So it appears that the current Librem 13 and 15, v1-4 have a headphone jack rather than a headset jack. I didn’t even realize this until I tried jumping on a call and other people complained about the low mic quality, due to it using the built-in mic rather than my headset mic. You can get around this by using a USB mixer, but for a modern laptop this seems like a surprising and unintuitive design choice.
I guess there’s two parts to this post:
Why does the current and previous versions of the Librem Laptop not support headset mics?
Can this be added for the Librem 13v5 / 15v5?
The Librem Mini appears to have a combo headset jack, so I would assume that there aren’t any FOSS / hardware limitations at least.
Update (2020-05-30): I spoke with Purism support, and they are aware of this issue and intend to correct it for future models. One work-around for this problem that should theoretically work even for Qubes users, is to get a small TRRS/combo-jack-to-usb adapter. Obviously this isn’t ideal, but at least it should be workable while we wait for the 13v5/15v5.
You might be able to use a USB bluetooth dongle and use USB pass-through for Qubes. Obviously not as ideal, but if you’d like to get it working with your current laptop that is one approach.
For example, here’s a low profile bluetooth USB adapter for ~USD$13 - Amazon Link (I realize many people here don’t use Amazon, but you can probably find similar deals with whatever dealer you use. It should be a pretty common device.)
Thanks for the Qubes link, it’s an interesting read. It sounds like they at least have plans for making it secure in the future, using a separate Audio domain.
The odd thing is that the Librem15rev2 actually has a combo jack (at least mine has), but the 15rev3 doesn’t. But I get along with the built-in mic as long as my fans don’t get too noisy.