Looking back on the road we have already traveled, Purism has pioneered many areas. These include securing boot firmware (PureBoot), manufacturing in the USA (Librem Key and Librem 5 USA), and creating the first truly convergent operating system (PureOS) by authoring the foundational pieces for mobile GNU/Linux (Phosh, Phoc, Squeekboard, Calls, Chats, etc). These innovations and growth has happened due to the unflinching support of our team, early backers, supporters and customers. As we look ahead to 2022, we wanted to share where we are going next.
Great update, transition to announcement of products when ready to go rather than crowd funding is a good sign of the companies maturity.
I think this sentence is going to need to be expanded a bit for crystal clear interpretation on the forums though - “Our Librem 5 continues to sell at a pace that means—based on CPU availability—it will hope to be in stock later in 2022”
Purism is planning some new hardware products to be brought to market later in 2022
However I guess that’s the flip side of internally funding new development. Purism doesn’t have to set future expectations and then potentially disappoint. Instead, the development happens behind the scenes and if and when the development is complete, the product manufactured, stock available … it is offered for sale in the normal way.
Nature abhors a vacuum. So I expect there will be endless speculation over what these products might be. I will resist the temptation to speculate.
This is the proper way to do legitimate business. If Purism can actually do this and it is clear that they’re “in stock” products are actually shipping in a reasonable time frame, perhaps I might purchase directly from them in a couple of years. I have been a bit surprised at how impressed I’ve been with the Librem 5 I acquired off of eBay, so to me it’s clear that Purism can produce quality products. Now the question is if they can operate like a legitimate business. I honestly hope they can.
Crowdfunding is a legitimate way of doing business - but it comes with some negatives, for customer and business alike.
For sure though … product in stock, buy it, shipped within a few days at most, product in your hands within 2 weeks (depending on where in the world you are) … is a simpler and in some ways more customer-friendly model.
Crowd-funding is a way if doing business, but based on my experience with having ordered a Librem 5 USA, cancelled that order due to shipping time frame obscurity, and having to do a credit card chargeback to get my money back for my cancelled order, to me it seems like Purism has been trying to operate non-crowd-funding business as if it were crowd-funding business. If this blog is true, then perhaps they are turning a corner as a company.
In part. Because of the level of doubt in the sentence and knowing how it will be picked apart in this forum.
Our Librem 5 continues to sell at a pace that means—based on CPU availability—it will hope to be in stock later in 2022
Let’s break that down.
the pace at which it sells throughout 2022 may be higher, lower or the same as now and higher, lower or the same as Todd expects (ironically a high level of sales could mean that it is never in stock in 2022 even though a high level of sales, being fulfilled, would be a good problem to have)
based on CPU availability - something that is almost totally outside Purism’s control and is a major problem across many industries with much bigger players than Purism
hope - implies an inherent uncertainty - I mean we all hope that demand for all Purism’s products is high and that Purism successfully fulfills all orders in a timely fashion but …
So, yes, there’s enough in that one sentence to argue about in this forum for a few weeks.
How cool would it be if some vehicle manufacturing CEO would just throw us a bone and pull 3500 units out of their next CPU order (100,000+) and ship them to a location of Purisims choosing.
I won’t
To me, the logical next step would be a tablet that re-uses most of the components (and lessons learned) of the phone. It would also re-use the investment in software.
Also, keep in mind that a tablet had already been planned and canceled, with a hint that it might come back.
If that’s it, I’ll definitely get one.
Wasn’t that x86-based though, so quite different from what you are implying?
In other words, from the point of view of interest from Purism, product space, and probably demand from customers, it’s the same - but there could be many implementation differences between the old non-product and the new non-product, and it is unclear how much if any design work could carry over.
Me too. Well, subject to price and screen size. So not definitely.
I didn’t know about that rumor, but it seems semi-official
Actually, I didn’t even think about updates. Just about really new products.
But of course, L16, L14v2 make sense*.
As does Fir. (L5v2)
(*) and if they find a way for international layouts (without half-height keys, off buttons where the Delete key belongs and similar atrocities) that’d be great.
I’m certainly still interested in an L5 Fir, but still won’t order until they are in stock and ready to ship within days of an order, as well as affordable. And that may be several years or more away, but so be it. For now, affordable degooged phones is the way.
@Kyle_Rankin Apart from the fact that that blog post doesn’t actually contain a roadmap, it’s great to know that a roadmap exists (and hopefully for a Librem16v1 or at least a Librem15v5).
On a high level, one thing I’d like to see is Purism conducting more polls along the lines of:
Which proposed design would you buy and how much would you pay for it?
Which features are must-haves? Which are must-not-haves?
