Many years ago I was a sysadmin for a medium-sized tech company, and a fringe benefit of that role was getting first choice at stacks of “obsolete” computers that were about to be thrown away. They say that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and that is even truer when th … | Continue reading
Another Purism Differentiator: We are a Social Purpose Company. Purism started in 2014 by crowdfunding a laptop with a vision to create a future that respects privacy, security, and freedom. We knew then that we wanted to compete with the largest technology companies and needed t … | Continue reading
What we all want is pretty simple: We want individual freedom. We want peace of mind that we are safe. We want to control our own digital lives. We want to be free. The video references clips from “Why US trails China in Phone Manufacturing”, CNBC What we don’t want is equally si … | Continue reading
2022 has been a phenomenal year, full of ups and downs (thankfully more ups than down!). For Purism, we have seen several milestones, none of which could have been possible without the support of our team, customers, supporters and investors. I am writing this post to highlight t … | Continue reading
I wanted to look back at what changed in phosh in 2022 and figured I could share it with you. I’ll be focusing on things very close to the mobile shell, for a broader overview, do watch Evangelos upcoming FOSDEM talk in February 2023. Some numbers We’re usually aiming for a phosh … | Continue reading
Purism will be at CES® 2023, one of the most influential technology events in the world. Owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)®, CES features innovative ideas from the technology industry. Purism will partner with Teksun Inc, a IoT and AI solutions provi … | Continue reading
I know you missed our kernel reports lately but even if you can’t believe it, we haven’t forgotten about them. I just took a break for a few weeks but now the desperate wait is over: Following up on our report for Linux 5.18. Summary of the progress on mainline support for the Li … | Continue reading
Earlier this year I wrote a post titled Where is My Librem 5? where I went into detail about some of the challenges (in particular in the supply chain) that we faced in making the mass-produced Librem 5. If you haven’t yet read that article, I highly recommend it so you have more … | Continue reading
Our customers and supporters are concerned about the privacy of their phone data. With other big telecom providers, phone data does not stay private; it’s collected, linked with a person’s identity, and sold to advertisers. Purism treats user data like uranium. Unlike Big Telecom … | Continue reading
It’s hard to believe, but Libadwaita is not even one year old, having first been released on December 31, 2021. With that in mind it’s pretty remarkable how widely adopted it is today. Between the majority of GNOME core and Circle apps having already been ported, the many new thi … | Continue reading
PureBoot is Purism’s solution for high security boot firmware that gives you complete control. While we design PureBoot’s defaults to meet most people’s needs, you can also create your own version with custom features, pre-approved USB keys, and all with little risk to your Libre … | Continue reading
Just so you can get all your holiday orders in, we’ve extended the sale on Librem 5 USA till Dec 10, 2022. This is a great gift for any one in your family concerned about secure supply chain or online privacy. Get a $100 off this holiday season on your order for Librem 5 USA with … | Continue reading
Most Big Tech efforts to secure the boot process give the vendor control over what software you are allowed to boot on your laptop, with keys they control. With PureBoot Restricted Boot, you can lock down your boot firmware to only boot trusted, signed executables both on a local … | Continue reading
On the 16th and 20th of November, Adrien Plazas and I had a booth at the French Free Software event “Le Capitole du Libre” in the city of Toulouse. It was the first time the event was taking place since 2019. As for the previous years, this edition was a success and we have met [ … | Continue reading
Score $100 off this holiday season on your order for Librem 5 USA. With the holiday season in full swing, this is a great gift for any one in your family concerned about secure supply chain or online privacy. Built with Made in USA electronics, we ship globally, within 10 busines … | Continue reading
It’s that time of year when many people find themselves in a reflective mood. For those of us in the US, it’s the week of the Thanksgiving holiday and this week people commonly reflect on the past year and what they are thankful for. Normally our posts are status updates, tech ti … | Continue reading
