3 ms·

I'm a bit puzzled by the 'ethical' in the title. It only appears in the title, there's no explanation of what makes this laptop ethical and by which measures.

I'm a bit puzzled by the 'ethical' in the title. It only appears in the title, there's no explanation of what makes this laptop ethical and by which measures. The Librem is probably the most available laptop with recent-gen hardware that is the most Free (i.e controllable down to the firmware through Free Software components, and sometimes puts proprietary components behind libre daughter cards). That's a laudable and an impressive achievement all by itself. But when we say ethical, for me that would mean many other things too. Being very repairable and ideally modular so that the user can maintain the device for a long time. Selecting materials that ensure the device is very recyclable and sourcing those materials and the labour needed to assemble them from places that mine them in environmentally conscious ways, that don't employ child labour and pay workers fairly. Purism might be doing some or even all of that, but that information doesn't appear to be available from Purism itself and doesn't look like it's something TuxPhones intends to dig into. Based on the next installments they do at least intend to look at the repairability of the device. Purism itself states: > By removing just a few screws, you can easily replace the battery, wifi module, RAM, or the M.2 ssd.

fsflover 4y ago
> there's no explanation of what makes this laptop ethical and by which measures. They probably mean this: https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-pureos-to-list-of-endorsed-gnu-linux-distributions-1 https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-pureos-to-list-of-endorsed.... See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25504641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25504641. It's repairable and upgradable, too: https://puri.sm/posts/beyond-right-to-repair/ https://puri.sm/posts/beyond-right-to-repair/.
- daenney 4y ago
  > They probably mean this: https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-pureos-to-list-of-endorsed https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-pureos-to-list-of-endorsed.... Possibly, yes. But if that's the case then I'd argue the author didn't understand the announcement. It covers PureOS the Debian-derivative published by Purism, not Purism's line of hardware. Purism does some stuff with hardware that the FSF considers "unethical", like the daughter card setup for components where they can't control the firmware. The FSF explicitly states on that page: > It is not a certification of any particular hardware shipping with PureOS. No Purism hardware is "Respects Your Freedom" certified.
  - fsflover 4y ago
    > It covers PureOS the Debian-derivative published by Purism, not Purism's line of hardware. No, it's not just software. You can only run an FSF-endorsed distro, if you have no proprietary blobs in the OS. You can do this on Librem 14, because it uses Atheros (replaceable) WiFi module working with free software and firmware. > No Purism hardware is "Respects Your Freedom" certified. This is true, but they are trying to get this certification for their Librem Key and Librem 5.
    - daenney 4y ago
      It is just software. The only thing PureOS does it not ship with the firmware necessary to make those proprietary hardware components work out of the box. It's essentially Debian but without the non-free repo. Nothing stops you from making PureOS work on hardware with proprietary firmware if you want to. It isn't locked to only work on libre hardware, it's just a bit more tedious.
- hiq 4y ago
  > They probably mean this: https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-pureos-to-list-of-endorsed https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-pureos-to-list-of-endorsed.... There are already many FSF-approved Linux distributions which you can install on most laptops, many of which existed before PureOS.
  - fsflover 4y ago
    > which you can install on most laptops But your WiFi card will not work on those laptops, except for Lenovo ones from 2008 and earlier.
- author-of-post 4y ago
  Author here (thanks for posting!) - I went much deeper on that in the 2nd part, which was released some hours ago (https://tuxphones.com/purism-librem-14-ethical-linux-privacy-laptop-review-2/ https://tuxphones.com/purism-librem-14-ethical-linux-privacy...), not sure if before or after this first bit was shared here)
ineedasername 4y ago
>there's no explanation of what makes this laptop ethical and by which measures. Well, they didn't say "no animals were harmed in the making of this laptop" so I'm going to assume that's not what they meant & therefore probably slaughtered countless puppies in the process.

fsflover 4y ago

> there's no explanation of what makes this laptop ethical and by which measures. They probably mean this: https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-pureos-to-list-of-endorsed-gnu-linux-distributions-1 https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-pureos-to-list-of-endorsed.... See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25504641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25504641. It's repairable and upgradable, too: https://puri.sm/posts/beyond-right-to-repair/ https://puri.sm/posts/beyond-right-to-repair/.

daenney 4y ago
> They probably mean this: https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-pureos-to-list-of-endorsed https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-pureos-to-list-of-endorsed.... Possibly, yes. But if that's the case then I'd argue the author didn't understand the announcement. It covers PureOS the Debian-derivative published by Purism, not Purism's line of hardware. Purism does some stuff with hardware that the FSF considers "unethical", like the daughter card setup for components where they can't control the firmware. The FSF explicitly states on that page: > It is not a certification of any particular hardware shipping with PureOS. No Purism hardware is "Respects Your Freedom" certified.
- fsflover 4y ago
  > It covers PureOS the Debian-derivative published by Purism, not Purism's line of hardware. No, it's not just software. You can only run an FSF-endorsed distro, if you have no proprietary blobs in the OS. You can do this on Librem 14, because it uses Atheros (replaceable) WiFi module working with free software and firmware. > No Purism hardware is "Respects Your Freedom" certified. This is true, but they are trying to get this certification for their Librem Key and Librem 5.
  - daenney 4y ago
    It is just software. The only thing PureOS does it not ship with the firmware necessary to make those proprietary hardware components work out of the box. It's essentially Debian but without the non-free repo. Nothing stops you from making PureOS work on hardware with proprietary firmware if you want to. It isn't locked to only work on libre hardware, it's just a bit more tedious.
hiq 4y ago
> They probably mean this: https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-pureos-to-list-of-endorsed https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-pureos-to-list-of-endorsed.... There are already many FSF-approved Linux distributions which you can install on most laptops, many of which existed before PureOS.
- fsflover 4y ago
  > which you can install on most laptops But your WiFi card will not work on those laptops, except for Lenovo ones from 2008 and earlier.
author-of-post 4y ago
Author here (thanks for posting!) - I went much deeper on that in the 2nd part, which was released some hours ago (https://tuxphones.com/purism-librem-14-ethical-linux-privacy-laptop-review-2/ https://tuxphones.com/purism-librem-14-ethical-linux-privacy...), not sure if before or after this first bit was shared here)

ineedasername 4y ago

>there's no explanation of what makes this laptop ethical and by which measures. Well, they didn't say "no animals were harmed in the making of this laptop" so I'm going to assume that's not what they meant & therefore probably slaughtered countless puppies in the process.