Today, @simon_brooke asked me about the laptop I got half a year ago. How’s the build quality?
Let me start by saying that I know very little about these things. Overall, I’m happy. We still have a Mac PowerBook and I no longer use it.
What do I have?
The positives:
1. hardware kill switches
2. a Debian derivative is preinstalled (PureOS)
3. I see regular updates coming down the line
4. it came with disk encryption
The negatives:
1. when I got it, it soon broke down and I had to get it replaced; customer service was very friendly, though
2. the keyboard is not perfect, sometimes shift doesn’t quite register and I think it’s sometimes creaking – rare, but I noticed it
3. the lid doesn’t move easily which means opening the lid = lifting the laptop, sometimes
While travelling in Japan I wondered whether the laptop’s wifi was worse than my phone’s wifi. I never figured it out and back at home it just means that I can’t use wifi on the balcony, with the glass door closed, 10m from the router who’s in a closet behind a wall... I think that’s OK.
Continued: 2021-08-26 New laptop, again‽
#Purism
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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I just tried to watch a movie using HDMI and was unable to do it. So either the cable is borked, or the default setup is not usable.
– Alex Schroeder 2018-09-01 11:24 UTC
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Remember that the USB port has enough power to let me destroy the firmware of the Atreus keyboard I have but not strong enough to write a new one. I have to use my old Mac PowerBook to write that firmware.
– Alex Schroeder 2020-04-09 20:31 UTC
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I just realized that there is no way to plug Ethernet. WiFi or bust!
– Alex Schroeder 2020-04-28 14:41 UTC
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Apparently the microphone is not working at all. I bought an external USB microphone and that works.
– Alex Schroeder 2020-05-09 19:27 UTC
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Today I broke off a hinge. It tore out of the plastic molds that held it in place and I had to remove it. Now I can at least open and close the laptop again. Sadly, the screen now hinges on just one of them.
Image 1 for 2018-06-08 Librem 13 by Purism Mini Review
Perhaps the problem was caused by “the lid doesn’t move easily which means opening the lid = lifting the laptop, sometimes” in the end.
I’m not sure what to do now. Pour superglue on the thing and never open or close it again?
– Alex 2021-08-12 20:49 UTC
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I’m not sure how I missed this initial post back in 2018, particularly as I was an admin on Simon’s mastodon instance at the time.
My biggest gripe with the same model, is the wifi.. and because it was pretty new on my visits to in-laws in Japan in 2018 and 2019, I didn’t realise how poor the wifi on the laptop was and was griping about my in-laws poor router performance.. oops!
– jk 2021-08-12 21:08 UTC
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Oops indeed! 😄 I guess I just got used to the wifi. It never bothered me again, I guess one simply learns where the invisible boundaries are and unless you’re handling many devices, you no longer notice the difference.
– Alex 2021-08-12 21:34 UTC
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I think the Down Arrow key is starting to fail…
– Alex 2022-06-18
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The Right Arrow key no longer responsive.
– Alex 2023-02-12 17:51 UTC
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Purism support says to use high pressure air…
– Alex 2023-02-13 08:01 UTC
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I bough a dust remover spray to clean the keyboard and it made no difference. This keyboard no longer has a functional right arrow key. Using Emacs key bindings almost everywhere makes this bearable. I’m getting used to Ctrl+F. But in some web apps, notably Discord, Ctrl+F is bound to something else.
– Alex 2023-02-25 20:40 UTC
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The down key has locked up a few times, now.
(Update: I try to avoid the down key because it likes to get stuck.)
– Alex 2023-02-28 07:29 UTC
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When battery charge falls below 40%, the screen starts flickering.
I no longer like this laptop.
– Alex 2023-07-12 16:29 UTC
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I have an external monitor from 2014 that supports HDMI 1.4 up to 1920×1080 or 2560×1440 via DisplayPort (DP) or DVI Dual Link. The Librem 13 supports HDMI 1.4 up to 1920×1080 which doesn't look sharp. I guess it's OK for playing games or watching video.
On the forum I saw a quote:
the USB-C port on current model Librems is USB 3.0 (aka USB 3.1 gen 1 / 5Gbps), non-Thunderbolt, non-USB-C PD. Just a USB 3.0 type-A port with a different connector. … the USB-C port functions as a regular USB3 port - charges up to 3A(?) @ 5v, can power external SSD, etc. It does not support DisplayPort Alt Mode AFAIK. USB sticks, SSDs, mice/kb all work fine. I’ve tested here on 13v2/15v3/13v4/15v4. I can’t speak to the hub etc you used, but if it was a thunderbolt dock, then that’s why it didn’t work. – Charging via USB C port?
So there's no way to get DP out of the laptop. 1920×1080 is the best I'll get.
I carried my laptop around in a backpack today (2023-11-30). Now it no longer boots. At first it switched off when I was about to provide my login password. I started it again and it switched off sooner, as soon as I had typed the disk decryption password. Now it switches off as it is about to show me the disk decryption password. Like… no power? Batteries super low? But it’s connected to the power and “charging” according to the light. It is also not based on a timer: when I hit ESC to get into the boot menu, I can look at stuff. Running memtest now, for example. So… perhaps the power key is stuck but the boot menu ignores it? I’m confused.
I can plug in a USB stick with a Debian installer on it, and move around in the menus. As soon as I boot the system and the disk is accessed (?) the laptop shuts down. What the hell.
I just plugged in a different drive and switched it on, running the installer from the USB stick and then telling it to do an install, all without screwing the back on and it powered off with an audible clack. So perhaps there is a short circuit somewhere near the drive but not on the drive itself. I switched the drives back, and just messing with drive plugs didn’t fix it, sadly.
(There used to be a video here about the laptop attempting to boot and crashing.)
I don’t really understand what I’m seeing and I don’t know what’s happening. First, there’s the Sea BIOS message. Then there is the Purism logo with the offer to jump into the bios menu (?) where I can run memtest and coreinfo and the like. Then there is a super short flash of GRUB. Then the screen turns blue and the kernel loads and the initial ramdisk is loaded. Then the screen goes black, then a cursor shows up, and a message warning me:
[0. 085688] RETBleed: WARNING: Spectre v2 mitigation leaves CPU vulnerable
RETBleed attacks, data leaks possible!
[0.212190] sgx: There are zero EPC sections.
And then it switches off.
See Running a MacBook Pro with Debian for the follow-up.
Running a MacBook Pro with Debian
Update on the current laptop situation: @deshipu@fosstodon.org opened it up, looked it over with the binoculars and applied the sysadmin touches and … and he found a lose screw wedged into a corner of the laptop's innards so that it wouldn't rattle and betray itself. We recovered the screw, located an empty place that looked like it might be missing a screw, put it all back together, and it worked! And then we switched the disks of PowerBook Pro and Purism laptops. I'm writing this message from the laptop I feared was toast!
