Qubes OS will ship pre-installed on Purism’s security-focused Librem 13 laptop

Also worth noting is the Novena, which has similar goals: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena

Novena contains 4x Cortex A9 CPU, thet is much less power and not enough power for more serious work :(

I would argue that it's really powerful for certain, niche applications. Having an FPGA onboard is awesome. Now if we can get software everyone uses (office apps, browsers, and the big ones, not specialized ones 1% of people use) maybe the Novena will be fine. We should get that anyway so mid/low-range smartphones can replace the PC for most people.

You are right, it has it's own (sadly small) niche. But it's hardly comparable to Librem.

I just benchmarked my shiny new Asus Chromebook Flip (4-core ARM) against my ludicrously overpowered desktop (12-core Xeon E5-1650). I ran povray --benchmark, so it was a float-heavy number-crunching exercise.

The figures were about 1500 CPU-seconds for the desktop and 3000 CPU-seconds for the Chromebook. Of course, wall-clock time was significantly less for the desktop due to having many more cores, but that's showing that per-core, the high-end Intel was only about twice as fast as the ARM.

I do development work on the Chromebook, via a Debian chroot inside Crouton. And you know what? It's fine. It's probably the fastest laptop I've ever owned. The filesystem's a little slow, but compilation speeds are perfectly adequate.

Are you seriously saying a machine that can process over a billion instructions per second, four times in parallel is not powerful enough for serious work? What kind of serious work do you do?

It includes several open firefox tabs and running an IDE and a compiler.

Anyway Cortex A9 is barely enough for web surfing if you visit some more demanding pages.

I don't think your numbers are correct. My Core i7-4770K (4 cores) runs povray --benchmark faster than your 12 core Xeon:

    Render Time:
      Photon Time:      0 hours  0 minutes  1 seconds (1.256 seconds)
                  using 11 thread(s) with 1.456 CPU-seconds total
      Radiosity Time:   No radiosity
      Trace Time:       0 hours  2 minutes 18 seconds (138.426 seconds)
                  using 8 thread(s) with 1099.214 CPU-seconds total

That's POV-Ray 3.7 with no architectural optimizations. I just apt-get installed it.

I would be very surprised if the Chromebook's 1.8GHz Cortex-A17 was only 3x slower. Googling around, I see people mentioning numbers like 10,000 CPU-seconds.

The issue is Cortex A9 not ARM. Flip has Cortex A12 or Cortex A17.

(I am not ARM hater, the oposite is true. I admire the work Apple did when designing A9 -not the Cortex one - and I hope I can buy a lightweight laptop with Cortex A72 or Cryo next year. But this doesn't make Novena effort any way usable for heavy web usage or more demanding tasks or comparable with i5 notebooks for work..)

> via a Debian chroot inside Crouton

Try a native install on the Flip, it is nice: http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/

We use Novenas as build slaves in GNU Guix's build farm and they work well. Is that not serious work?

From that page:

> The C100P Flip is the best netbook I have seen in eight years.

That's quite the praise! This thing must be really good.

> The default ALSA config was completely silent. Enabling Right Speaker Mixer Right/Left DAC fixed that. Supposedly there is a risk of burning out the amp if you thoughtlessly enable every option.

Uhh... wow. Well, OK.

> After suspend/resume, wifi will not work if the btsdio module was automatically loaded.

The best netbook in eight years, yet it can't even suspend/resume properly? What?

> The best video output mode is X11 video output. Despite what everyone says about being slow, this is the only driver that doesn't have major desync problems.

> Stellarium would run at a buttery smooth 60 FPS for a few minutes and then everything would die.

> Chromium will not run on this hardware.

> Screen rotation through xrandr doesn't work at all...

Then under "Things to Fix":

> - HMDI output. Very wonky, usually crashes X11 after a few minutes.

> - USB ethernet. The cdc_ether module will load but nothing happens.

> - Webcam. Crazy bucket of fail here. Maybe 25% of the time fswebcam can grab a single frame. Good luck with video.

> - Multitouch on the panel. No idea how to get that working.

To me, —even with the fixes and workarounds you describe— that device sounds like a nightmare to use.

I just reran it. I don't have access to the 12x Xeon now, but:

8x i7-3770K: 1123 cpu-seconds (wall-clock: 144 seconds)

4x Cortex A17: 3196 cpu-seconds (wall-clock: 963 seconds)

I just wish it had more cores, but I suspect that Rockchip are raking in money from these things, and I expect we'll get more cores next year.

The 12x Xeon was my work machine. I might have to have a word with them about it.

As a counter, ChromeOS will boot from cold in about five seconds. It's got a web browser, file browser, video and music player (with super-slick video quality --- no tearing!), the WiFi just works, there's built in support for mapping the caps key to ctrl, it maintains and updates itself, all the fiddly audio and touchscreen and gestures all just work.

And then if I want to use a real OS, I switch to my fullscreen Debian installation running awesome and all my xterms and it all just seamlessly interoperates. Except I don't need NetworkManager or PulseAudio or any of that nonsense because ChromeOS does it all for me. The brightness buttons work! The audio volume buttons work! Suspend and resume works! Everything works! There's even two-way clipboard support! Which works!

I've been using Linux for years, and I think this is the first time I have ever had a Linux-based laptop where all this stuff wasn't a total PITA.

Well it is the best netbook I've seen in eight years. With the exception of the meager number of ports and the glossy screen, the hardware is wonderful.

Everything else comes down to software. Some of the difficulties were because I prefer to do things a difficult way. Eg, Arch is going to require more configuration and sound Just Works if you use Pulse. Having ALSA correctly autoconfigure everything except a single boolean flag is pretty good in my book. The warning about burning out hardware is just me passing on the advice from an engineer who actually works on these boards.

