Librem: a Laptop Custom-Made For Free/Libre Software

Bunnie Huang's Novena laptop re-invents the laptop with open source (and Free software) in mind, but the hackability that it's built for requires a fair amount of tolerance on a user's part for funky design and visible guts. New submitter dopeghost writes with word of the nearly-funded (via Crowd Supply) Librem laptop, a different kind of Free-software machine using components "specifically selected so that no binary blobs are needed in the Linux kernel that ships with the laptop." Made from high quality components and featuring a MacBook-like design including a choice of HiDPI screen, the Librem might just be the first laptop to ship with a modern Intel CPU that is not locked down to require proprietary firmware.

Richard M. Stallman, president of the FSF, said, "Getting rid of the signature checking is an important step. While it doesn't give us free code for the firmware, it means that users will really have control of the firmware once we get free code for it." Unlike some crowdfunding projects, this one is far from pie-in-the-sky, relying mostly on off-the-shelf components, with a planned shipping date in Spring of this year: "Purism is manufacturing the motherboard, and screen printing the keyboard. Purism is sourcing the case, daughter cards, memory, drives, battery, camera, and screen."

Comments

Liberated? What about the hardware?

[unixisc]

This is based on a 4 Core (8 Threads) 3.4GHz Intel i7-4770HQ. So has Intel released the HDL model of that CPU for these Librem guys, in case they wish to change anything inside it? B'cos they make big claims about the kernel, OS, software, freedom and privacy, so it would be interesting to see if they go all the way. Heck, they should start it right from the bottom - make a GPLv3 based CPU (whose HDL models are all publicly available). It would probably have to be a VLIW CPU or something, in order to force the source code to be always available. Not an x86 or an ARM.

TFA

[unixisc]

15.6" display in either 1920x1080 or 3840x2160

4 Core (8 Threads) 3.4GHz Intel i7-4770HQ

Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200

375 x 244 x 22mm 2.0Kg

14 x 9.6 x 0.86" 4.4lbs

4GB Mem (up to 32GB)

500GB HD (up to 1TB HD or 1TB SSD)

CD/DVD ROM Drive (or extra drive bay)

48 Wh lithium polymer battery

65W power adapter

Up to 8 hours usage

Three USB 3.0 ports

One HDMI port

One Pop-Down RJ45 Network port (r8169)

802.11n WiFi (ath9k)

720p camera

HD Audio

Mini-TOSLINK optical fiber connector

Full-size keyboard in a variety of languages

Aluminum enclosure body

SDXC card slot

Purism GNU/Linux 64-bit Operating System (Trisquel based)

375mm x 244mm x 22mm (14" x 9.6" x 0.86")

2.0kg (4.4lbs)

Re:TFA

[TWX]

I'll be amazed if they manage to get all of that into 4.4lb with the presence of the optical drive.

My wife's Thinkpad X301 is ~3.25lb, designed to be as absolutely light-weight as possible while being durable, with an optical drive.

Her new Thinkpad Yoga 12 with the i7 is a hair over 3.5lb, also designed to be as light-weight as possible while being durable with a convertible 2-in-1 setup, without an optical drive.

If they succeed I'll consider getting one, but I'm still wondering what the catch is.

Re:TFA

[by (1706743)]

Sadly, it doesn't look like it has a TrackPoint-style mouse -- something I've grown rather fond of (just to preempt the oblig replies: http://xkcd.com/243/).

Re: TFA

[PincushionMan]

Chiclet Keyboard refers to the style where there's wide spacing or a border between the keys, all keys are level with each other, and there's a soft mushy membrane behind the keys. In my experience, I type slower on that type of keyboard, but still make more errors.

It looks a bit more stylish than the old keyboards, and doesn't seem as hard to keep clean, but the membranes seem to wear out much much faster than those old IBM buckling spring keyboards or those Cherry MX keyboards, but about equivalent to those laptop keyboards with darn scissor switches that lose a key about once every other year.

Re:too expensive

[jeffb (2.718)]

Freedom isn't free!

