Taping over the hole is a really ghetto solution for a premium-priced device. The Librem 11 costs $999. The shell should be designed properly to not need that in the first place.
Supposedly, the entire point of Purism’s business is privacy and security, yet the number 1 privacy and security problems on these devices seem to have been completely overlooked.
(while I don’t speak for Purism) Yes.
Looking specifically at the Librem 5 (the phone) …
I want WiFi. I just want to be able to kill it in hardware. For example, always on at home, always off outside the home.
Likewise I want the main camera. I just want it to be under my control. (I could probably do without the selfie camera.)
The WiFi card is in a general purpose slot. So you can remove the card and reuse the slot for another card that maybe is something that you want. Or just leave the slot empty. It’s quite normal (and generally useful) for computers to have empty slots for future expansion.
In the case of the Librem 5 though, removing the WiFi card would raise questions of how you want the phone ever to communicate with other devices that you own or whether you want that. Maybe you could expand on what your requirements are.
Looking specifically at the Librem 14, the WiFi is most certainly not mandatory. When you order it, the order page contains a pulldown menu for WiFi with the two choices being “No wireless” and “Wireless”. It does appear to default to “Wireless”. The Librem 14 comes as standard with an ethernet port, so for some use cases not having WiFi could make sense.
Yes, choosing not to have the WiFi card will probably leave a slot free for expansion that you could use for some other more useful (to you) device.
For either the Librem 5 or the Librem 14, the empty WiFi slot will be completely invisible to you and so there is nothing to cover over.
I’m not aware of holes related to the wifi. I’m assuming the wifi is all on the inside. The holes problem is about the cameras. As for what I’m looking to use my devices for: drawing, reading/writing, watching movies, light gaming. None of it requires communicating with other devices while I’m on the go and none of it requires a camera.
I am unaware of a modern device that has touch and screen size suitable for drawing, reading/writing, watching movies, and light gaming without being in the tablet format, which usually includes cameras and WiFi. It might be worth looking at separating those functions on to more than one device.
For instance, drawing, reading and writing could be on an e-ink device like the Supernote. The watching movies and light gaming could possibly be done on a netbook from the olden days.
If you’re really dedicated to using a modern device, the Librem 5 and 14 have their CAD designs published as open source, so you or someone you know can redesign the shell to meet your needs. However, it would be up to you to move all the guts over to the new shell, and risk putting it back together incorrectly.
For both the Librem 5 and Librem 14, you can hardware kill the camera. In that situation, what is the difference between having a hardware-killed camera and having no camera?
In any case, that is the approach taken. The camera is present for those that do really want it and use it - and the camera can be hardware killed for those that don’t want it.
The camera is not an easily removable module, unlike the WiFi card, although I guess if you are dead set that you didn’t want a camera then you could open the device up and snip a cable to the camera - so the camera lens is still present (and hence not leaving a hole in the shell) but the camera is guaranteed non-functional.
Yes!!!
Purism needs more customers than those who don’t want a camera or wifi.
My Librem 5 is using an elegant 3D-printed version of the back plate made from nylon. It was custom made for $70 by some company online using their 3D-print service. You could custom make one with the hole for the camera removed. Then there would be no hole, and it would be completely covered over.
As far as WiFi, removing that won’t even leave any marks. It is designed to be removable. Unlike the camera, the WiFi is extremely easy to remove and is in the removable section on the back.
Given that the main design is to have hardware switches to turn off cameras and wifi – at least if you trust those switches – then I would tend to want to assume your complaints are mostly not really a major concern and are easily resolvable for the Librem 5.
Even though they are not easily resolvable on other “phone” devices in today’s society.
I should think that difference speaks volumes.
Yes, the Librem 11 is a tablet. Why does it need cameras and wifi? And if it’s so easy to redesign the shell, why can’t Purism do so? The Librem 11 is $999. If I’m paying a premium, I expect it to at least do the basic thing it is advertised to do (be good for privacy and security), without me having to put an ugly piece of tape on it, and without redesigning the shell myself and taking the risk of destroying the device.
Drawing on a Supernote would only work for black and white drawings. Netbooks also come with cameras, so that’s not a solution either.
I think some of the people in this thread thought you were talking about Librem 5’s, not Librem 11s. Me included.
Yeah, I don’t know what’s up with Librem 11’s, I didn’t buy one of those. No hardware shut off switches for the camera/mic/wifi. Not standard of Purism. Probably just an effort to make money off of people who were previously addicted to iPad and want to feel some sort of escape by running Linux.