If you are curious to know how and why it matters where your phone is manufactured, CNBC’s new short documentary is for you. “Purism is one American company that has been able to do what many are calling the impossible” it says. CNBC wanted to find out why tech giants aren’t maki … | Continue reading
History is a series of pendulum swings between opposite extremes. A generation moves in a certain direction, and the next generation reacts based on the consequences (often rejecting it). Eventually a new generation appears that never directly experienced the consequences and les … | Continue reading
Whether on a Librem 14 laptop or a Librem 5 phone, using Matrix is one of the best free software solutions for communication. It offers end-to-end encryption where the keys are fully in your control; In other words, Matrix servers can’t read your encrypted messages at all. Recent … | Continue reading
Librem-EC 1.11 for the Librem 14 laptop includes several improvements targeting device stability and reliability. As with our previous posts on the EC, it has been quite an adventure investigating corner cases! Update to this release with our update instructions, and as always … | Continue reading
We have been aiming for proper Matrix support for the Chats application since the beginning of its development. The initial support for Matrix was provided with the purple-matrix plugin. It had rudimentary Matrix support for non-encrypted chats and decryption (but not for encrypt … | Continue reading
Earlier this month, the “OpenGL for cameras” libcamera project enjoyed its first release, versioned 0.0.1. Congratulations, libcamera team! At Purism, we’re especially happy about this milestone, because we recognize how important libcamera is for the future of the Librem 5 phon … | Continue reading
We have been busy on the PureBoot front! Recently we announced “PureBoot Basic Mode” which is a low-security option for PureBoot that disables tamper detection, but leaves you with the robust PureBoot recovery console for debugging boot issues. To balance our last “low security” … | Continue reading
The Librem Key comes preloaded with the PureBoot bundle to protect your firmware. While it’s good at protecting your boot firmware, that’s only some of what it can do. You can also encrypt your computer’s file system, auto lock on removal, and encrypt local documents just to get … | Continue reading
It is already the year end, and a new year will be knocking at our doors very soon! We’ve seen an incredible response to Librem 14 laptops this year, so we decided to offer a great new promotion, just in time for the holiday season ahead. Use the coupon L14SALE22 when you check … | Continue reading
The Librem 5 features a built-in smartcard reader. While most people use it for GPG I wanted to see if it can be used as an authenticator for services like email (SMTP, IMAP), access to web pages (HTTPS), calendars, etc. without either having to retype a password often or having … | Continue reading
Just in time for the holiday rush season ahead, we are offering our Librem 14 customers an amazing option to get their laptops within 48 hours (2 business days) after placing their order. Customers who order the Librem 14, can now get their laptops delivered within 2 business day … | Continue reading
Both the Librem 5 and Librem 5 USA run the PureOS Operating System based on GNU/Linux and share the same hardware specs. So what exactly is different between them? The key differences between the Librem 5 and the Librem 5 USA are the manufacturing location, lead time, and price. … | Continue reading
Librem 5 phones are for those who care about their digital security and the use of free and open source software. Our team has designed the phone so that the parts are easily repairable and you can keep using the same phone for a longer time. Let’s go through the hardware of the … | Continue reading
The advancements of the digital age has gifted us with the ability to search and access world’s information sources within a few seconds. However, Big Tech companies still make it hard for users to control their own privacy when accessing digital products and services. The proble … | Continue reading
PureBoot is our high-security, tamper-detecting boot firmware. With the release of version 22 we have added a new feature called “PureBoot Basic” that lets you optionally disable the tamper detection, leaving you with a clean, simple, and still powerful boot firmware with more re … | Continue reading
Firmware debugging is uniquely challenging, because most conventional software debugging tools aren’t available. With coreboot’s specialized tooling, support from the amazing community, and a little bit of creativity, we fixed a regression in coreboot 4.17 that caused reboot loo … | Continue reading
