Hello everyone! I made a preorded of librem 14 because purism tells it’s the best qubes laptop. However, the company is very disappointing now. They will (probably) ship the laptop at the end of 2021, and waiting for so long seems to be impossible.
In addition, the major quality issues made me think about buying something else.
I don’t want to use a 2005 laptop and that’s the problem. Can you guys suggest me something that you are using without any issues?
The more modern that laptop is, the better, would be perfect if no workaround is needed.
Unfortunately, hcl doesn’t have good laptops less then 5 kilograms.
I personally found librem shipping times to be very very long. There is much talk about the delays on the librem5 phone etc.
If you require firmware attestation (like librem) using heads firmware, then you will need a laptop capable of heads firmware. These are listed here https://github.com/osresearch/heads/tree/master/boardsvthough please note not all laptops have guides currently (Im working on one for t430)
If you do not require heads firmware then the Qubes hardware compatibility list is here https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/
I would look for a laptop with 3+ years that has been highly tested. For example the X1 Carbon Gen 5 is what the developers (and I) use and it should be relatively cheaper these days (especially if refurbished or second hand).
@deeplow X1 Carbon would be near perfect IF possible to install >16GB ram. How many App and sysVM’s do you normally have running concurrently? I have 40GB of ram and run around 7 AppVM’s and 5 sysVM’s and I feel like I’m using most of my RAM (although I’m not sure how to accurately access that as xentop always reports that its using 99%).
True. 16 GB is a bit annoying. And it’s soldered on the motherboard. So no chance of upgrading it.
For the most part 16GB is tolerable. You just have learned to deal with it. It’s not like with 8GB where you have to be constantly doing manual management.
I run on average about 10 VMs which should be around ~12GB. Some are minimal, others are not.
edit: I’ve also adjusted the title to make it more specific. Change it if you feel it does not correctly reflect your situation.
T480 was my previous driver and the keyboard was much better.
recently some one asked me if i was working in server room while i was on a videoconference (audio only) because the fans were so loud… maybe i’ll find a replacement part with lower noise, just badly selected fans…
recommendation goes to T480, with a similar amount of Ports. no core boot, but bottom cover temper detection, and its possible to detach the camera/mic inside the machinne. also the designnated LTE modem slot can be used as a NVME harddrive slot (bootable). maybe even the WIFI slot but i dont have a module that size. but make sure you have a windows hard drive arrounnd to make some times necessary firmware updates, one was mandatory else the charging could break (thunderbold controler or so…) and you can put 32GB of ram in it.
sudo xenpm set-scaling-maxfreq 1600000 (the output of get-cpufreq-para is funny because it cant display things above the gigahertz sudo xenpm set-scaling-governor powersave
worked for me so far
i am really disappointed with the keyboard. :/ (i hate emojis)
There’s an issue with the Ethernet device on install, but there’s a simple workaround for it.
NVIDIA graphics are, well, NVIDIA graphics, so not really supported, but other than that it’s great.
It also allows for easy upgrading of both the RAM and SSDs. I’m cruising along with 16GB of RAM, but plan to upgrade in the future. A machine like this is a bit of a hefty initial investment, but I can easily see myself getting 10+ years out of this machine.
I guess, this really depends on the product and part availability. Fully, agree with the Librem 5 shipping issue but they clearly stated this issue in blogs and newsletter emails.
For the Librem 14 I can share the opposite experience. It was so quickly shipped - in my case international shipping - that I had to wait one more day more for my locally order extra RAM package.
maybe i’ll find a replacement part with lower noise, just badly selected fans…