Librem / Purism

What does Lain think of Purism? They've been getting some attention recently with their libre focused phone, laptops, and now a suite of software that claims to be the utmost in privacy and security. My take? I don't really think they're worth the hype. >US based, so their software is compromised by default >They do not know if the IME is actually completely dead >Most of their "special software" (paid only) is just fancy rebrands of Matrix, K9 Mail, etc. >Computers do not appear to be very friendly for repairs >Librem 5 is constantly pushed back, still doesn't fix THE most glaring flaw of phones (proprietary baseband)

>>17286 I agree with most of this but lets not make perfect the enemy of good. >Librem 5 is constantly pushed back, still doesn't fix THE most glaring flaw of phones (proprietary baseband) I agree about the pushed back part. But I think the librem is better than any android or iphone you can buy when it comes to privacy. Hell, even the fsf approved phones have proprietary baseband. However, the baseband should be separate from the cpu as is the case with the librem 5. This is uncommon with most phones. Furthermore, there are hardware kill switches for the radio functions of the phone. I havent bought a librem 5 but I am thinking of preordering. Please lmk if im wasting 650$. I currently use a nexus 5, lineageos, no gapps.

>>17299 I'd wait, personally. The first run of any new technology always is like kicking dead whales down the beach (the "early adopter" penalty). Librem 5 v3 or 4 will probably be good enough, assuming it doesn't flop like the Ubuntu phones did.

>>17300 thats my real fear. The librem 5 as it is currently has everything I would want. I just want a privacy respecting phone that I can use for the next 10 years. I really dont know how they could mess this up. See: https://puri.sm/posts/may-progress-update-librem-5-hardware/ https://puri.sm/posts/purisms-librem-5-progress-in-videos/ And if I wait, Ill have to pay 100$ more and/or they might go out of business and I missed my only chance to have a linux phone.

By default, if you're going to use these types of services, these will be a soykaf ton better than anything else out there. Short of self hosting, of course.

>>17286 >>US based, so their software is compromised by default Based.

>>17299 Same boat. I don't think it's worth it over Lineage & no gapps.

they recently got a lot of kaf for their stance on not banning nazi content off the bat **insert smug loli pleroma user frozen peaches here**

>>17299 Personally, the PinePhone (Pine64) looks a lot more compelling. You could probably expect more or less the same kind of performance out of it, plus the low price might be enough to spark development interest that might have been missed otherwise. Honeslty though, I'm not sure any mobile linux project will ever reach a point where it's mature enough to replace AOSP. For me a device like the PinePhone or Librem 5 running some hardened Android fork free of Google seems most ideal.

>>17300 >>17301 that's the line of thought that prevents ideas like these from ever maturing, typically from lack of funding. They seem to already have it fully crowdfunded. If you find the cause noble, it seems logical to support. I do find librems cause very noble, it definitely beats the monopolistic market landscape we have currently

>>17349 Well put. But that said, there is one logical reason for one to wait before ordering a Librem 5: precise radio band info is yet to be public. I personally won't be ordering one until I know for certain that I can actually use it with one of the carriers where I live.

>>17346 >I'm not sure any mobile linux project will ever reach a point where it's mature enough to replace AOSP The real problems will start when Android dies. Mobile Linux alternatives will slow right the fuarrrk down when people need to reverse engineer and rewrite Fuchsia drivers for Linux. Where we are now is actually the good times.

The company that has the scam factor of crypto currencies with the free software marketing of all the horrible businesses that fail within a year (Leemote comes to mind but there are others). Don’t waste your time paying attention to them until you have met someone who owns their product and enjoys using it. Sheelled reddit posts do not count.

>>17286 >proprietary baseband I don't like it either, but it's necessary if you want the phone to actually come out. The thing is that not only is the 4g spec not available, but there is no baseband with foss firmware available (i mean, there's ti calypso, but it's 2g and it hasn't been produced for years). The osmocombb project has been working on creating a foss mobile telephony stack for 9 years and during this time they've managed to get 2g working and some very early libs for 3g (and that's all with leaked&official docs), there's no way Purism could have done it without any documentation and moving the launch to something like 2045.