ExFAT

[tepples]

SDXC card slot

How will that work? The SDXC spec requires the use of ExFAT operating system, which is patented software. Or will these laptops not be available in Slashdot's home country?

Re:ExFAT

[CronoCloud]

[code]
yum install exfat-utils fuse-exfat
[/code]

You assume more restrictions than what is actually available or possible.

Re:ExFAT

[danbob999]

They just won't be allowed to put a SDXC logo sticker on the laptop. Nothing stops you from bundling a SDXC controller in hardware without the software support for exFAT.

Re:ExFAT

[unixisc]

That laptop shell is absolutely clean - has no stickers on it, not even Intel. That may be a part of the reason for its high price

Re:ExFAT

[AC-x]

But in order to carry the SDXC logo, the device must be capable of reading and writing the patented file system.

That makes sense for self-contained devices like cameras, but for card readers (especially add-on readers) there must be an exception because the reader itself can't read ExFAT (or any other filesystem for that matter), it's the host OS that does.

Re:Liberated? What about the hardware?

[ssam]

You have to take steps to make progress. You can take something useful and make it more open (like librem) or you could start from scratch and make something very basic that is completely open.

You can take bigger strides towards openness and get something like Novena, but then you make other sacrifices (size, cost, performance).

I guess if you had infinite money you could make a high spec, completely opensource laptop.

Re:Does anybody give a shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Snowden's revelations haven't gotten you to care about software freedom, I guess nothing will.

Re:Liberated? What about the hardware?

[phantomfive]

Mr Stallman interestingly isn't a huge proponent of open hardware. As long as it's not locked down, so he can run whatever he wants on it, then he's satisfied.

Re:too expensive

[Torp]

Actually it's more expensive than a retina macbook pro with the same specs. $2359 "earlier bird" price vs $1999 for a rMBP, if you configure the Librem with a 250 Gb SSD, 16 G ram and the hi res display. The CPU seems to be the same. You do get an optical drive, if you care about those things.
The 'normal' price if you miss all "early-ish" bird discounts is $2609 for the same configuration.

But considering they're only doing a 500 unit run as opposed to a few million for Apple, i think it's a pretty good price.

Why HDMI?

[ArhcAngel]

If they were going for free wouldn't DisplyPort have been a better option? I mean HDMI is at its roots video DRM. With DisplyPort you can opt to output to almost every modern video connection available including HDMI.

Re:Why HDMI?

[danbob999]

Why not? There are more monitors and TVs out there with an HDMI port than with a display port. Therefore you have more chances of needing an adapter or special cable if you have DP on your laptop than HDMI.

UID mismatches with removable media

[tepples]

In theory, you can use the Linux extended file system (Ext2-4) on removable media. But it shares one drawback with NTFS: user IDs generally don't match from one machine to another. So when you mount a file system on another machine, you won't have privileges to read or write files. FAT, by contrast, doesn't store owner or group IDs, instead assuming that all files belong to the user who mounted the file system. UDF supports the same feature, reserving UID -1 to mean "bearer" in this sense. UDF works on SDXC cards, but I was under the impression that any licensed SDXC writer had to support exFAT.

So... What BIOS is running on it?

[naturaverl]

Before I get modded to oblivion... From TFA: In addition to enabling as above the development of free BIOS firmware, we are also working with Intel to allow us to scrub, release, and maintain the source for the FSP, but havenÃ(TM)t finalized that yet. We are devoted to freeing this binary. You can read here about the current state of our efforts to free the BIOS. (http://puri.sm/posts/bios-freedom-status/) The point I was trying to make is that UNTIL every layer of the operational stack really is Free & Open Source, the product as a whole isn't REALLY libre.

