This is my first post in the forum. In fact, I am a long time MacBook pro user (11 years), but this will not be the case any more as am moving towards open source and free software community for many obvious reasons that won’t surprise you here in the forum. Therefore, I am planning to buy a new Librem 13, or maybe 15 yet to make a final decision, but most probably 13 I just want to know if the new Librem 13 v3 is coming out soon so I can wait to buy the new version. Is there any fixed release date of the new laptop ?
I have also two questions to ask as this is the best place to get the exact answer, and I would appreciate your reply.
Is it possible to have a two language layouts on the keyboard, for instance English/Arabic, this would be perfect because I am a heavy writer and I go consistently from English to Arabic. If this is not available, do you recommend any available alternatives, for example a specific transparent sheet that correspond to the design of Librem that goes on top of the keyboard.
I would like also to know if you sell a separate external CD/DVD reader that I can order with the laptop ?
There’s certainly no fixed date that I’m aware of.
At the very least, I doubt Purism would bother releasing a new model until Intel puts out chips that don’t have the Meltdown/Spectre vulnerabilities, hardware-level. That should be later this year.
Can’t answer the rest since I don’t yet have a Purism device. I too am waiting for a new revision.
That being said - I would think the keyboard layout thing would depend on the OS and not the hardware. You can look into PureOS and see if you can get any info on that.
If it doesn’t, maybe look to find a Linux distro that does.
Though that’s a very basic feature in most operating systems. I’d doubt PureOS doesn’t allow you to…
If this is not available, do you recommend any available alternatives, for example a specific transparent sheet that correspond to the design of Librem that goes on top of the keyboard.
Ohhhhh… you want to actually change the hardware keys too huh? Yeah I wouldn’t know about all that.
I would like also to know if you sell a separate external CD/DVD reader that I can order with the laptop ?
They don’t. I’m pretty sure the Librems are the only thing they do. They don’t sell peripherals or anything else. They’re basically just a little startup company that focuses on making privacy-focused computers.
If I were you I’d just get a USB keyboard to plug-in to the Purism laptop and use that when you want to switch keyboard layout. I mean what do you currently do for this issue? Lol.
I just received my Librem 13 about a month ago, and it clearly says “Purism Librem 13 Version 3” on the bottom. So…do I have a Version 3 or is mine a Version 2 that’s been incorrectly labeled?
I don’t remember offhand, but I think Librem 13v2 vs Librem 13v3 doesn’t have any hardware changes. I think the difference in versioning was because the v3s shipped with Coreboot pre-installed, while the v2s didn’t. But I might be wrong on this one.
In some forum post several weeks ago, I read something that gave me that impression, but I have no idea which post, and so I’m not 100% sure if that’s correct.
Librem 13v3 has an i7 cpu (Librem 13v2 has i5). We decided to bump hardware version when we introduced L13 with i7 cpu to bring version numbers up to par with Librem 15.
I definitely have a Libreb 13v3 as I have the i7 cpu and it says Version 3 on the bottom of the case, but sudo dmidecode reports it to be a Libreb 13v2.