First, thank you @unman and others for the interesting discussion.
I didn’t invest in Purism much and I really want to know all its sides, not just good ones (which is why I posted about the lack of SPC reports above). (By the way, it’s easy to dismiss the arguments of the opponent in this way, but it’s a fallacy.) However I did invest in free software, including Qubes OS. My investment in Purism I consider as a part of my investments in free software. And I think it’s pretty important to support it, which is what Purism arguably does. Don’t you also value free software?
I guess @unman means laptops from 2008 based on Libreboot, where old versions of Intel ME were fully removed. Although unman is right, it is not relevant anymore since those laptops are extremely insecure (Spectre & Meltdown) and I expect no one on these forums would use them anymore.
This sounds like a real issue, but I never saw that despite following Purism closely since a long time. Any actual links?
I’m not sure why Purism would intentionally skip installing Qubes to its customers, while security is their main selling point. Especially given that Qubes install is a relatively simple task. By the way, I ordered my laptop with a Qubes usb stick, but I did not receive the stick. They sent it separately after I complained about it. Should I have lost all my trust in the company in your opinion?
This is true, but such waiting time was reasonable given the goal. Their time estimation was pretty much wrong though.
This is one of the Zlatan’s lies. Actual data is that the phone battery lives for 14+ hours even though suspend is not implemented yet.
I in principle agree, but you should consider the reasons. I have no idea why people become Apple fanatics, but Purism is the only company producing devices with kill switches, the only company strongly pushing towards freedom and having it as a selling point, the only company seeking FSF certification for the phone, one of very few companies testing Qubes on their laptops. I think that everyone in the free software community should become their fan and ignore their drawbacks as long as they do not lie or mislead the customers. If this company fails, we will not get a free phone in the near future. Pinephone never even mentions freedom, calls itself “open-source company”, and supports hardware producers breaking GPL license AFAIK.
Again, for some reason you ignored the problem with Spectre and Meltdown. Did you find a way to fix them for those laptops, or do you ignore the threat of every program reading your RAM? I have such laptops as well, but I have no idea what I should do with them now. They also don’t support Qubes 4.0+.
Pine64 develops no free software, while a large part of Librem 5 phone price is the software development. Purism developed phone shell Phosh, which is used by >50% of Pinephone users. So Pinephone is in fact using Purism developers (which is not bad, but when you are comparing, you should be fair). For more detailed comparison I suggest to check out this link. Especially look at “reasons to buy”. Tl;dr: this is not as ambitions and challenging at all, although definitely very useful and should be supported.