Weirdly schizophrenic

[Solandri]

Some key specs on this thing:

3.4GHz Intel i7-4770HQ
Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200
375 x 244 x 22mm 2.0Kg
14 x 9.6 x 0.86" 4.4lbs
48 Wh lithium polymer battery
Up to 8 hours usage

That battery life is a pipe dream. The Macbook Pro 15 (which is much better optimized for battery life than Windows) w/o discrete graphics gets 8 hours under light use on the same CPU using a 95 Wh battery. This thing is more likely to get 4 hours best case, probably closer to 2-3 hours since most open source software won't be optimized for power savings on this exact hardware. (Yes I've tested this, when I put together my NAS/VM server. I plugged it into a Kill-a-Watt and measured power draw from a variety of OSes. Windows came in best at 30 Watts idle. The best default install of a Linux distro was 35 Watts idle. The worst 55 Watts idle. All were right around 105 Watts under load.)

Most of the Windows laptops with an quad core i7 (without Iris Pro graphics) managing 4 hours under light use have a 60+ Wh battery. The two with 52/54 Wh batteries (Lenovo Y50, MSI GS60) come in at 3-4 hours battery life in reviews. An 8 hour battery life in this thing is going to be attainable only in the useless "I leave the laptop sitting there powered on, but doing nothing" case (where BTW the MBP 15 hits 14 hours due to its gargantuan battery, and the 60+ Wh Windows laptops manage about 8 hours).

Which brings us to the weight. Given the short battery life, why not increase the weight to put in a bigger battery? Obviously they're trying to match the Macbook Pro 15. But if you can't match it, sacrificing battery size to keep the weight low is probably the worst compromise you can make. As it is, this thing is going to be an super-light (for a 15" notebook) ultra-portable laptop that has to sit on the desk plugged into AC power most of the time. People who buy ultra-portable laptops buy them so they can take it with them and use it away from the desk and power outlet. People who don't mind short battery life don't mind it because their laptop usually sits on a desk plugged into AC power, and thus weight doesn't matter as much. Pick one or the other.

Re:Weirdly schizophrenic

[dopeghost]

Was blown away by what they've doing here (note: I was the original submitter), however the thing I found bizarre - particularly in 2015, and given their target market is techies - was the inclusion of a DVD drive bay...

Battery life is arguably one of the most important features of any laptop, particularly amongst Linux users where - due to a lack of OEM tuning - installing Linux on other laptops typically only brings around ~2/3rd of the native OS's battery life.

Leaving space for an extra HDD or SSD is sorta cute but even individual SSD capacities are huge nowadays. If they absolutely had to go with the extra bay, it's a crying shame there's no option for second battery.

To their credit they're promising a 13'' version sans DVD drive next, however this perhaps only goes to reinforce that the additional of a DVD drive in the 15" model was an overstretch

Who knows, perhaps even someone from Purism is reading this and could enlighten us as to the choices they made?

Re:Liberated? What about the hardware?

[phantomfive]

The GPL is the only license practically that lets you dual-license with a proprietary license.

You can give it freely to people who want to spread it freely, and you can charge people who want to close it. That way, you get a return on your investment either way.

Good news!

[Lord_Byron]

You can replace the SSD in the current Macbook Pro: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/M...

I suppose you could in theory upgrade the RAM though, but I don't count any Mac upgrade solution that requires re-soldering anything.

Why can't I buy an aftermarket chassis?

[dcooper_db9]

Just yesterday I was reading about the Novena and a couple of similar and related projects. It struck me that all of these projects are tackiling this from the ground up. It seems to me that more people could contribute if different projects could focus on separate modules. That way I could maybe buy an open hardware video adapter to fix a laptop screen. Or an open hardware disk controller to restore a burnt HDD controller. Having open hardware components available would make it cheaper to repair computers. I'd love to be able to stock a single drive controller card and flash the firmware to match the drive it's controlling. Right now I have a complete laptop with a broken hinge and damaged power port. I'd love to be able to take all the parts out and put them into an aftermarket case. I don't mean a replacement case from the original model. I mean a standardized case that would allow me to swap out parts. Why does no such case exist? Why do I have to order an exact match when the case is just molded plastic and each component is pretty much the same size and shape?

Re:Why can't I buy an aftermarket chassis?

