Hi, I’m not a Qubes user, so sorry to intrude on this forum. However, I noticed this thread (since it is linked to on the Purism forum). Given the amount of controversy that Purism seems to generate, I think it is important to be accurate about what the company has and hasn’t done.
According to Wikipedia, Purism was the first company to sell computers with a neutralized Intel Management Engine. The first code commit for the me_cleaner utility was on 2016-11-16. Purism first posted that it had used me_cleaner to neutralize the ME on 2017-03-09. Purism announced that it would start selling laptops with a neutralized ME on 2017-10-19. Purism’s example pressured System76 to announce on 2017-11-30 that it would also neutralize the ME. Dell started selling some laptops with a neutralized ME in Dec. 2017. Then ThinkPenguin and TUXEDO computers announced that they would neutralize the ME.
As far as I know, Purism is the only company that sells PCs with 90%-92% of the ME’s code replaced with zeros, whereas the other companies just change the HAP bit to disable the ME after booting.
Purism has a history of making announcements which will take years to fulfill, but Purism does work on fulfilling those promises.
In November 2014, when Purism started crowdfunding its first laptop, it claimed that the laptop would have a free BIOS. Purism did eventually port Coreboot to that laptop in summer 2017 and started selling new laptops with Coreboot preinstalled in late August 2017. Its example pushed System76 to work on Coreboot ports for their laptops, which they started shipping in January 2020. Now Slimbook and TUXEDO Computers have announced that they too are working on Coreboot ports. Without Purism pushing the Linux PC industry, the only option to get new hardware with Coreboot would be Google Chromebooks.
In addition, Purism has removed the proprietary VGA BIOS, so the only blobs that remain are the microcode, Firmware Support Package and 10%-12% of the ME. Purism has gotten very close to fulfilling its original promise.
More importantly, Purism has spent the last 3.5 years working on making i.MX 8M a viable platform for Respects Your Freedom devices.
On the question of Qubes, Purism’s Chief Technical Office runs Qubes on his Librem laptops and Purism’s Coreboot developer Matt DeVillier says that he makes sure that Qubes is compatible with every Librem PC. As far as I know, none of the other companies that sell new Linux laptops have the same level of commitment to Qubes, so basically you are telling people to not buy from the one company that attempts to support Qubes on new laptops and mini-PCs.
Zlatan was not truthful in this part of the interview:
the [Librem 5] campaign was going bad (as most of us predict) but then [Klumpp] and I talked about getting KDE community involved as they had Plasma Mobile which was pragmatic way to look at as phone OS base and Todd agreed that we contact them and make deal with them. There needs to be noted that Todd was for Plasma Mobile at that time, but then maybe and then seemingly not in the end. Anyway, this was a good decision and we gained traction, and on wings of that Todd went getting more PR momentum with GNOME, later also Matrix and Monero. THE MOAR THE BETTER!
[emphasis mine]
Zlatan had a disagreement with Todd Weaver about whether the Librem 5 should use KDE Plasma Mobile or create a new interface based on GTK/GNOME. By the time that Purism started its crowdfunding campaign for the Librem 5 on 2017-08-24, the company had decided to make a new mobile interface based on GTK/GNOME, as is seen in its original crowdfunding web page. However, as a compromise, Purism decided that it would also support Plasma Mobile, because it received a lot of feedback from KDE users who wanted to use Plasma Mobile on the Librem 5, however Purism always made it clear from the first day of the crowdfunding that it was developing a new interface based on GTK/GNOME, which would be the default interface. On 2017-09-14, Purism and KDE announced an agreement to work on porting Plasma Mobile to the Librem 5.
The question is why did Zlatan say that Todd was for Plasma Mobile when the crowdfunding started, when Todd was clearly for a GTK/GNOME interface at the time? Maybe Zlatan misremembered or maybe he was lying, but he isn’t a very reliable witness and he wasn’t on the team working on the Librem 5.
The second questionable claim that Zlatan made in that interview was this part:
That said, the Librems are heavily overpriced but that is because Purism seemingly never tried to get better deal and the South San Francisco partner abused this so that is why Purism Librems are double the price they should be. [emphasis mine]
Claiming that Librem’s cost double because a middleman is ridiculous. Most of Purism’s higher prices is due to the higher cost of doing small-scale custom hardware manufacturing and paying for software developers.
PS: I had lots of links in my post but your forum software prohibits me from posting more than two links since I am a new user. This configuration option ought to be changed.