I realize that with the departure from crowd funding comes an increased emphasis on design secrecy. This is understandable from a competitive advantage standpoint. But in Purism’s case, I would suggest that design secrecy is a competitive disadvantage because their competitors are so comparatively inept with respect to platform security that Purism would be better off reaping the advantages of a prospective buyer review before initiating manufacturing. (Nobody else even seems to offer kill switches, for starters.) I don’t want to see the next laptop spin end up like a dumb real estate development that suffers from critical flaws, when a simple public design review would have prevented the waste.
Here are few critical issues for a putative Librem 16, from my personal point of view. Everyone will have their own issues, and nobody will get their ideal laptop, but we can try to optimize on a consensus for the design team to consider. (I realize that there are plenty of related threads, but it seems like this might be a good thread for people to dump their realistic wishlists into.) I suspect that the team is probably a year into the design process, but nothing is set in stone until the schematics hit the factory.
4K matte display or no purchase.
6 physical cores or more, or no purchase.
The Librem 15 case was flimsy and “poppy”. There wasn’t enough space for the fan and heat spreader, so pressure on the case translated to pressure through the entire thermal stack and into the motherboard.
I suggest that the headphone jack needs a microphone input. Environmental mics just suck. Analog jacks also need a good deal of shock mitigation due to the zapping that inevitably occurs when connecting a headset in a dry climate. That, and tough mechanical reinforcement.
I suggest that we split up the kill switches for wifi, bluetooth, camera, and mics (but envronmental mic and analog headphone jack mic can share a switch). There are simply too many use cases in which one but not the other needs to be enabled. In any event, more splitting is better than less.
I’m now aware of 2 other Librem 15 owners who have seen keys go out, and at least one other case of random key repetition disease. As I explained in an earlier post, I suspect this is due to pressure on the ribbon cables which connect the panel to the main chassis, causing mechanical stress on wires or bonding points that result in noise effects on the keyboard.
The leaky keyboard backlight on Librem 15 is really painful. Some people agree with me, but others don’t care. I wish they were splashproof keys with no light leakage from the perimeter (only illuminated letters).
There’s some debate over whether or not the number pad should be there. I vote yes, but it’s not critical.
Definitely no power button where the delete key should be. This is probably the worst feature of some Macbook keyboards.
Don’t worry too much about price. Worry about critical features. If I just wanted low priced crap, I could buy from a host of other vendors tomorrow.
Case should continue to be black. Nobody wants a silver glare generator for a laptop, titanium or not.
GPU is a must-not-have. Sucks power, drivers full of bugs, security nightmare. I can use one on Amazon if I need the compute or buy a gaming console if I’m so compelled.
I’m still a fan and looking forward to your new product launches.
I hope there is still the choice of Coreboot, due to the fact I had problem with Pureboot.
Also if Pureboot is going to be standard, is there anyway that Purism can make the instruction clearer on there documentation, as I have find their instruction on the documentation confusing.
Is their anyway possilbe, they can make Pureboot more user friendly?
I really hope Purism does really well this year, I wish there were more like Purism doing there thing
Thanks, I didn’t realize that Wifi and Bluetooth share the same chip. Although, the switch could instead cut them off at the antenna level. Since I don’t use Bluetooth, it’s basically just another source of UHF radiation that I’d rather not broadcast (which I suppose happens regardless of whether the binary blob is installed). It’s not a deal breaker, though.
The TRRS-to-mic adapter might work if I could get hold of one. But in any event, it would be cleaner and simpler just to have a 3-band audio jack that works like a mobile phone audio jack, i.e. mic plus 2 stereo outputs. The fewer gadgets we need to carry, the better. Hopefully this will be addressed in the next major laptop spin.
Thanks linking the thread about the replacement for Librem 15. Lots of good suggestions in there. Which reminds me:
ECC memory, at least as an option, is a must. It’s not about mitigating random errors. It’s about preventing the known hazards of directed attacks that can be launched with no privileges to compromise the OS. (It’s effectively impossible to prove that this can’t occur on any given hardware setup, so better just ECC and forget it. It would be great to have this in the CPU L1, L2, and L3 caches as well, although that’s not likely to happen unless we can cram a Xeon server chip into a laptop thermal envelope. (Hmm… maybe we could run a many-core Xeon at low MHz, thereby gaining performance and the benefits of on-die ECC without blowing the power budget.)
Speaking of overheating chips, have a firmware setting or a physical switch which toggles CPU Turbo Mode, so we can stop listening to that damn fan noise every time some news website pegs the CPU with autoplay videos and animated GIFs. That way, we wouldn’t need to do hacks with MSR registers to turn it off for the 99% of the time that it does nothing useful and only increases heat and noise. This isn’t critical, though.
