Yay! I finally got my Librem 14 operating again! I had to install Pure.Os as it was programmed with Quebes, a program I know absolutely nothing about, now I am super green about how to do everything I need to do to make it mine personally. with the platforms I that offer privacy I have been reading a lot about the way it is made and the distributions it works with. My question is how do I get t camera to work in Zoom? I do not have it blocked or anything. Is there something inside the firmware that doesn’t let it communicate with the invasive apps? Just curious if what I am trying to do is A dead END. I do a lot of virtual meetings online. If there are any less invasive apps that allow this type of behavior could someone point me in the right direction? Additionally I cannot get it to recognize my printer. I tried finding and installing drivers for the printer but machine si not having it. I have difficult navigating the recovery shell… any suggestions?
Here.
I am not very interested in troubleshooting anything regarding proprietary software.
Take your time.
I guess the precursor question is: Is the camera working at all?
This is of particular significance with the Librem 14 (and other Purism devices) because there is a physical switch that disables the camera. So have you checked the switch to make sure that the camera is on?
The problem with this question is that in reality in many situations you do not control the choice of meeting platform. Let’s say in a work scenario someone organises a video meeting for a cast of thousands, they aren’t going to change to a more open source-friendly or a more privacy-friendly platform just for you.
Frankly, thank you for your suggestios and your candor.
Irvinewade,
I realize I cannot control meeting grounds most of the time… My camera is not working and I cannot even get it to pull up when i search for it. I am aware of the kill switche in the middle of the keyboard. they are not disabled. Same with printer…it will not show now on a search. It did show once before I updated…but i had it plugged into the computer. Now i plug it in and it is not recognized
Do you have an application like Cheese installed?
When I launch Cheese I get an error “No device found” (which is correct in my environment). What do you get?
Edit: Another thing you can try is:
with the camera switch off, issue the lsusb command
then turn the camera on and reissue the lsusb command
What difference, if any, do you get in the output from lsusb? In other words, does a webcam appear?
Lol I do have Cheese and it does work, thank you! Where has my brain gone?
OK, so that pretty much fault isolates it down to the specific application software (Zoom) that is trying to access the webcam.
Like(?) @FranklyFlawless, I don’t have Zoom installed and will always be trying to avoid installing it, so I can’t help you with Zoom.
You could look to see whether Zoom allows you to configure which webcam device it is using and, if so, whether the (one and only) webcam device shows up as an option to choose? Whether Zoom offers you some kind of test mode where you can at least see what it is seeing? Whether it actually gives you the possibility of placing a test call? And whether you get an error message at any stage?
I must agree with Frankly regarding Zoom and the invasivess of all of those platforms. Not sure I even care to troubleshoot it, lol. Learning and loving it 
Thanks for your replies.
My Librem 14 camera works fine with Zoom (by the way I’m using Qubes OS to isolate Zoom from the rest of my system, so it doesn’t compromise anything).
Can we have two operating systems at once? i did get a usb drive with quebes on it. but now that ive installed pure.os how does that work?
Yes, it is called dual-booting, but that can raise security concerns with Qubes because the other operating system could affect it.
First I have heard of it. Single booting is difficult enough…but perhaps it is worthwhile. It is my understanding this Librem 14 was designed to run quebes…rahter that Pure.os. I think I need to take a class…anyone know of a good one?
The Librem 14 is designed around PureOS first, with Qubes OS a close second.
There are no classes, but there is documentation.
Have fun reading.
Mladen told me my two laptops I purchased were around Quebes he stated was less user friendly than Pure.os. So of course I am wondering if I can do the dual boot thing. I AM determined to learn this thing. I AM grateful for this community and thank you for the tutorial link.
You can use a PureOS live image on a USB drive instead to keep it separate from Qubes OS; that is how I personally manage using them both at the moment.
Good information, thank you
Having Qubes and PureOS is still much more secure than just PureOS. More information about dual booting with Qubes:
What is a good way to learn all of this language I do nit innerstand? Grub,Boot configuration,
The general approach is:
- Enable legacy boot mode
- Ensure current OS boots in legacy mode
- Install Qubes
- Manually add boot stanzas to /etc/grub.d/40_custom
- Update
I assume these commands are performed in the recovery shell?