Bad for image, Intel.
- 0xCMP 8y agoAnd from what I understand these days that's not so much the case except for when running the very latest games on High/Ultra. Or maybe when running >1 4k screens at 60hz or more.
- ben-schaaf 8y agoUnless you're talking about AMD's new iGPUs, intel's desktop i7 8700k with UHD Graphics 630 barely scrapes over 60 fps on average playing Overwatch at 720p on low settings [0]. I think it'll take a long time before any iGPU can play recent-ish games at even low settings in 4k. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-UHD-Graphics-630-GPU-Benchmarks-and-Specs.257928.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-UHD-Graphics-630-GPU-Ben...
- djsumdog 8y agoReally? I want Intel graphics. Fuck dual CPUs on my developer laptop. I don't want to figure out how to disable or switch a separate NV/AMD GPU if all I'm doing is photo editing and running docker images. I'd really prefer if the XPS15 or HP Spectre 15in had the option for an Intel card instead of an nvidia GPU I'll never use.
- favadi 8y agoSame, I actively avoid anything with dual graphic cards.
- snovv_crash 8y agoWhat about the new Ryzen Mobile? Decent GPU and CPU, no crazy power overheads with PCIe or GDDRx.
- jhasse 8y agoUnfortunately the laptops with that CPU all suck. If the XPS 13 would include Ryzen as an option I would have chosen it.
- jpetso 8y agoI have a Macbook Pro 15 with dedicated GPU at work and battery runtimes are abysmal, even after accounting for the bright HiDPI display. Great for gaming, but no thanks for a portable development laptop.
- 0xCMP 8y agoWow, this seems like a pretty nice laptop that supports OSS software out of the box. Keyboard, screen, and form factor seem to be exactly what people want. I wonder how the trackpad is (usually a major problem with non-Apple devices to get "right"). I also wonder what the battery life is like since I didn't see that in the review either.
- robotresearcher 8y agoLinux Journal’s review had specs. 48 Wh battery ‘up to 8 hours’ but this review said 4 while typing.
- sowbug 8y agoThat article is from three years ago (https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/purism-librem-13-review https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/purism-librem-13-review). Is this an old laptop, or was that a really early review? It does say it's for a prototype, but that's still a long time ago.
- andrewcchen 8y agoThat one has an i7-5557U, compared to the i7-6500U the current one is selling with, so probably an early prototype.
- kyleperik 8y agoPurism says that it lasts up to 12 hours with light usage, and I can attest to that. The only times I need make sure to plug in my computer is when I'm using a lot of CPU
- larkeith 8y agoHe had battery under misc: "Battery: The battery is really good for a GNU/Linux laptop. I was used to laptops with two hours maximum while typing and 30min while painting. This one can go almost to four hours while typing and 1h30 while painting. Sometime even more, it depends the backlight settings and your activity with it."
- kyleperik 8y agoI bought this computer for work just recently. Like he said, I really appreciate how easy it is to open it up and modify it. I'd add that it's very lightweight and small, but has specs just as good as my old MacBook Pro. Great laptop for travel and customizability.
- bo1024 8y agoI really like these aspects as well, and would add battery life as a feature (I get 6-8 hours of typing+browsing with the brightness not cranked). Some are disappointed that it's not a superpowered battlestation, but that's not what it's designed to be. It's really good in its niche.
- steve19 8y agoThis looks like a really great system. The gpu is a little of a letdown but other than that maybe this is the laptop to replace my MacBook.
- tombh 8y agoI didn't see a price in the article. But there's a page on the Purism website to calculate prices: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-13/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-13/ Judging from that, I'd guess the model in the article is about $1700USD.
- walrus01 8y agoI don't see any specs on the wifi card there. Assuming it's an Intel 802.11ac dual band minipci-express interface, (likely 2x2, not 3x3), which has decent linux kernel driver support. But if it's not specified it could be a lot worse. There's a shocking number of "new" laptops that still ship with 2.4 GHz only, 1x1 (SISO) wifi cards, because they're cheap as hell.
- andrewcchen 8y agoThey say on their website "Atheros 802.11n w/ Two Antenna" Wi-fi cards are actually a huge issue if you are concerned about privacy. You have no idea what the firmware is doing, and it has access to your entire memory through the pcie interface, and the internet at the same time.
