Well, this, I whink would be even better, I’m definitely not against this. I’ve just seen aome discussions above in favor of non-free wifi.
And this, I think, is totally wrong, at least in this generality. By far not all “new tech” should be preferred over the old tech. This is where purism began: by far not all modern intel CPUs should be preferred over the old ME-less versions, most of the mewly available intel CPUs have ME, and therefore are worse than the old pones. Similarly, (at least almost) all SSDs by construction suffer from severe reliability issues, their very physical construction does not allow you to write in the same physical sector more that ca. 1000 times. And this is becoming only worse with new drives, with the increasing number of *LC. If purism can include an SSD that is free of these issues, I would be happy with it. But I don’t think such a thing exists.
Sure, maintaining old tech when the “new” tech doesn’t provide any advantage. But preferring old tech to new tech despite the advantages is what I’m talking about. Otherwise we keep going down that rabbit hole until we reach the ultimate digital security and don’t use any computer at all.
Let’s keep the baby and just get rid of the bath water. That is the point of Purism and the reason they market it as a modern laptop.
Regarding your critique of the drives, I’ve yet to have any but a crappy Corsair ssd fail on me. Such is the case that even if they did the speed benefits alone would still make them worth it.
I’m sure there is ample room in the Librem 15 for sata, but for the Librem 13 it is better off without one & simply have 2 SSDs instead. Both HDDs & SSDs die eventually let’s not forget that, but if one is worried about endurance, one can always just go for a higher capacity MLC SSD , other than that, it is very important to remember that apart from the glaring difference in speed, SSDs offer better security overall because they are less prone to damage/corruption from impact & EM radiation, HDDs also opens up an avenue for acoustic side channel attacks(leaks) even if the device is airgapped (yes even if you turn off your wifi/blutooth/camera/mic).
True, there is a very easy solution if you want a lower ppi, but if you want a higher ppi – ZERO, you will need to plug your laptop to a high ppi display, so Librem laptops might as well have the higher ppi, although I’m not against Purism offering configurable screen options, that would satisfy both of us (I certainly want a high ppi screen).
I’m not so sure you can actually have any real privacy & security with a closed source software & hardware; it might be possible with a formally verified software & hardware but then the designers/verifiers can always hide parts of the specification sheet from the public or even issue a limited specification sheet to the verifiers(more sinister). There is actually more conflicts of interest between these big name pc makers & retail customers than you actually realise.
More importantly though, in the long run if we want better software, hardware, performance etc it is important to remember that closed source software & hardware actually slow the progress of things, can you imagine a world without any FOSS software, no Linux, no LLVM or GCC, no git, just to name a few things that actually accelerate software development & slash cost & make the world less Orwellian.
The good thing though is that there is no shortage of options if this is not what you want, there is HP’s Elite & Z series, Lenovo Thinkpads, Dell Latitudes & Precision notebooks, these lines are well made & have very good support, they’re all x86, and they supposedly offer more “security” features (*wink *wink) compared to the average notebook.
Yep that is the crux of the argument, only as discussed before, unless YOU, and YOU ALONE, are an engineer and can understand all of the code that is part of your system, then the argument is no different than for that on a closed source system, because it all boils down to trust.
I also disagree with your premise of software being slowed because of the closed source nature. Reality would seem to disagree. The vast majority of open source projects are amaturish and incomplete, light years behind in terms of design and features. If what you are saying was true, than the open source community would have superior software by now, and yet, they do not. Absolutely do not.
If the world was different and didn’t run the way it does, then sure, open source could be very useful in breeding innovation.
Because the world is the way it is, the vast majority of programmers (myself included) work on closed source projects.
Like I said, as a voluntary measure, open source is fantastic. The second someone says it is unethical to make closed source, is where I 100% disagree and scream hypocrite!
I used laptops with 1920×1200 since year 2004 and am not interested in anything lower. I do not demand anything higher either although I would not mind.
I am a little confused. I am telling you what the current situation with WiFi is. I believe that the current situation with WiFi will not change in the v5 laptops.
Basically all Intel CPUs released in the last 12 years have the homunculus CPU (Intel ME).
Technically you are correct that, therefore, a really old Intel CPU is better than a current Intel CPU - but it also illustrates the trade-off. It is only better in one aspect. It is surely worse in all other aspects.
As a comparison with SSDs, I think it falls down. I would much rather have the latest fastest biggest baddest Intel CPU, with the homunculus CPU disabled as far as is possible, than to have to use a 12 year old CPU.
The potential issues with SSDs are well known.
If we were talking about a server running a database doing 1000 transactions a second then fine but for a laptop, 1000 times total writes would be good going. With a decent SSD controller doing wear leveling and assuming that you monitor the health and utilisation of your SSD, it’s just not that big a deal. (For example, I just checked my home server and at current rates the SSD might die after 100 years. I reckon that both I and the server itself will die before that - as well as the fact that all of the server hardware will be completely obsolete long before that.)
Of perhaps greater concern is the inability to do a secure erase on an SSD when it is retired.
the way this rings in my mind is like so: “let’s keep BOTH as CHOICES for people but STOP infusing trillions of fiat currency into closed-source software for big-tech/gov abuse”
Purism already has a good solution for 802.11n on the Librem 5 with the Redpine Signals RS9116 via USB 2.0 on an M.2 card. I assume that this was a custom order, because I can’t find it for sale anywhere else.
Here are Purism’s options:
Keep using crappy Atheros WiFi/BT (costs less and less work for Purism).
Change the Intel reference board design from miniPCIe to M.2, so it can use that same WiFi/BT M.2 card in the Librem 13/15 v5 as the Librem 5 (more work for Purism and M.2 is more expensive).
Do a custom order for the RS9116 on a mPCIe card (which is more expensive). The mPCIe standard supports USB 2.0, so I assume this should be able to work with the Intel reference board design.
I am predicting this option - that’s what I was saying, not because I think it is the best - and I am completely OK with being wrong in my prediction.
Would be happier with this option after it has been tested in a wide variety of real customer environments i.e. once Evergreen has shipped.
Also, USB 2.0 is a bit slow for recent WiFi generations, or even for 802.11n ! You might get away with that on a phone because its overall capacity to do anything with data at that rate is more limited than an x86 laptop.
In other words, what you really want is 802.11ac via USB 3.0 on an M.2 card that doesn’t require blobware.
If the really high-end CPU was an option, I would be buying straight away. I was thinking something like this:
And also: some nice GPU wouldn’t hurt either. I know that the proprietary driver comes with a binary blob, but that’s users’ discretion to install it or not.
I would be using it the same way I do now on my desktop: I run fedora on the host which is using the integrated video card and doesn’t touch the dedicated GPU. And I use two virtual machines: a fedora VM for tensorflow, and a windows vm for gaming. Both accessing the GPU using VT-d.
I think going for the highest end CPU/GPU that does not have binary blobs would be ideal. One of the primary selling points of Purism laptops is that they ship with ME disabled and open source drivers. That said, the 13 and 15 are on the high-end scale of laptop prices, so having a few extra hundred dollars on the base price would make sense if it would mean a significant power upgrade for the laptops overall.