>>17350 This is also the main reason as I am holding back on this. Until I am able to know that I would be able to use this and if the long term reviews are okay then only then will I probably consider it.

They have put out an FSF approved distro which I think means something.

I just want a phone that looks like picrelated to be honest. If it comes out I'll buy it I'm not into preordeing, why buy something if i don't know it's going to be good.

>>17522 Nokia N900 kind of comes close. Has a physical slide-out keyboard and runs a Nokia Debian derivative which can be replaced with PostmarketOS. It is ~2009 vintage though so specs are well below modern smart phones.

>>17522 That's the hitchhicker's guide to the galaxy prototype.

https://libreboot.org/faq.html#will-the-purism-laptops-be-supported I believe you all should read this section on libreboot FAQ.

>>17557 The link is a bit of a soykaf show. The tl;dr is that the purpose of libreboot was to disable Intel ME, they failed so now they only support pre-ME processors. Purism devices use modern processors which include ME and libreboot doesn't support that. The rest is to passive aggressive FUD. The important thing to note is that Purism devices ship with open source coreboot. It's also important to note that libreboot is just coreboot with some scripts to remove binary blobs. The libreboot "developer", lacking any kind of coding ability, then paid some real developers (Raptor Engineering) to port his software to other platforms. Then used the libreboot website and branding as a soapbox to attack Stallman and the GNU project over trans rights or some soykaf and then begged for money for gender reassignment surgery despite not actually paying what he owed to Raptor. So this is not exactly the apex of technical or mental compliance we're talking about here.

>>17567 >So this is not exactly the apex of technical or mental compliance we're talking about here. Presumably competence not compliance. It is true that Libreboot has created more drama than anything else unfortunately.

>17567 What about intel FSP?

>>17567 >Most notably, these laptops also use the Intel FSP binary blob, for the entire hardware initialization. Coreboot does support a particular revision of one of their laptops, but most are either unsupported or rely on binary blobs for most of the hardware initialization This is not drama, just the reality.

The number of posters who get bent out of shape when I say I want to buy a L5 ensures I will buy one just to make them lose their minds. I'm almost at the point I suspect purism is running a brilliant reverse trolling campaign just for this purpose... Which would only increase my respect for them further.

>>17572 The reality is Intel is Intel. The drama is singling out Librem and shitting on them just for having a different threat model and risk tolerance.

>>17587 Purism's pretensions of security and purported use of strictly libre hardware are clearly intended to mislead people into believing they are not compromised. >designed chip-by-chip, line-by-line, to respect your rights to privacy, security, and freedom >except the Intel parts lmao jk about that

>>17599 >except the Intel parts lmao jk about that Libreboot is just as dependent on Intel. The absence on ME doesn't mean the absence of backdoors. There can still be an undocumented string of op codes that launches you into Ring 0. Or a magic packet that causes the ethernet card to dma a reverse shell into main memory. An IOMMU would prevent the second attack but only on modern chipsets i.e. not libreboot. You also don't get virtualization extensions so no secure virtual machines for you. As pointed out Rowe is not a developer or a security person. He's trying to frame the issue as ME := insecure => Purism := insecure, no-ME := secure => libreboot := secure. But anyone who now anything about security knows, there is no such thing as "secure" and "insecure". Everything is relative to a threat model. The real issue is that Purism actually thought about their threat model and made tradeoffs to get their product to market. Rowe's threat model is implicit and centered around a tiny subset of problems that libreboot deals with.

>Their social media suite was so hastily thrown together that it still had Google trackers built in from the things they forked from >Their website was full of trackers and proprietary JS until someone told them >Their website STILL tries to harvest canvas data I still want to believe in the Librem 5, but I am having doubts.