After MUCH procrastination I bit the bullet and bought a fully featured L14 where I just I added my own 64gb. I ordered it with qubes and the full anti interdiction.
First up, communication was flawless. Librem key shipped to another address without a problem, photos of the entire process with security tape and red sparkle nail polish that I had to get out of the screw holes to put my RAM in. No big deal. My only criticism is that I think closer up pics would allow one to compare sparkle patterns better, but I was able to compare and confirm its integrity to my satisfaction. Shipping was cheap to Australia at $49 DHL, less than a week delivered by Australia Post. Lovely, except the ouch with GST and other opaque govt charges (about $400 worth).
Qubes setup had no drama. All good. I cannot fault this laptop. The build is solid, sexy as hell with no branding and much thinner that I had thought although another usb port would be nice.
Qubes runs flawlessly (mostly…see below) and it loves the 64gb. I love it. But.
If I have things running I can disconnect the camera via the switch, no problems. Qubes shows it as disconnected. If I turn the mic off though it disconnects my wifi (haven’t tried with ethernet). Now the concerning part is that I disconnected the mic BEFORE booting up. After putting in my log in pw in (after the LUKS pw), qubes went ballistic in a way I’ve never seen. It began to throw errors that it couldn’t start qubes, couldn’t start dom0 and other error boxes flying up in a manner where the ENTIRE screen was covered in error boxes that just kept coming. It was a sight to see, but freaked me out. I managed to shut it down, turn the mic back and then it booted ok and no problems since because I haven’t ventured near that button again. I have no idea why this happened although it would be nice to run this laptop with both camera and mic off. Now its just camera off. I will investigate this further when I get time.
But apart from this glitch above which I hope is behind me and a known thing that is fixable, I can’t recommend this highly enough. Granted, my demands are not great, but I’ve used qubes for years and so far this laptop runs it the best of any laptops I’ve used so far.
If you’re thinking of getting a L14, do it. I thought about it for ages and am glad I did. So much so that I’m going to back up for a mini. My phone aspirations will probably end up being a FIR model in due course.
Huh. Read the manual eh? As you no doubt gather, I dont really have a need for these. So the behaviour I’m describing is with bluetooth/wireless.
Is there any reason it would carry on as described with bluetooth/wifii turned off at the switch from a starting boot up, rather than being disconnected when already operating?
Granted I didn’t know the switches, but the behaviour is not as expected.
Thanks for that. I will check later. But, would they ship an old version with this bug? Rhetorical question, but I’d hope to be getting the latest with a new machine.
Just had a quick look here and this is pureboot 21. Great.
I have no idea just how to do this. If what you say is correct (I have no reason to doubt you), then this really irritates me.
I mean, wtf? Ship the laptop with one of its main features knowingly, knowingly faulty.
I’m saying this assuming that this is a known bug that has a known solution and they ship the problem to me and now I have embark on a fix that is all new to me. Talk about taking the shine of an expensive purchase.
Brad with Pureboot v21 Purism sent the machine with an up-to-date BIOS, because Pureboot v22 it was released 2 week ago.
Also i guess that the bug what i talk about was fixed on Pureboot v21 @MrChromebox if i remember well, so anyway make sure ALL is up-to-date like BIOS, EC, SYSTEM and try again.
Purism sent your L14 with the new version of Qubes too?
If its two weeks old then that explains it, but then it doesn’t explain the bug, at least not in that way you suggested.
Qubes was not up to date as it arrived with Fedora 34 which I had to update to 36. It does have whonix 16 so it didn’t require a major upgrade as was the case fron whonix 15 to 16. Qubes doesn’t worry me so much as I’ve been wrangling qubes for years but having it arrive with the current templates would have saved time on my crappy internet connection.
I guess it’s a compromise between “in stock” and “ship within 10 business days” on the one hand and revisiting their inventory to apply all updates before shipment.
It may even be worse than that if you choose Anti-Interdiction and a Librem Key - because once the measurements are in the Key and the Key is shipped (to the same or different address) then they strictly do not want to apply any updates to the laptop - otherwise it will look as if the laptop was interdicted by our so-called government.
Sure, the resulting behaviour is “ungainly” for this particular bug.
In the case of a general Linux distro pre-installed, it is almost never going to be up to date by the time the device is in your hands, with updates issued sometimes several in a week. HM Customs, with or without postal delays, will see to it that there is sufficient delay for the distro to be out of date already.
government.