Using Librem 5 outdoors is easier now! Because the Librem smart phones have more sensors than an ordinary computer, and we can use these extra sensors to improve ease of use and accessibility. The most recent release of Phosh (our user interface), has added a feature to automatic … | Continue reading
It has been a long and difficult journey to build a freedom- and privacy-respecting phone like the Librem 5. While the end of this journey is in sight, we aren’t quite there yet, and I wanted to take some time to do something we should do more often: acknowledge and thank all of … | Continue reading
The Librem 5 is the first mobile computer with a truly convergent OS. Convergence means having the same OS across multiple hardware platforms with apps that adapt to their hardware. The Librem 5 uses the same convergent PureOS as our Librem 14 laptop and Mini PCs, with the same a … | Continue reading
We asked the Purism team for their recommendations on top books that inspired them or provoked their imagination. The genres ranges from non-fiction, sci-fi and even cyberpunk. Here is the list of our team’s top 15 books, in no specific order. Feel free to share them with your fr … | Continue reading
PureBoot is our high-security, tamper-detecting boot firmware that we offer as an alternative to our default coreboot firmware on hardware like our Librem 14 and Librem Mini. The combination of PureBoot, our anti-interdiction services, and the option of Qubes as the pre-installed … | Continue reading
Interested to know what has improved using the Librem 5 phone? We made the interface more swipable. The Librem 5 phones are powered by the same PureOS that runs on our other computers, and with Phosh 0.20.0 entering PureOS, it got a major makeover. Previously, Phosh had a few int … | Continue reading
PureOS on the Librem 5 USA has a long list of default capabilities and a longer list of applications that are available to install and an even longer list of applications that are coming. Software: A fast summary of capabilities from PureOS on the Librem 5 USA is as follows: Full … | Continue reading
While our recent news has been all about Librem 5 USA, we also have been steadily shipping through Librem 5s from previous production runs and it has been gratifying to share in the excitement of customers who have gotten the Librem 5 they have been waiting so patiently for. Whil … | Continue reading
Google has long abused digital rights through its tracking, privacy invasion, and ads business. Apple—while inaccurately claiming they care about privacy—has seen significant growth in its own ads business. Most recently this was highlighted how Apple utilizes anti-competitive la … | Continue reading
Yes, you can go onto a multi week trip with a smartphone running free software. I wanted to share some impressions from my recent trip to Prizren/Kosovo to attend Debconf 22 using a Librem 5. It’s a mix of things that happened and bits that got improved to hopefully make things m … | Continue reading
The Librem 5 USA is a remarkably secure mobile phone out of the box. The reasons for this are immense. Starting at the hardware level, the Librem 5 USA has Made in USA electronics, where the mainboard PCBA and type-c PCBA are manufactured at the Purism facility in the United Stat … | Continue reading
Purism’s Made in USA phone, Librem 5 USA uses a tighter supply chain. It is powered by PureOS, and designed for longevity. Standard orders ship within 10 days. SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA- Purism is now shipping its latest privacy-first smartphone, Librem 5 USA within 10 days for … | Continue reading
GUADEC is the main yearly GNOME conference, where developers, designers, and other community members gather in one place to watch talks, hack on new features, and plan for the future. Given Purism’s close involvement with GNOME development we used to attend GUADEC as a team befor … | Continue reading
The day we have been waiting for is finally here! The Librem 5 USA has reached shipping parity, which means that new orders placed today will ship within our standard 10-business-day window. The Librem 5 USA now joins the Librem Mini and Librem 14 as a post-Just In Time product, … | Continue reading
This is part 2 published 2022-07-25. Part 1 published 2021-04-30. Nearly every person on earth has experienced some impact from the supply chain in the past two years. As we wrote in part 1 in April of 2021 “Prices will increase for consumer goods” and time has proven that accura … | Continue reading
In a previous post, “Is Ethical Advertising Possible?” I talked about the internal discussions we were having as we looked to expand our marketing efforts beyond what we’d done in the past. One of the reasons for that post was to explain our current thinking both so everyone knew … | Continue reading