Impressions of the Purism Librem 15v3 for Qubes

[Sean Hunter]

I want to start by saying I really like this laptop so far and it works great for me in qubes 4.0. I’m a (very) long term linux user but new to qubes. For the last 5 years I have used a macBook pro as my primary computer for personal and work, and am using this to replace that first for personal stuff and dev projects and then hopefully soon for my main work also. I also didn’t ever boot pureOs (their debian spin) so can’t comment on what that’s like. 

So a 15” mbp is my point of comparison and these are relatively minor issues which don’t stop me from using the laptop for everything I need (so far):

1. they added a numpad (that I don’t use) so you’re not centered on the screen when you type and there are extra keys to the right of the arrows. Annoying to me but many people wouldn’t notice or might even like the numpad
2. It won’t boot qubes R3.2 for some reason so I have to run R4.0. That’s fine for me although it means a somewhat rougher user experience as it’s not super polished yet
3. The keys for screen brightness, volume etc are hooked up using dark magic that doesn’t work in i3wm for some reason. On xfce they work just fine. At some point I’ll try to figure it out and if you don’t use i3 you may not care
4.  I haven’t got the acpi (or whatever it’s called now) settings quite right yet so it doesn’t shut down properly - It shuts everything down but leaves the screen backlight on, then I have to manually press and hold the power button for it to actually shut down. Likewise I can hibernate it, but it doesn’t come back from hibernation. Again, there’s probably a fix
5. I’m not crazy about the touchpad. It’s resonsive enough but the friction on the surface is a little high.  I guess macs have pampered me and I’ve become soft. 
6. It won’t drive my super-wide external monitor at full resolution so I am restricted to a “mere” 1900xsomething. 

If you’re not familiar with this laptop, some of the points in its favour are:

1. Free software ethos: comes with core boot and the hardware is user replaceable to an extent very unusual for a laptop

2. Security-minded: ME disabled, open-source bios and has hardware disable switches for mic&camera and wifi&bluetooth

Let me know if you have specific questions and I’ll try to address

Sean

Sent from my phone. Sorry if brief. 

[nicholas roveda]

Thanks for the details.

Can you send a simple benchmark (`hdparm -t --direct`) of the default ssd pre-installed, if you didn't choose another drive?

[Yethal]

How's the keyboard?

[pixel fairy]

is suspend and resume reliable?

[pixel fairy]

On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 1:40 PM Sean wrote:
On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 12:54:54PM -0700, pixel fairy wrote:
> > is suspend and resume reliable?
>
> Kinda, although some further debugging etc is needed like the hibernate
> problem.
>
> So closing the laptop suspends (so far so good) and opening resumes.
> However if you spend too long in suspend it seems it reboots when you
> open (at the moment).
>
> Probably fixable, haven't tried yet.
>
> "Too long" needs some further experimentation but empirically a bath is
> definitely too long.
>
> Sean

thanks, you saved me the cost of one. my lemur7(system76) has the same behavior. For now i just set it to lock the screen instead of suspend when the lids closed.

[Grzegorz Chodzicki]

On 09/25/2017 10:22 PM, Sean Hunter wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 11:37:23AM -0700, Yethal wrote:
>> W dniu poniedziałek, 25 września 2017 13:34:13 UTC+2 użytkownik Sean Hunter napisał:
>>

>> How's the keyboard?
> So I'm bit of a keyboard nerd (I have a couple of Planck ortholinear
> keyboards from olkb.com) so I use an external keyboard where I can, but
> it's surprisingly pleasant for a laptop. I rate it higher than my macs
> (old version mbp and my new macbook with the 'flat' keyboard switches)
> and the hp and lenovo laptops from work have.
>
> No laptop is ever going to be as good as a proper mechanical keyboard
> though.
>
> Sean
Is it as good as the thinkpad island keyboard?

[Tai...@gmx.com]

On 09/25/2017 02:37 PM, Yethal wrote:
> If you’re not familiar with this laptop, some of the points in its favour are:
> 1. Free software ethos: comes with core boot and the hardware is user replaceable to an extent very unusual for a laptop
> 2. Security-minded: ME disabled, open-source bios and has hardware disable switches for mic&camera and wifi&bluetooth

Not true, purism isn't any different than an off the shelf laptop when
it comes to freedom - their BIOS isn't open source and ME isn't actually
disabled simply de-activated as anyone can do with me-cleaner (which
they didn't create mind you).
It is simply an overpriced quanta re-brand.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3anjgm/on_the_librem_laptop_purism_doesnt_believe_in/

Their version of coreboot is simply a wrapper layer, all the hardware
init is performed by intel's binary blobs and while some say "oh they
are doing their best" that isn't true as there are a variety of other
companies that somehow make actual libre hardware such as raptor, and a
variety of companies that provide libre firmware hardware (vikings,
minifree etc) reselling the KGPE-D16/KCMA-D8 boards and the variety of
intel thinkpad laptops created before mandatory ME.

Purism could have easily created an actually libre firmware device by
using AMD's 2013 pre-PSP FT3 hardware (ex: lenovo G505S) which would
have equivalent performance to intel's ivy bridge, but they didn't.