I’m a Purism fan and planning to buy the Librem 15 and Librem 5 together (probably once the 5 is released).
I’d like to recommend privacy-respecting devices to all my friends and family, but the price range for Purism products is out of reach to a lot of people. I’m not criticizing the pricing - I think it’s perfectly fair given all considerations. I’m just saying that it’s not affordable for a lot of people.
Therefore, if you were to recommend a privacy-respecting alternative to the Librem 15 and 5 that was relatively low cost and feasible for a non-technical person to adopt, what would it be?
Purism is expensive because they do they do better than any competitor I’ve seen.
That being said, there are some similar companies:
Laptops:
System76 - Ships with an Ubuntu fork PopOS, can’t remember if they utilize non-free firmware and software.
Dell Developer Edition - Not heard good reviews in the privacy and free software community, but it does ship with Linux.
Technoethical - Amazing reviews from people I know run it, but hardware is fairly old.
Newest laptop the T400s originally started manufacturing in 2009 (correct me if wrong?).
Thinkpenguin - Good company in my experience, never used their laptops though.
If you want cheap:
Ebay - Some decent used Linux laptops. Especially Librebooted laptops.
With ZeroCat Chipflasher becoming more popular you can find many online DIY shops for setting up free software laptops.
Minifree
If you want arm:
Try the EOMA68, not yet launched tho.
If you want servers
Vikings Hardware
Technoethical
Phones and Tablets
The only ones I’ve heard of are Technoethicals
Note: I haven’t personally tried most of these, just reviews I’ve read online and/or been told by friends.
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