I currently own a Librem15v3. It’s served me fairly well for 5+ years, and now I am in the market for a new laptop. I’m looking at the Librem14. My question is this… in my current Librem15v3 I have an M.2 NVMe storage (stick) and a 2.5" SATA SSD. I boot different-purpose OSes on the two medias. I want to retain that functionality… Can the Librem14 host more than one storage block device? I don’t necessarily need an M.2 and an SSD, it could be two M.2 devices. I just want to know if I can boot from two separate block devices with the Librem14.
You can use two M.2 SSDs with the 3-cell battery. (The 4-cell battery physically blocks one socket.)
coreboot/SeaBIOS is better at booting two OSes on two SSDs than PureBoot currently, since PureBoot wants a single /boot partition. We ship PureBoot on all devices now, but you can switch with coreboot_util.sh, and coreboot/SeaBIOS is supported.
If one or both OSes will be PureOS, and you get the standard ax201 Wi-Fi card, you’ll need to copy the device firmware files to /lib/firmware in order to use Wi-Fi with SeaBIOS: blobs/librem_jail/librem_14 · purism_next · firmware / PureBoot · GitLab. Almost all other OSes provide device firmware, so you only need this for PureOS or a few other distributions that do not provide it.
OK, this is helpful, thanks. Is there any downside to using coreboot/SeaBIOS? Am I at risk of running out of support if I do so (say, within 5 years)?
I assume that my available time on battery power will be reduced (by 25%?) with the 3-cell?
“and you get the standard ax201 Wi-Fi card”
is there a chance that I wouldn’t get that chipset? I don’t see a choice in the configurator?
Another question occurred to me… One downer on the 15v3 was the inability to get a replacement battery. Should I consider getting a second battery with the original purchase of a Librem14 to avoid this situation in the future? Or, will Purism commit to stocking those adequately? This would be for the 3-cell battery.
Also, what is the difference between NVMe and NVMe Pro? Will I get more total writes before the device goes read-only? If so, how much more?
coreboot/SeaBIOS doesn’t have any of the boot security features of PureBoot (may or may not be relevant to you) and doesn’t provide ax201 device firmware for PureOS.
I don’t have any plans to deprecate SeaBIOS. Distributions have been discussing deprecating BIOS boot, but to my knowledge none have done so yet, and of course some will be faster/slower at deprecations than others. Optimistically, I’d hope that by that time we have filled in the few remaining gaps between PureBoot and SeaBIOS, so you could switch to PureBoot at that point
Yes, exactly.
It’s always ax201 if you get our Wi-Fi card, perhaps I could have phrased more clearly The only other choice is No Wireless - you don’t get a Wi-Fi card. You could provide your own or not use Wi-Fi if you don’t need it, though most laptop users probably want Wi-Fi All modern cards will require the OS to provide device firmware. The last card that stored firmware on the card’s ROM was ath9k, which tops out at 802.11n and is difficult to find these days, as it has been discontinued for some time.
This is a bit outside my normal area of responsibilities, so I suppose I can’t make a commitment like this. It’s difficult to predict future availability of anything from years away. For comparison, Librem 13 batteries are still available, but Librem 15 batteries aren’t. Sorry I can’t be more helpful here, maybe that helps you balance the decision a bit.
I’ve reached out internally for some more clarification here too and will follow up, did not want to delay the other answers
you can see the difference here between the nvme and the nvme pro.
My suggestion to you is to buy from an online retailer and then replace the included ssd because their ssds are insanely expensive, you can find 1 TB ssd with the same read and write speed from Samsung for 500$ less.
International air carriers are becoming more difficult about shipping batteries in isolation. If you are in the US then you can ignore this point. If you are outside the US then this point tends to suggest that ordering a spare battery at the time of order can be a good idea.
If you keep a spare battery then you must give it appropriate care and feeding. Otherwise by the time the original battery is no longer performing adequately, you may find that the spare battery has also degraded significantly.
This also leads into
Disclaimer: I have no association with Purism. These are my thoughts, not theirs.
Purism can’t stock an unlimited number of batteries (for the above reason) - but if Purism doesn’t stock an unlimited number of batteries then, since Purism doesn’t actually manufacture any batteries, Purism will be out of stock eventually if/when the manufacturer ceases that model - and that is something that is beyond Purism’s control.
Purism can’t stock an unlimited number of batteries (for the above reason)
I get it… maybe a better question is, is the included battery a type that is common enough to reasonably expect that they will be manufactured for the next ~5 years? I recognize that may be difficult/impossible to answer as well…
OK, the delay in answer makes me think that it’s a hard question to answer… and that’s OK. I went ahead and ordered a Librem 14. On this battery question (and the issue I faced with the Librem 15), does Purism become aware when batteries are becoming harder to source? If so, will they try to let me/us know so that we can get one in the market before they become unavailable?
My thought is, 3-4 years down the road, the included battery type might be starting to become scarce, but my battery still has a couple years of life left… I think this happened with the Librem 15, and if I would’ve realized that supplies were getting tight and maybe soon impossible, I would’ve gone ahead an bought a new battery (even though I technically didn’t need one at that time).
I hope I make sense, and that you consider this plea…
I think it’s going to be hard for any of us to go on record with a concrete answer here because there are simply too many possibilities between us and suppliers. We like to make parts available as much as we can, but nothing can be provided forever. We want to know the future availability of the parts we offer for our own purposes too, but nothing can be predicted with perfect certainty.
From an outside perspective, one thing you could see is changes to our product offerings. For example, the Librem 13 and 15 went through several iterations with the same batteries. The Librem 14 uses a different battery, and at some point we no longer had Librem 15 spare batteries available.
I don’t really have any more information on this to provide, but that’s one thing you could watch for even if no other information is available.
All modern cards will require the OS to provide device firmware. The last card that stored firmware on the card’s ROM was ath9k, which tops out at 802.11n and is difficult to find these days, as it has been discontinued for some time.