- walrus01 8y ago802.11n in the year 2018 ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww................. I don't see how using a Qualcomm (Atheros) 802.11n chipset is any better than an Intel chipset card, developers do NOT get access to the code that's running its firmware. Same as Intel.
- SahAssar 8y agoIf you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-source_wireless_drivers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-source_wire... you can see that a few of the atheros chipsets have both OSS firmware and OSS drivers, the intel ones only seem to have OSS drivers. Perhaps they are using one of those that have the OSS firmware/drivers combination?
- walrus01 8y agoIt really doesn't matter, the actual RF baseband inside the chip is still closed source. Atheros never released it for any model. The firmware interface to the OS driver, yes, but not what's going on under the hood.
- sowbug 8y agoDoes anyone know whether the USB-C port will charge using a typical USB-C charger? I don't buy anything that requires anything else anymore. Very annoyed that the Dell XPS 13 is barely compatible with any USB-C chargers. It won't even recognize USB-IF certified chargers.
- ghancock 8y agoI have a Librem 15 v3 and it would not charge with an Apple USB-C charger.
- sowbug 8y agoThough that charger is not fully standards-compliant, it is one of the more compatible chargers out there because it's popular. So if the laptop doesn't work with it, it probably doesn't work with the others, either. That's unfortunate. Thanks for the info.
- bo1024 8y agoNo, it doesn't. Why do you prefer that particular connector for charging so strongly?
- sowbug 8y agoFamily of five. When we travel I want to take a small number of chargers, each of which can serve all our devices, rather than having to remember a special snowflake permanently paired to exactly one device. Home is similar. One commodity charger on the table next to the couch can serve any of our laptops, tablets, or phones. That's the world my family has now, with a couple male-to-male USB-C to micro-USB cables as adapters for legacy devices that haven't died yet. It's as easy as I'd imagined, and until something even more standards-based and capable than USB-C comes along, we don't plan to change. Unfortunately that rules out this laptop, which is too bad because I like what it stands for.
- cobbzilla 8y agoI really like the Purism design aesthetic, but hardware-wise they just don't pack enough punch for me to work with. Last year I ended 10+ years of developing on macos because their latest "pro" edition had a weak CPU and didn't support more than 16G memory (don't even ask me about the TouchBar). After some research, I went with a quad-core System76 with 32G memory (could have gone to 64) and 4TB SSD. The laptop is an absolute beast for software development; various compile/build times were cut nearly in half (versus my previous MBP), it is a screamer. While I do love it, I must admit it's pretty heavy. If Purism made a quad-core laptop with 32G+ memory, I'd be very interested.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ekianjo 8y ago> If Purism made a quad-core laptop with 32G+ memory, I'd be very interested. Seems like it's difficult to get 32G+ RAM on recent Lenovo models. There's not so many options out there actually.
- chuckdries 8y agoAm I to understand this laptop doesn't support uEFI?
- rekado 8y agoIt comes with coreboot. Is there a free UEFI-based init software that you would want to use instead of coreboot?
- mappu 8y agoCoreboot is low-level plumbing, on top of which, you can place either a BIOS (SeaBIOS) or a UEFI (TianoCore). Purism chose the former. There's an open question https://forums.puri.sm/t/install-tianocore-payload/2629 https://forums.puri.sm/t/install-tianocore-payload/2629 and a somewhat-relevant developer comment at https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-v15-boot-issues/1202/7 https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-v15-boot-issues/1202/7 .
- sfRattan 8y agoHas anyone else noticed that, on Purism's website[1], you can only select "Don't Include" for the TPM dialog box if you have also selected the "English (UK)" keyboard layout option? Or is this some bug in my particular web browser? For a company whose advertising copy on their "Why Purism?" page includes, "We believe people should have secure devices that protect them rather than exploit them,"[2] only allowing removal of the TPM chip for a particular keyboard layout is a pretty big red flag. [1]: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-13/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-13/ [2]: https://puri.sm/why-purism/ https://puri.sm/why-purism/
- noobermin 8y agoHanlon's razor. Or may be the a soft version of it that says the most likely explanation is it's a mistake.
- cbsmith 8y agoAs the QubeOS folks will tell you, TPM is necessary for Anti Evil Maid.
