Introducing the Librem 11

General Announcements
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  1. " Bluetooth: Intel 9460, Bluetooth 5". Does this mean Bluetooth won’t work out of the box and will only work with the addition of non-free firmware? (it looks like for Debian, 9460 support is in the non-free firmware-iwlwifi package), or use of a dongle?

  2. “Pureboot (Coreboot + Heads)”. Does this mean a Librem Key is required? It’s not mentioned anywhere in the Librem 11 description or offered as an option on the Librem 11 page in the store, so maybe not.

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Quite likely. (Although it’s odd they don’t mention that, but mention the missing fprint support)

Quite unlikely. Have a look at Introducing PureBoot Basic – Purism
Related: Boot and BIOS Archives – Purism and the latest (not properly tagged) PureBoot 28 - Upstreaming and Upscaling – Purism

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Many people consider biometrics to be a pretty sketchy security choice. If it’s an option then all good. If you want it, you get it. I wouldn’t get it for my own use.

That would be barely legal in the EU though? so not a good long term option? and not convenient for a smaller company that doesn’t want to have to have an EU model as distinct from a rest-of-world model?

You will note today that Apple released the iPhone 15 as the first iPhone to feature USB-C charging, as mandated by EU regulators (with effect from 2024). I am pretty sure the same regulations apply to tablets as phones.

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If Purism wanted Big Money Flow would make Librem 5 Fir with a Fancy Desing plus an improved powersave hardware instead of this poor Tablet.IMHO.
As Purism is the creator of the best Gnu+Linux mobile device to date and there is no other device on the market like Librem 5. PinephoneS it’s a cheap joke.

Los pinephones son una broma barata :wink: yo tengo 2 pinephones incluyendo el pro y sé lo que estoy diciendo, actualmente la gestión de energia del Librem 5 es buena, pero todavia le faltan algunas habilitaciones que mejorarán más el aspecto energético, lo cual en mi humilde opinión el L5 por Purism_HKS es lo mejor.

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My guess would be that.

It says that the storage is a Kingston KC3000, which is just a vanilla M.2 2280 NVMe drive. So if you can get in to the drive at all, I would expect that you can upgrade it to any M.2 2280 NVMe drive with an unplug from the M.2 slot / plug (provided that the new drive is supported by Linux and by Pureboot).

… which raises the obvious question: can it boot from a USB port? (for when that upgrade doesn’t quite go as expected :slightly_smiling_face:)

Regardless though 1 TB is a pretty generous allocation. In this day and age, that seems more than enough (where a lot of stuff is stored on a server / in the cloud). I wouldn’t see myself upgrading the storage. With that in mind I wondered whether the µSD card reader is really needed. To be honest, the price was a pleasant surprise - otherwise I would be complaining that they over-specced the storage. :slight_smile:

At this stage though the product is crying out for a FAQ, for all those unanswered questions so far …

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I noticed another odd detail about the drive in regards to the CPU: the Intel N5100 only supports up to PCIe 3.0, so it seems like the Kingston KC3000 is a significant value-added product.

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Good pickup.

PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives are slowly disappearing. Maybe it was just easier to go with PCIe 4.0 even though the chipset can’t take advantage of the extra speed.

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To be clear, this is probably a product in the category of their Mini. By that I mean that it’s probably just a rebranded generic Chinese tablet with the BIOS replaced with Pureboot and the OS replaced with PureOS.

Compare this with what was being speculated by their CTO, Nicole Faerber, in March 2021 ( Is it in plan to have tablets as well - #5 by kieran ).

Also, I’m not sure whether the firmware for the wifi+bt card is Free. People on the Debian forums seemed to think it requires non-Free firmware. intel wifi 6 ax201 - Debian User Forums

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The Librem 14 and Mini still use OEM/consumer PCIe 3.0 drives, and as far as I am aware, they are not being upgraded to PCIe 4.0 drives anytime soon; there should be no justification for the Librem 11 to use PCIe 4.0 drives except for value-added purposes.

