Hello,
I came back this Friday from Havanna, Cuba, from a Filmfest there…
I find this category of the forum with very little posts… Why is this?
Personally I cant do anything with my L11 anymore. I damaged the display and dont know if there is any chance to get this repaired. I plan to buy a 2nd one after the end of this year and when all returned to business.
Matthias
Holiday season.
I didn’t buy Librem 11 even though I like my other Purism products, because hardware switches and removable batteries are some of the parts that make my Purism devices feel special.
So I personally was ignoring the L11 topic because of this. Are others in a similar situation?
Edit: If we wanted to change how I feel on the matter, one idea would be to publish software on Librem 5 that can record audio even when the hardware mic switch is off. A big YouTuber said that everyone who likes security must buy Google Pixel instead of Librem 5, and one of the reasons he cited is the ability to record audio anyway even when the mic switch is off, which he said is proof that Librem 5 and Purism hardware switches do not actually function in any meaningful way.
He has million(s) of viewers and many people were swayed by his claims, supposedly. If we could develop proof of concept software for recording audio while the mic switch is off, and folks like me who enjoy their hardware switches could run and see that software in action, maybe then we would know these features are a hoax and become more liberal about buying Librem 11.
I strongly don’t want to know who it is.
I will never use it a Google Phone nor Google OSes or Degoogled Whatever OSes.
L11 is a Big Shame for Purism.
I kind of hope you are right. I tend to see it the opposite way; eventually Librem 5 concept will decay until it no longer has even a pretense of respecting user freedom, because it is the nature of human kind to abuse his fellow kind for gain. It makes me love my Librem 5 all the more, because they were able to make this, even if it only ends up allowed to last a short time.
But it seems, then, that you are agreeing with my perspective rather than encouraging me to buy a Librem 11 by shattering my perspective or viewpoint.
For my threat model, controlling the radio is far more important than controlling the mic. (Radio in this case means WiFi/BT.)
And I demand that the software operates as a remote exploit.
You are being cynical, right? 
Hardware switches are not really necessary with Qubes OS.
Keeping the radios (cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) on your device silent is not something that you can reliably do in software, at least not when each radio component contains “blackbox,” non-auditable firmware and hardware.
Cell service providers use the non-silence of cellular radios to supplement location tracking. Companies–for example, Apple–do the same with Wi-Fi. It is possible that this can be mitigated to some degree on Wi-Fi, through MAC spoofing, but that is not certain, as the blackbox Wi-Fi card could still easily broadcast a unique identifier without your operating system knowing about it.
In short, the hardware switches are a great feature, even on Qubes OS.
Qubes relies on hardware virtualization, which AFAIK last time was broken in 2006 by the Qubes founder herself. To me it looks as practically the same level of security.
You just stop the VM to which your WiFi card is connected, and it switches off. I checked that even USB charging stops in such case (for USB VM).
In short, Qubes doesn’t require hardware kill switches for PCI devices, as they themselves also confirm.