- ghancock 8y agoThis https://puri.sm/posts/tpm-by-default-and-free-international-shipping/ https://puri.sm/posts/tpm-by-default-and-free-international-... says they are moving to including the TPM in all systems, but there are some UK models left in stock without it. The TPM is a security feature--you don't have to use it. I have not used it on my laptop but I see from the documentation that it is different from some other trusted computing systems in that the end user controls the keys and what is loadable, not the vendor.
- buu700 8y agoLibrem 13 would without a doubt be my next laptop if it had a >=Retina screen, USB-C†, and ideally a form factor as close to the current-gen MBP as possible. I think they have a real opportunity to win over the group that doesn't like Windows and is getting increasingly scared off from macOS >= High Sierra, but not if it means a downgrade in any aspect of our current hardware. † (Edit): I see that it actually does have one USB-C port, but I'm thinking more along the lines of dropping all non-C USB ports and charging over USB-C.
- r00fus 8y agoGiven the issues I consistently have with USB-C peripherals and adoption even in 2018, I wish my MBP had at least one USB-A port. Charging over USB-C is ok but MagSafe was better and I almost never care about which side I'm charging on. So mixed USB-C is the best bet IMHO.
- buu700 8y agoFair enough about wanting at least one USB-A port, but I can't wait to upgrade from my 2013 MBPr to something that charges over USB-C. MagSafe is nice, but the magnetic breakaway USB-C cables look fine too, and it'd be much nicer to have chargers set up all around the house that work for all of my devices and don't cost a small fortune.
- fouc 8y agoQuality of build, Power, Cost. Pick 2. Unfortunately cost would probably be even higher than a macbook if it approaches that quality (retina display, form factor), because there's no economies of scale.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- merinowool 8y agoI wonder when it will become illegal to produce such laptops as states progresses with surveillance and data collection about citizens. I would really like to buy privacy oriented laptop as I don't feel comfortable that someone can look up my private life. But this laptop is pretty weak to use it for work I do sadly. When something more up to date is going to come out, I am definitely going to buy.
- lioeters 8y agoThat's a probable future scenario, that computers will have privacy-invasive data collection or some kind of security/encryption bypass required by law. I feel like those of us who are privacy-conscious need to support projects/companies/products like these, that are transparent/open-source and respect their users' privacy. I also agree with your sentiment that this particular laptop model might not be powerful enough for "serious work" - although it's getting close, and I'm considering something similar in the near future.
- ne01 8y agoInteresting to see high quality laptops for open source OSs. I would so buy this laptop if it came with a typematrix 2030 keyboard built-in
- loup-vaillant 8y agoI carry both (laptop and typematrix) on my bag. Heavier, but bearably so. And since I use a Roost laptop stand, I can't use the built in keyboard most of the time anyway. https://www.therooststand.com/ https://www.therooststand.com/
- codetrotter 8y agoI used to do the same. Eventually the cable of my TypeMatrix 2030 USB was damaged and I tried to fix it but I didn't know what I was doing back then. I replaced the first one with two new -- one for having at home and one for having at work. I bought my first TypeMatrix 2030 USB in 2010 and kept using TypeMatrix 2030 USB until december of last year when I bought an ErgoDox EZ Shine with Kailh Thick Gold switches. Completely black with nothing printed on the keys. The ErgoDox EZ keyboards are ortholinear like the TypeMatrix and they have similar keys in the middle but they are split in two and they have legs so you can angle them. Also they are programmable so you can assign your own mapping. My key map is based on Dvorak of course. The ErgoDox EZ is quite expensive but it has been worth it IMO. Very much so :) The ErgoDox EZ is a bit more convoluted to travel with and you wouldn't be able to use it without a table but then again I had already stopped carrying my keyboard and laptop most of the time -- I now only bring them if I am going someplace and will be away from home for many days. Laptops aren't that great anyways; short battery life and the screens are too small. I mainly use a stationary computer with dual 24" monitors, 32GB of RAM, an AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU and an Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB graphics card. Here is the ErgoDox EZ website: https://ergodox-ez.com/ https://ergodox-ez.com/ Here is the layout I created for my keyboard using their online tool: https://configure.ergodox-ez.com/keyboard_layouts/qppwjy/edit https://configure.ergodox-ez.com/keyboard_layouts/qppwjy/edi... There are two things that are really nice about having the keyboard be programmable; 1. I can use it with any computer without having to configure layout customization on the computer itself. Just set the keyboard layout of the computer to be US QWERTY if it isn't already (I live in Norway) and I can use my keyboard with the Dvorak based variant that I have defined. 2. It can send different signals based on whether you are tapping or holding a button pressed. Some people remap their caps lock to ctrl, some to esc. Typically people that use emacs will map it to ctrl and vim users will map it to esc. I use vim but I think having ctrl in that position is nice as well, so I have the button in that position configured so that it sends esc if I tap it and it sends ctrl if I press and hold. Here is a photo of my room that I took just a couple of days ago: https://i.imgur.com/NcqDL9N.jpg https://i.imgur.com/NcqDL9N.jpg
- gkya 8y agoI'm surprised that people call this a weak laptop. Clicking through to the article I thought it would have 2-4GB RAM and a weak CPU. It has 16G of ram and a very recent 3.10GHz Intel CPU. What are you doing on your laptops? This is a deeecent laptop and it is 13". The software you use is crappy if you can choke this machine w/o running a bunch of VMs concurrently.