[LuxuryYacht]

This is what we are working on now. http://openlunchbox.com/

Standard modules that anyone can make and cases printed on demand.

Re:Liberated? What about the hardware?

[ClickOnThis]

You have to take steps to make progress. You can take something useful and make it more open (like librem) or you could start from scratch and make something very basic that is completely open.

This. Stallman himself took the former, more pragmatic approach when he began Gnu. He started with an existing proprietary Unix system (Sun OS?) and used it to develop parts of Gnu, with the goal of replacing the entire OS eventually with Gnu.

Re:Why a custom OS?

[unixisc]

What was wrong with standard Linux distributions such as Debian / Ubuntu / whatever?

The FSF explains that here

Re:Yes, but

[Holi]

Skylake? really? it's useless because it doesn't use a processor that hasn't even launched? I can understand the thunderbolt and the gpu but really to complain about the lack of a processor that doesn't exist is truly nitpicking to the extreme. especially one that may be delayed.

Re:Liberated? What about the hardware?

[lkcl]

You have to take steps to make progress. You can take something useful and make it more open (like librem) or you could start from scratch and make something very basic that is completely open.

You can take bigger strides towards openness and get something like Novena, but then you make other sacrifices (size, cost, performance).

I guess if you had infinite money you could make a high spec, completely opensource laptop.

interesting that you should say this :) i am taking a different approach. i am also developing a laptop where the goal is to reach FSF-Endorseability *and* high-end specs. i am doing it one phase at a time, as you suggest... however where instead of having infinite money i am instead using creativity and ingenuity (posh words for "persistent bloody-mindedness combined with desperation stroke eye-popping frustration").

sooo, i decided to go the "modular" route, but had to first create a decent hardware standard - one that will still be here in 10 years time but is simple enough for the average person (or a 5-year-old, or an 80-year-old) to use. it's based on an old "Memory Card" standard - you may have heard how PCMCIA is no longer being used? well, the case-work is still around :) so, re-using PCMCIA it is. and all the benefits of "Memory Card", you now get "Computer Card".. upgradeable, swappable, saleable, transferrable, storable "Computer" Card. ... but then, of course, because of that, yaay, you now have to design entirely new casework, not just a motherboard. talking to casework suppliers didn't um go so well, so i have to do it. bought a mendel90 6 months ago... ... but mendel90's don't do injection-moulded plastics, they do 3d-printed filament plastics. and when presented with a potential $USD 20,000 cost for creating injection-moulding (you send your STL files off, someone adapts them, CNCs out two steel halves and then a little *team* of chinese people sit there for weeks on end polishing out all the CNC burrs.... then you find out it's *completely wrong* and have *another* $USD 20,000 to pay... no wonder ODMs quote $USD 250,000 for developing laptops!!!) ... anyway so that's all completely insane, so i thought, "hmm, i wonder if you can create reverse-3d-printed moulds to do injection-mould prototyping" and it turns out that you can. so i could at least - on a low budget - make a few runs out of very-low-temperature plastic (so as not to burst the 3d-printed plastic under pressure), hell i could even use plasticine for goodness sake, just to get a proof-of-concept, *then*.... and this is the hilarious bit.... there's a girl who's been doing LostPLA home-grown aluminium casting.... *using 1500W microwave ovens* :)

http://media.ccc.de/browse/con...

so in theory i could quite conceivably even try doing the casting of the inverse-moulds for plastic injection *myself*, out of landfill-designated aluminium bicycle rims. do watch that talk: julia is surprisingly subtly funny, there were lots of jokes that the audience didn't get (not a native english speaking audience), and a few later that they did.

bottom line it *can* be done... if you make the decision, and damn well stick at it until success. if you're interested to follow along, here's the links:

* micro-desktop (launching very soon) which has the first EOMA68 module: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo...
* the 7in tablet (due to go to assembly this week) http://rhombus-tech.net/commun...
* the 15.6in laptop (currently developing the casework) http://rhombus-tech.net/commun...

on the laptop - as yo