Librem 14 will begin shipping in December with all backorders shipped in January and reaching shipping parity in February.
While our plan was to be able to start shipping devices early Q4, which would be about now, a couple of recent industry-wide developments caused a few delays. We are at least as disappointed as you are, but on the other hand we also do not want to rush some half-baked solution forward but instead want to stay focused on what we planned—making the ideal laptop—because we are convinced that this is what we all want.
With this new Librem 14 we want to implement a lot in the EC on our own and invested a lot in getting all the necessary tools for doing so. This work is proceeding rapidly and we are very happy that we can finally do it! The EC firmware is usually a pretty closed thing but now we can change it and eventually also free it , albeit this will probably come in a second step later since we are continuing to work on it as our goal!
Now this is something very positive! Are there any plans to also free the EC firmware for previous laptop models?
I can’t speak for “plans” but if it’s a different EC then it may be a lot of extra work, if even possible, to retrofit such a change to earlier models.
no. Prior Librem models use a different EC, from a different ODM, with completely different firmware (for which we don’t have the source). It would require a pretty massive reverse-engineering effort for which we just don’t have the resources.
Any updates as to when shipping email notifications will begin to go out, similar to L5 shipping emails? And are we still on schedule for mid December?
No updates/changes since the post last week. While we are super busy with Librem 5 posts this week, we might be able to squeeze a Librem 14 update with pictures next week.
