For your reference your reaction and continued tone seem to be reiterating my point.
Exactly! And, mind you, that’s a third-party cable. We’re soon getting to the point where even if your charger breaks or you forget it at home, you can borrow anyone elses’ charger just like we do today with phones and mini/micro-USB chargers.
Going back to my barrel jack bucket, it wouldn’t exist at all if these devices used USB-C, because they’d all be compatible. Even when one charger breaks, I can use the charger for another device. The Librem is great at avoiding vendor lock-in (with user-upgradeable battery, storage, and RAM) but charger lock-in is the one place where the Librem falls behind even today’s Macbooks.
If a Librem charger breaks (or gets lost in my spaghetti tangle of barrel jacks) then I’m stuck with blocking my other ports with the single awkward middle USB-C until I order a new barrel jack charger from Purism.
Does the Librem 14 support Power Delivery?
If not, then it only has one power port.
If so then you don’t have to use the barrel connector and can even throw away said charger and only use the usb-c charger and not have to worry about the barrel connector at all.
Purism isn’t the only company to have gone down this path and from my experience with my work issued laptop the barrel connector charger is more efficient than the USB-C charger.
Also from a security perspective I’d rather plug in someone’s barrel connector to my charging port than plug in their device to my USB port… Power and ground is a bit harder to compromise than all those lovely data pins.
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It does support PD, but it’s inconvenient to use because of its placement.
Also, USB-C should only be an issue because of DMA, but I thought the Librems don’t enable DMA for their USB-C ports (or otherwise have some sort of USB IOMMU enabled). Is that true or was I mistaken? If the USB-C ports are unprotected, then yeah I agree about the security concerns. I guess I kind of assumed the USB-C ports wouldn’t be included unless they weren’t any more unsafe than regular USB-2.
I suppose a workaround would be to move the one USB-C port to the other side of the laptop, where the kensington lock slot is. That way it’s actually usable as a charger because it’s not going to block any other ports, while the barrel jack is still there on the other side for people who want it.
Edit:
When using someone else’s USB-C chargers, you can also block data at the hardware level like this: https://www.amazon.com/PortaPow-NA-USB-C-Data-Blocker/dp/B082WDHS22/
Even without DMA I’m not keen on plugging in other people’s USB devices.
As far as that data blocker goes “Not suitable for laptops since they require a data signal to allow charging.”
Edit: USB-C will be limited to 5v unless it can use the data pins to negotiate the higher voltages/amperage. Also in some environments I’ve worked they disable the USB ports entirely so having that separate power option has its place.
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Ah, I see. Honestly I understand the concern about USB-C, but first of all, all the USB-C exploits require physical access, so that eliminates some worry. And USB-C without DMA is going to be similar to USB-2 in terms of security. So using someone else’s charger is going to be about the same amount of danger (if not less) as plugging in a USB2 thumbdrive. Close to zero on linux.
Any way we can ping Purism Staff for more info?
Also, I found this… Librem13 USB-C Charge Hack Thoughts?
Apparently a couple people already opened up their librems to put in a USB-C => DC converter.
Here, if it helps you feel better about charging port placement. This is my current laptop
I’m so sorry…
Eh, doesn’t bother me any. Better than on the back side.
TBH though if the rest of your ports were behind it instead of in front of it, it’d be even worse. That’s my biggest issue with Purism copying your laptop… they’re also putting everything behind the USB-C port too.
I’d actually prefer that, so I wouldn’t have to flip the cord around to use the USB port (the plug has a 90 degree bend in it)
Let me just say that I MUCH prefer barrel jacks to USB-C. USB chargers can be incompatible (maximum current and maybe voltage if there is software in the charger) and the conductors are much smaller than a barrel jack’s and easier to damage. One reason I prefer the Librems to the newer Macs is the barrel jack, though there are other, better, reasons. 
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One possibility that I think would be cool (but I won’t be attempting anytime soon since I sprung for the 3-year warranty) is drilling out a usb type c slot on the left-hand side, attaching one of the boards from Librem13 USB-C Charge Hack Thoughts? , and then internally routing a cable from the DC output to the barrel jack on the right-hand side to enable charging from either side of the device. With the board with USB data you could even get data working through the port (though obviously no alt-modes). Naturally, we won’t know if this is possible until we have the machine in-hand to see what kind of free space we’re dealing with but having a barrel jack gives an easy path for this hack by providing a simple interface to supply DC.
Yeah I’m thinking I’ll do this.
Also this is one way for Purism to make everyone happy… USB-C PD on one side and a barrel jack on the other. That way the user can choose from either option. I sleep on one side of the bed so I’d much rather have a laptop with a power port on both sides anyway, so I can always use the most convenient one.
Unfortunately the guy who made that thread you linked left without any more updates and when I attempted necromancy nobody else responded either, so I may have to just figure out what I’m doing from scratch.
My point was, if there were ports on both sides, you’d have to flip it one way to get some ports and flip it the other way to get to the others.
I was a little curious about 2 power ports as well, seemed like the design was a little confused to me.
One is sufficient, two seems to complicate things. I can understand the desire to be able to use the USB-C port that works as PD while at the same time charging the laptop.
But what happens if you plug two chargers into the laptop at the same time?
I’m sure someone will manage to do this at some point in time.
Does this make the design more expensive since there are more components to support two different power supplies?
I think someone should make a decision to dump one of the charging ports, personally I’d dump the barrel jack.
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If you plug in both chargers at the same time power USB power delivery will negotiate to not take power because charging is already happening.
Does it make the design more expensive? Maybe, but not likely by any meaningful amount. USB-C charging has to have all of the intelligence it has anyway, and barrel charging is already very well understood and other vendors offer this combination as well so it’s not like they were reinventing the wheel on this front.
If the USB ports are disabled in the bios can you still charge via USB-C? If not, this would be the primary reason I would push to keep the barrel charger around, and if so I’d be concerned about how well the USB ports are actually being disabled since part of the PD spec is using the data channel to negotiate voltage and amperage between devices.
Also also, some people would like to charge their laptop and use the PD FROM the laptop to charge a mobile (or other) device so another reason to have multiple ports CAPABLE of charging. The PD spec LET’S you charge the laptop but can ALSO be used to charge other devices.
Just because you don’t intend to use the options available doesn’t mean those options should be taken away from others.
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You could still charge through USB-C it if you disable USB, it would just be limited to the 5v default. The data pins are only used for negotiating correct voltages/amperage. So you’d have to turn it off or something while it’s charging.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting removing the USB-C port though. I was originally thinking the USB-C and barrel jack could just be replaced with two USB-C ports. But, as a compromise with our barrel-jack loving friends, the USB-C port could just go on the opposite side so it is as convenient to use as the barrel jack is right now.
That or something would be that it would not charge, laptops will not charge on 5v they have to negotiate the higher voltage to charge at all. There are several other devices like this as well where the battery minimum charging voltage is above 5v so no this would not work.
Moving ports around seems to be primarily a personal preference thing and one where no matter where they’re moved to some group isn’t going to be happy.
The risks of USB charging are about the same as the risks of USB random-other-device.
However the risks of USB charging are greater than the risks of barrel connector charging.
Bottom line: It is difficult to please all of the people all of the time.