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tl;dr There are no HKS and the back is glued.

From community/general:

Currently, the battery will give around 3 hours of browsing usage and 24h in suspend. Just like with the phone, battery life is a work in progress and Jonathon Hall is optimistic that this can be improved.

The HKS was my main question. I would guess th ebattery is user servicable,

In this first iteration, we focused more on the components inside than on the chassis itself, which is why there are those logos in the back. Therefore, there are no HKS and the back is not really removable. It is glued so you can remove it but may damage it. Things become serviceable inside when the back is removed. The RAM is soldered but the drive is an NVMe card that can be replaced. Not fully sure about the battery, but I think it is removable too.

Some solutions may come up to redo a Librem 11 back with a 3D printer

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Thanks for the info! What material is the back made out of currently?

I don’t have a unit with me right now but I believe it is made of soft plastic. So if you peal it off it may keep a curly shape

It is disappointing but the tablet looks pretty good specs-wise. I will probably get this after seeing people’s impressions of it when they get theirs. I still want to vote with my wallet because I think a Linux tablet is good and after seeing other attempts like the JingPad fail, I’m hoping this one doesn’t so that they can iterate on it.

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Did that fail? What happened?

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You can read more details here:

I think most issue they made was closing down their operating system JingOS (you couldn’t even flash it without their software which was Windows-only and required keys which they didn’t provide before vanishing). I think the suggestion in the blog that their prices were too high doesn’t make as much sense when you consider they needed money for the hardware cost as well as funding the software development.

I think they overestimated the market for this kind of device. After all tablets are more niche than phones. So it would probably have been much easier to use existing software and just supply the hardware with that, similar to what Pine64 offers.

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That’s terrible.

Is there any information on how long it takes to completely boot from power off state?

Also, is suspend to disk supported and reliable, and how long does resume take?

24 hours on suspend does not come close to suitable for my expected use cases, especially since it would be at best 16 hours after an hour of use and 8 hours after 2 hours of use…

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That is sad.

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Yeah Looks like a generic chinese tablet.

Yeah i guess it is a super closed firmware and driver like Linux os, like windows like android :wink:

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My thoughts, with the obvious disclaimer that I don’t have one, and nor does anyone else in this topic.

This product isn’t what I was expecting. What I was expecting was a tablet that is an evolution of the phone. What this looks more like is a laptop i.e. extending the laptop range downwards to produce a device that can also operate like a tablet, rather than extending the phone range upwards. Not being what I was expecting is of course not an actual problem.

Comments on the specs:

  • CPU - reasonable, I speculate that the performance will be like a low-end laptop and much better than the performance of the phone - that of course can impact on time between charges
  • RAM - good, for most use cases 8 GB is a good amount (I’m not worried that it’s soldered - it’s soldered in the Librem 5 - and that’s just a design trade-off that is unavoidable)
  • storage - excellent, very generous (and should be upgradable with some difficulty) - uSD card reader seems unnecessary
  • screen - reasonable, I would have preferred 16:9 aspect ratio (rather than 16:10) but that’s a minor quibble
  • WiFi - likely to perform much better than Purism’s current offerings but question marks over blob status
  • rear camera - 5Mpx is underwhelming - that is much less than the phone and is also less than my vintage digital camera - admittedly though image quality is not only about resolution (and, again, I would have preferred a 16:9 aspect ratio, rather than here 4:3)
  • USB ports - good
  • price - a pleasant surprise
  • appearance - good
  • fingerprint reader - bad

I would be curious as to whether the product resulted from the resurrection of the original tablet project (with presumably updated hardware specs, given the passage of time) or whether they basically started with a clean slate.

I was always on the fence about whether the tablet should or should not contain a cellular modem. It seems they have come down on the “no” side (with the benefits that flow from that). That could be OK if using a phone as a hotspot. I assume that someone has verified that the tablet plays nicely with the Librem 5 in that use case (and presumably the tablet can use any smartphone as a hotspot, assuming the phone has that capability at all i.e. doesn’t have to be the Librem 5).

