Mine is a Librem 13 running Qubes with some VMs running Fedora and some Debian. The touchpad gives me a bit of trouble but this shouidn’t affect new buyers because the new Librem 13s are using a touchpad from a different manufacturer. The screws tend to work their way out and have to be tightened roughly every 1.5 months. Otherwise excellent.
Had mine for almost a year now and still love it every day. I travel a lot including to remote communities in the north of Australia (little planes, lots of 4wding, lots of dirt that gets into everything) and am not the gentlest with my gear but it’s stood up well. There’s been some slight rubbing away of the anodized coating on the front right corner where the top and bottom touch but it’s tiny. Haven’t had any screws work their way out.
Other than causing my own software problems, PureOS has been solid too. I generally use an external mouse even when travelling as it’s what I prefer and I haven’t fixed the accidental clicking while typing thing. Perhaps this is not a problem with the new touchpad’s Joe mentioned?
I am very happy with my Librem 15rev2. It has now completely replaced my MacBook Pro, and I use it daily.
I have some problems getting used to the offset keyboard and touchpad due to the extra number block on the right, but I am anyway not a very good typer.
Speaking of screws, I now realize that I already lost two of them: One of the long ones close to one of the rear rubber foot and the long one in the middle! Apparently, those are not interchangeable (I tried to put the remaining one next to the other rubber foot into the middle hole, that didn’t work…). It would be helpful to get the specs of the screws (I know that sounds picky, but now I have to bring my Librem to the shop, because I don’t know what type the middle screw is).
Of course everyone thinks I am using a Mac when they look at the laptop, which is kind of cool.
as a side note, it looks like the screw close to the rear rubber foot is a M2.5 metric one (10mm length?), and the one in the middle is M2 (I used 8mm, 10mm was too long). At least that is what I put now.
Anyway, interesting that the screws are metric.
Thought this information could be useful in case someone else is short of screws for his or her Librem 15rev2.
I’ve received a Librem 15 v3 recently, and so far I’m loving it. There are minor things that require adjustment (gamma in the display, font scaling/smoothing, the trackpad took some getting used to), but overall I’ve gotten things to a good place, and I’m very satisfied with the machine. The hardware works remarkably well, and I’m actually rather surprised by the webcam quality.
Coreboot appears to be in working order, though looking at Coreinfo does not seem to work at this time, and requires some kind of update to fix. Wayland works remarkably well (HD video playback is HUGELY improved), but there appears to be an issue with wacom tablet inputs registering as a second cursor.
Got my Librem 15 rev3 and am very happy with it. I saw all the versions and can say that the team has made improvements along the way with the rev3 being well constructed, quiet, fast and a joy to use. Noticeable differences include (which people are probably familiar with if they read blog posts and discussions) placement of the kill switches (back where rev. 1 had them, under the screen), black case, one SODIMM slot available instead of two (rev 1 and rev 2) and the rest you can read about (DDR4, CPU, etc.). Battery life is great.
EDIT: I forgot to mention: The laptop is very quiet!
I switched to Arch so I can’t speak to PureOS but I did get a total freeze while updating which was slightly concerning.
I recommend the laptop if you want a well constructed laptop with privacy and freedom in mind.
I’ve read everyone’s comment and i see how muc you love it other than the small litte problems. Should i wait for the 13inch i 7 and will the specs be the same in terms of grapics wise for gaming or graphics designing.
And how qpuld u compare librim with other products thats provides which provides security and privacy
Very happy with my Librem 15 v3, which I received (in the UK) just over a month ago and use as my work laptop connected to an HDMI screen and various other peripherals. It is perfect for dev work - 16GB RAM is plenty, and no need for HDD with a 500GB SSD.
When I received it I booted once to PureOS and verified the coreboot config, then repartitioned the disk and set up LUKS on LVM for full disk encryption and installed Arch Linux, which runs very well.
Things I love
Awesome continuing work from Purism on the massive task of freeing all hardware and software in the modern laptop, doing so transparently while still ending up with a beautiful self-contained product.
Case: build quality excellent, ports just right (only one I would add is ethernet, but it would increase case thickness, and an ethernet to USB adapter works fine).
Full keyboard with numpad and arrow keys, rare on laptops.
Kill switches <3
The lack of graphics card means the laptop is lighter, cooler, and much quieter than my colleagues’ MacBook Pros, and since I am not doing heavy graphics work or gaming on this machine it is not missed.
Improvements for the next iteration
As mentioned elsewhere on the forum, there are occasional issues with wifi, typically in poor signal-strength situations or where constant roaming is required. I use a USB wifi dongle at work (my home network works fine with the internal wifi antenna) so this is not an issue for me.
I highly recommend the Librem 15. Regarding @A.production’s question regarding other products, I believe you will have difficulty achieving a similar level of security and privacy in a laptop form factor without downgrading the spec (the “old ThinkPad” option).
Hey Joe, just as an aside if screws keep coming loose you can look into a thread locker. Loctite makes a product (make sure it’s the BLUE one) that helps hold screws in place. may help keep 'em where they belong
@JamesRufer pointed out to me that Brian Fagioli (journalist/reviewer for BetaNews) has published an unboxing/overview of the “out of the box” experience with the Librem 13 v2:
Seconded. You can get it at motoring goods stores that sell car parts and tools. It’s useful stuff. I’ve had the same problem on another brand of laptop before.
I waited 6 month!!! until my purism came. When it came it was broken (screen flickering massive + microphone does not work). Since i am from Austria and need the laptop daily i try to negotiate with the support for a deal where my laptop is not gone for an eternity… for 6 more month, no sucess.
The flickering got so horrible i have to send it in now anyway. It will cost so much valuable time from my master theses.
No i am not happy with my Purism. I deeply regret my choice
I absolutely love my Librem 15 v3! The laptop feels elegant but still robust enough. The display is awesome. Touch pad works good.
I’m not using bluetooth so I don’t know if it functions properly. Wifi is a bit slower than my work laptop (Dell XPS 15) but it runs with open source drivers (which is important for me).
I’m running Debian Buster on it.
I’m very picky when it comes to fan noise so before I bought it, I’ve read this review for the Librem 13 had big doubts…
But I’ve ordered it anyway and I totally disagree with the review (unless Librem 13 is behaving completely different than my 15, which I doubt). The fan does not run most of the time, when it runs, it is really silent and wifi ist really ok.
In my opinion, only weakpoint of this laptop is the keyboard. This is a purely personal thing of course. There are many people who find Librem keyboards even better than a Macbook Pro keyboard, but for me they feel a bit spongy.