Suspend/resume is in fact flawless. It has never failed to come out of suspend, unlike quite a few thinkpads I've used. However linux does the wrong thing here with the bluetooth module. Trivial to fix, and it happens on other hardware too. Not the fault of the Flip.

Chromium doesn't run on Arch Linux ARM at all. Any hardware, regardless. So you can't hold that against the Flip. And I don't use Chromium, so this is a non-factor.

Almost everything else is the usual crap you have to put up with using garbage closed source video drivers and a kernel hacked out of ChromeOS. But I spend the majority of my time in the terminal, so the graphics are nothing I am concerned about. Similarly, I don't care about the webcam or multitouch, or HDMI because I don't own an HDMI monitor. I feel they are irrelevant details hardly worth mention, but they sound like dealbreakers to you.

Literally all I do is typing, reading, listening to music. I wanted fanless, all-day battery life, that weighs under a kilogram and is under $300. The Flip delivers and overall it has been a better experience than running Linux on a thinkpad. There are very few netbooks that could meet those requirements, and none that do it as elegantly as the Flip does. Therefor it is the best in my regard. If you disagree, it is up to you to name something superior according to the given criteria.

Counter counter :-)

Linux boots in 6 seconds. Caps is mapped to Mod4/super, you already have a GIANT control key. Linux does not need NM or Pulse either. And the operating system is not in the middle of being axed by Google, so while updates are not automatic I don't have to worry about them stopping.

But the two biggest points: Linux gets you an extra five hours of battery life, and lets you configure charge limits so that the non-replacable battery won't rot away in three years.

Our use-cases are similar, but if you value your time at anything reasonable, your budget should be much higher. Let me explain.

I spend about 10 hours a day on my main computer. If I upgrade every 18 months, even a $1500 machine only costs 28 cents per hour. Set aside frustration with drivers or software bugs; expensive laptops win for purely economic reasons. If a $1500 laptop makes me even 10% more productive, it's worth buying. This is the case for practically anyone who works in tech.

My current laptop is a base model 12" MacBook. It is, without a doubt, my favorite computer ever. It's small. It's light. The screen is gorgeous. It resumes before I'm done opening the lid. It has an amazing trackpad, excellent battery life, and a wonderful keyboard. With current technology, it could scarcely be improved upon. I wish there was a combination of hardware and software that could compete with it, but so far, nothing I've seen has come close.

Nah, for $1500 I could have five of these machines. Or two laptops and a powerful headless build box. You can do a lot better than a mere 10% gain with that sort of budget. You are throwing good money at diminishing returns.

I think you misinterpreted my point. I didn't say a nicer laptop made me 10% more productive. The real number is likely much higher than that. I gave 10% as an example where it would still be worthwhile to pay $1500 for. Considering the hourly wage of a programmer, 28 cents is a rounding error. Yes the returns are diminishing, but they're still totally worth it.

With regards to being able to buy more equipment: I do have a powerful rack-mount server in addition to my MacBook. But being able to buy five ordinary laptops for the price of an amazing one? That's not very relevant. I can only type on one keyboard at a time. If anything, more laptops would slow me down. I'd have to keep all of their software up-to-date, sync data between them, ensure their batteries were charged, etc.

Imagine making the same argument in other domains. For the price of one plane ticket, I could buy five Greyhound bus tickets to the same destination. For the price of one quality memory-foam mattress, I could buy five innerspring mattresses. For the price of one Aeron chair, I could buy five AmazonBasics office chairs. So what? I don't want more. I want better.

> The brightness buttons work! The audio volume buttons work! Suspend and resume works! Everything works!

I can't remember when I last had a Thinkpad where any of that didn't work out of the box with Linux.

If you are paying for Applecare, you are paying for "more not better". A second laptop is zero (amortized) overhead: every night your real laptop rsyncs back to the spare. Battery floats at 70% charge, nothing to worry about there either. Now when you spill coffee all over your laptop, you have a hot spare ready to go. If you are accident prone you can do this "for free" up to four times. Imagine the productivity gain not having to visit a store and deal with the Geniuses.

It is irresponsible to always buy the "best" when you should be looking for the best value per dollar. Your own bank account is zero-sum, be more effective with it.

I have to admit that I've never used a Thinkpad. I know they have excellent Linux support (lots of people where I work use them because of this).

But on every single other laptop I have ever used Linux on, there has always been something that hasn't worked properly, whether it's audio not waking up properly after a suspend, or occasionally suspend not actually working and I discover a red hot laptop in my bag spinning at 100% CPU, or some such issue.

Having a machine which I don't have to fiddle with to make work is a totally new experience for me.

Thank you for reminding everyone why quality matters. (We're flattered to be compared to beautifully designed things like Aeron chairs and the Mac.)

We think that once you actually see and touch the Librem, hands on, you will find the hardware is even better than a MacBook in many ways.

The Librem is definitely much faster, and the screen quality is amazing. The feel is very sturdy.

The usability, look/feel of the amazing Mac OSX is harder to exceed but we are working on the UI and ease of use in our Linux-kernel-based PureOS. It's all a work in progress.

And one more thing -- we are structured more like an Open Source project than a traditional corporation, so we are able to iterate very very rapidly.

The Librem is really created with the feedback of the backers and the community. This is what makes it at the core, very different than any other computer.

But the real argument to pay more for a Librem should be:

"What is my data worth?"

What is your privacy worth?

What is it worth if even one time you have your identity stolen or tax return hacked, or your company's reputation is ruined by a data breach?