There are lots of unknowns, most for Purism to answer:

  • what is the battery capacity?
  • is it removable? i.e. replaceable?
  • what is the typical time between charges?
  • are there hardware kill switches?
  • what is the blob status? particularly for WiFi and Bluetooth? but also some of the other components?
  • what is the audio quality like? I quite like the audio quality on the phone (using headphones). Will the tablet be on a par with that? better? worse?
  • is there GPS? I like GPS because it allows photos to be geotagged automatically.
  • how is it charged? does it come with a charger? what are the power requirements if it doesn’t come with a charger and you are expected to use a random existing USB-C charger?
  • can it actually support three displays in total? (the built-in display and two external)
  • what is IME status?
  • confirm Librem Key not strictly required? but supported if you have one for it?
  • can it boot from a USB port?

The WiFi is particularly a concern given the combination of no kill switch and possibly using a blob - and also this is an Intel CPU that has built-in WiFi MAC layer. Is that being used or does the separate WiFi card do both MAC and PHY autonomously i.e. independently of the CPU?

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With todays state of ARM and RISC-V processors I find the choice for an Intel N5100 disappointing. I’d rather support small and libre tech with my money.

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As I implied, I was expecting ARM. One reason why I only rated it as “reasonable”. It is difficult for me to think that there is any escape from the Intel blackbox and, if anything, it is getting worse. So I would prefer development elsewhere.

Maybe on balance you think my rating of “reasonable” is an exaggeration and that I should have written “disappointing”. Fair enough. :wink: We’re all just commenting on a device that we don’t have and without access to Purism’s reasoning for their choices.

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None, based on this quote earlier in the thread by François Téchené.

Disabled, based on the product page in the web shop.

The Librem Key is never required for PureBoot regardless of which variant, as you can always bypass warnings. The Librem 11 is claimed to support the Librem Key, but it is not explained how: they use different USB ports (USB-A against USB-C).

Go do it then, it exists over on PINE64 with the PINETAB2 and PINETAB-V.

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Even though I’m not interested in a tablet right now, I thought I’d share some things here.

Facts:

Assuming the 2560×1600 display (16:10 aspect ratio) is exactly 11.5 inches diagnally,

  • the dimensions of the display are approximately 9.752×6.095 inches

  • the display has approximately 262.5 pixels per inch (ppi)

I don’t know if anyone really needed to know that, but there it is.

Observations:

  • Purism announced their new Librem 11 tablet on the same day as the latest Apple event.

  • Purism has not yet shared full details and photos of the new Librem 11 tablet.

Speculations:

  • Purism may have intentionally announced and released the Librem 11 on the same day as the latest Apple event in order for this to be a “quiet release” of their latest new product.

  • Purism may want this to be a “quiet release” in order to not draw much attention to the new device, since it is lacking the major features and acheivements of their flagship Librem 5 and Librem 14 devices (custom design, killswitches, removeable battery, and removeable/upgradeable Wifi/Bluetooth).

Opinions:

If I were interested in a tablet, I would definitely prefer the Librem 11 to anything else that currently exists for a few reasons:

  • PureBoot

  • Intel Management Engine (IME) disabled

  • 1Terabyte (1TB) NVME SSD Storage

  • Detachable Keyboard Case and Stylus included

  • Free Open Source Software Operating System (FOSS OS)

  • Funds from device sales support FOSS software development

  • Similar dimensions, resolution, ppi, stylus, and keyboard case to Apple iPads without coming preinstalled with malware like Apple iPads

  • Librem 11 (1TB) + Keyboard Case + Stylus: (about half the price of the most similar iPad) = $999

  • Apple iPad (1TB) + Keyboard Case + Stylus: $1499 + ($179 or $299) + $129 = $1807 or $1927

Questions:

  • Does the Librem 11 run phosh or GNOME Desktop Environment?

  • What is behind the removeable “OLED inside” back plate? Anything removeable like SSD or Wifi/Bluetooth?

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