Purism

Hello Again, Linux

Richard Mavis — Fri, 31 May 2019 13:26:34 +0000

My first MacBook was the first computer I really loved, but I wasn't happy about the idea of buying a new one. I decided it's important to live your values and to support groups that value the things you do.

After ten years of faithful service, last year the time finally came to retire my MacBook. Not many laptops last ten years—not many companies produce a machine as durable and beautiful as Apple does—but, if one was available, I was willing to invest in a machine that might last me through the next ten years. A lot has changed in ten years—for Apple, for Linux and for myself—so I started looking around.

The Situation

Prior to 2006, I had used only Windows. Around that time, there was a lot of anxiety about its upcoming successor to Windows XP, which at the time was code-named Project Longhorn. My colleagues and I all were dreading it. So, rather than go through all that trouble, I switched to Linux.

However, my first experience with Linux was not great. Although 2006 was The Year of the Linux Desktop (I saw headlines on Digg proclaiming it almost every day), I quickly learned, right after wiping my brand-new laptop's hard drive to make way for Fedora, that maybe it wasn't quite The Year of the Linux Laptop. After a desperate and miserable weekend, I finally got my wireless card working, but that initial trauma left me leery. So, about a year later, when I decided to quit my job and try the digital nomad freelance thing, I bought a MacBook. A day spent hunting down driver files or recompiling my kernel was a day not making money. I needed the assurance and convenience Apple was selling. And it proved a great investment.

During the next decade, I dabbled with Linux. Every year seemed to be The Year of the Linux Desktop—the real one, at last—so on my desktop at work (freelancing wasn't fun for long), I installed Ubuntu, then Debian, then FreeBSD. An article in this journal introduced me to tiling window managers in general and DWM in particular. The first time I felt something like disappointment with my MacBook was after using DWM on Debian for the first time.

Through the years, as my MacBook's hardware failures became increasingly inconvenient, and as my personal preference in software shifted from big beautiful graphical applications to small command-line programs, Linux started to look much more appealing. And, Linux's hardware compatibility had expanded—companies had even started selling laptops with Linux already installed—so I felt reasonably sure I wouldn't need to waste another weekend struggling with a broken wireless connection or risk frying my monitor with a misconfigured Xorg.conf.

Go to Full Article

Purism Launches Librem One, a Suite of Privacy-Protecting, No-Track, No-Ad Apps and Services

Bryan Lunduke — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 15:00:07 +0000

by Bryan Lunduke

Some time back, the folks from Purism sent me a question: "Would you like to record some voice-over for a little commercial we're making?"

"Sure," I say. "Why not?"

They give me a script, show me a rough cut of the footage, and I record a few lines. Easy peasy.

The only problem? The commercial was for something that I think is a really great idea. And, the finished commercial gave me a serious case of the giggles. Yet I couldn't tell anyone about it. I was sworn to secrecy.

For a person who runs his mouth for a living, secrecy isn't always so easy. Keeping my big, dumb mouth shut was downright painful. Painful, I say!

Luckily, I can now, as of today, spill the beans without getting into trouble.

Purism has just launched an online service it has dubbed "Librem One", which is, as Purism calls it, a "suite of apps and services designed to provide users with convenient alternatives to Big Tech products".

There are two components of Librem One that are offered free of cost (or, at least, choose your own price): Chat and Social Media.

The chat component—the aptly named "Librem Chat"—is built on Matrix (which I am also a big fan of) and includes end-to-end encrypted text chat plus audio and video chatting. And, since it's built on Matrix, it has access to all the other users on Matrix out there. Which may not be as big of a user pool as, say, Hangouts or something, but the user base is growing. Quickly.

The Social Media component is built using Activity Pub and Mastodon (a federated, free software social network system).

I want to pause right there a moment, because this is really interesting to me.

That means we now have a social media server that is supported via a subscription model. Not advertisements. Not data collection. Subscription. Which, in my opinion, is just a much better way to build a social network that respects user data and privacy.

Plus, this solves one of the biggest problems with picking and utilizing a Mastodon server up until this point—that they've mostly been run by hobbyists in their spare time. Thus, servers could go up or down or lose data at any time (which happened to me more than once). A professionally administered Mastodon social-media server supported as part of a subscription online service? Heck yes.

Then there are the services that aren't part of the free (in cost) tier, the ones you'll need to pay to gain access to: Librem Mail (encrypted email), Librem Tunnel (a VPN service), and, according to the Purism folks, they have plans to add a few additional services to Librem One in the future:

Go to Full Article

Review: the Librem 13v2

Shawn Powers — Thu, 03 May 2018 12:00:00 +0000

by Shawn Powers

The Librem 13—"the first 13-inch ultraportable designed to protect your digital life"—ticks all the boxes, but is it as good in real life as it is on paper?

I don't think we're supposed to call portable computers "laptops" anymore. There's something about them getting too hot to use safely on your lap, so now they're officially called "notebooks" instead. I must be a thrill-seeker though, because I'm writing this review with the Librem 13v2 directly on my lap. I'm wearing pants, but apart from that, I'm risking it all for the collective. The first thing I noticed about the Librem 13? The company refers to it as a laptop. Way to be brave, Purism!

Why the Librem?

I have always been a fan of companies who sell laptops (er, notebooks) pre-installed with Linux, and I've been considering buying a Purism laptop for years. When our very own Kyle Rankin started working for the company, I figured a company smart enough to hire Kyle deserved my business, so I ordered the Librem 13 (Figure 1). And when I ordered it, I discovered I could pay with Bitcoin, which made me even happier!

Figure 1. The 13" Librem 13v2 is the perfect size for taking on the road (photo from Purism)

There are other reasons to choose Purism computers too. The company is extremely focused on privacy, and it goes so far as to have hardware switches that turn off the webcam and WiFi/Bluetooth radios. And because they're designed for open-source operating systems, there's no "Windows" key; instead there's a meta key with a big white rectangle on it, which is called the Purism Key (Figure 2). On top of all those things, the computer itself is rumored to be extremely well built, with all the bells and whistles usually available only on high-end top-tier brands.

Figure 2. No Windows key here! This beats a sticker-covered Windows logo any day (photo from Purism).

My Test Unit

Normally when I review a product, I get whatever standard model the company sends around to reviewers. Since this was going to be my actual daily driver, I ordered what I wanted on it. That meant the following:

Go to Full Article