- roryrjb 8y agoYeah I agree with this, my Lenovo has the same CPU and 8GB of ram (the maximum) and I'm happy with the performance.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jcelerier 8y ago> It has 16G of ram and a very recent 3.10GHz Intel CPU. I had 16 GB of ram in 2010 and it was not even a top computer at the time
- kingofhdds 8y agoI don't know what you mean by "top computer", but 16gb is still not very usual amount of RAM in laptops even today.
- Freak_NL 8y agoFinding a laptop with 32 GB of RAM for sale is pretty rare even. Dell only seems to offer it on their Alienware laptops (over $3000 each).
- FRex 8y agoThey are rare (and it's hard to google for them..) but I got one in the summer of 2016 for just under 5000 PLN (about 1400-1500 USD and that already includes 23% Polish VAT)[0]. [0] - https://www.x-kom.pl/p/293547-notebook-laptop-156-msi-pe60-6qd-i7-6700hq-32gb-1tb128ssd-gtx950m.html https://www.x-kom.pl/p/293547-notebook-laptop-156-msi-pe60-6...
- gattr 8y agoThe laptop looks nice enough, but the lack of dedicated PgUp/PgDown/Home/End keys is a deal-breaker to me. I'm also on a 13.3" (Lenovo E31-70, previously a HP ProBook) and fitting these keys really isn't a problem.
- wpdev_63 8y agoUnless purism can prove they are NSA proof, I would not buy their computers. They expect a very large premium for the fact that their computers are open sourced. Don't get me wrong. I believe what Purism is doing is great and with the direction of where society is heading this is a much needed product. I just feel like they could be doing more to prove that they have a truly secure(from NSA) and open. With the Chinese social credit system and the vault 7 leaks; this is going to be a massive market segment.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mamon 8y agoActually, I wouldn't be surprised if Purism itself was a secret NSA division :) That would be the smartest way for them to target specifically the people that are actively trying to avoid being spied (so, logically, they have something important to hide).
- wpdev_63 8y agoThat could be but if purism open sourced their designs and their drivers etc.(like they have) then it would be harder to mask that fact. Or maybe you are a NSA agent trying to send false flags! :p
- teddyh 8y agoFrom what I can see, still no RYF certification, meaning no purchase for me. I will continue to watch any further developments. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15358342#15359710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15358342#15359710
- sowbug 8y agoAargh, just noticed the keyboard violates another one of my cardinal usability rules: everything directly below the Enter key must be a Shift key. This one invented a need for a second Fn key and then fulfilled it by taking away some of the right Shift key... worse, it took the area that touch typists actually use to press Shift. Chromebooks, Apple, and Microsoft understand this. Dell mostly does. Logitech does not, nor do second-tier manufacturers who try to shrink down layouts without user-testing with conventionally trained touch typists. Purism, if you're reading this, please: right Shift must fully overlap the horizontal space of the Enter key.
- hoosieree 8y agoA few of Lenovo's Flex/Yoga line have this infuriating right shift key placement: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lenovo+flex+4+shift+key&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images&iai=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.laptopkey.com%2Fuploads%2F2068_1487725612_yyj.jpg https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lenovo+flex+4+shift+key&iar=images... (the SHIFT key is to the right of the UP_ARROW key) Why laptop manufacturers feel the need to get creative with the key placement is beyond me.
- darklajid 8y agoMy laptop doesn't have an End key. Trips me up every time I am without a decent keyboard (to be fair: I mostly use it docked).