Edit 2:
@fish have you considered that you could buy a Librem 5 and a lapdock and maybe have a similar touch screen experience powered by Phosh and PureOS, but from a device with hardware switches?
I thought that seemed cool, but when I ordered a lapdock Purism never shipped it to me. So I ordered one from the NEX website, but it was not a privacy oriented version. The one they sent me has bluetooth and wifi built in and no obvious mechanism to toggle it off.
But if Purism’s lapdocks are better and wired only - and I don’t know if they are – they might be a good touch interface for a freedom respecting system, which could then also detach and be a phone. If you had that, I don’t really know why you would also want a Librem 11.
They are wired only:
The other thing I could recommend for Librem 11 is opening it up and disconnecting the wires to the camera, microphone. The cameras will still be there, so there is no hole being left behind, but at least you have the piece of mind there is no power to any of those hardware pieces.
Edit: And disconnecting the WiFi as well. I do not think the Librem 11, was designed to be as modular as the Librem 5.
Maybe you want the horsepower of the Librem 11 compared with the Librem 5.
I had never heard of lapdocks before. They seem very useful! Assuming the lapdock itself doesn’t have spy features, I could even hook one up to a single board computer.
Sure, but I can do that with literally any device from any company. Why pay $999 for a fake “privacy device” that has to be hardware modded by the user first, with the risk of breaking it?
Unfortunately the trend in lapdocks seems to be towards “mandatory WiFi”. So you would be looking for a model that does not have wireless display support. (I guess wireless charging is harmless, even though you wouldn’t be able to use wireless charging with the Librem 5 anyway.)
This topic got me thinking… My Lenovo ThinkPad touch version from 2013 running PureOS has better performance than Librem 5 in OpenGL games I wrote, and has a physical switch to disable WiFi. It’s definitely not as powerful/capable as my newer Librem 14, but it’s still pretty good. Also has an easily removable battery.
Makes the Librem 11 a hard sell for me, given that old machine has a touch screen and pen and can swivel the screen around to become a tablet. Seems like L11 pays a hefty price for being “as flat as an iPad” in my biased eyes, but obviously a Lenovo is a China-based machine and not a privacy conscious type of thing. I think mine might be the generation where the hardware watches for a Windows filesystem on the hard drive, and if it finds one edits the drive contents to emplace its own applications/“firmware.” As a result there was always a hotkey on Windows 8/10 that causes a driver crash and freezes the mouse, then creates a crash dump text file in Documents and shows a ghetto Windows-XP looking popup with an error. (It was built for Win7) No idea if/what it does to Linux systems. They worked mostly without issue for me but it could’ve been hiding something. So this isn’t really an endorsement of Lenovo. But the hardware has some of the advantages of Purism things despite being 11 years old.
If you don’t want the features, don’t buy the product and go find another product.
True, the same applies to any modern tablet. One argument to be made for the higher price is the software, but any x86 tablet can run pretty much any distro you want.
I do wish you the best of luck in your search. If you end up finding something can you please post an update in case there are others who are looking for something similar?
If you make your whole brand about privacy and security, you should expect to be trashed for not even remotely living up to that.
There is a difference though. Nobody is buying those other tablets specifically for privacy and security. Most of them also cost between $100-$500, some of them a bit more. They don’t cost almost a thousand dollars. So this sounds very much like privacy washing to me.
How many tablets are x68 vs ARM I don’t know, but I don’t think that matters too much these days. If you intend to use Linux, most of the software will probably be open source and/or available for both x86 and ARM.
Thanks. Sure will.
The Librem phones and laptops have separate physical switches that remove power from the camera(s) and wifi card. The laptops can be ordered without a wifi card installed.
The tablet is a sealed generic that was rushed to market for cash flow purposes so there are not as mant layers to ensure privacy respect.
I think the OP’s criticism is fair for the Librem 11 and off the mark for all other devices - hence why this topic ended up in the Librem 11 category after starting life in the wrong category.
I have my doubts that a tablet without any WiFi at all is around, since tablets are generally expected to be portable devices. For sure, if you were desperate, you could use a USB ethernet dongle to get on the network when you need to be on the network, and stay off the network otherwise. Another option might be a tablet that has mobile network support and no direct LAN support at all - but that certainly wouldn’t suit my use case (it would just be extra hassle to connect to my LAN from outside - and wouldn’t meet my privacy requirements).