In 2014, Purism launched a crowdfunding campaign on Crowd Supply to fund the creation and production of the Librem 15 laptop,[10] conceived as a modern alternative to existing open-source hardware laptops, all of which used older hardware.[11][12][13] The 15 in the name refers to its 15-inch screen size. The campaign succeeded after extending the original campaign,[14] and the laptops were shipped to backers.[15] In a second revision of the laptop, hardware kill switches for the camera, microphone, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth were added.
After the successful launch of the Librem 15, Purism created another campaign on Crowd Supply for a 13-inch laptop called the Librem 13,[16] which also came with hardware kill switches similar to those on the Librem 15v2.[17] The campaign was again successful and the laptops were shipped to customers.[18]
Purism announced in December 2016 that it would start shipping from inventory rather than building to order with the new batches of Librem 15 and 13.[19]
As of January 2023[update], Purism has one laptop model in production, the Librem 14 (version 1, US$1,370[20]).
Phosh, the GNOME mobile shell that runs on the Librem 5.
On August 24, 2017, Purism started a crowdfunding campaign for the Librem 5, a smartphone aimed to run 100% free software, which would "[focus] on security by design and privacy protection by default". Purism claimed that the phone would become "the world's first ever IP-native mobile handset, using end-to-end encrypted decentralized communication."[44] Purism cooperated with KDE and GNOME in its development of Librem 5.[45]
The release of the Librem 5 has been postponed several times. In September 2018, Purism announced that the launch date of Librem 5 would be moved from January to April 2019, because of two hardware bugs and the holiday season in Europe and North America.[50] The Librem 5's DevKits for software developers were shipped in December 2018. The launch date was later postponed to the third quarter because of the necessity of further CPU tests.[51] On September 24, 2019, Purism announced that the first batch of Librem 5 phones had started shipping.[52] The finished version of the Librem 5, known as "Evergreen", was finally shipped on November 18, 2020.[53]
Announced on 20 September 2018, the Librem Key is a hardware USB security token with multiple features, including integration with a tamper-evident Heads BIOS, which ensures that the Librem laptop Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) was not maliciously altered since the last laptop launch.[55] The Librem Key also features one-time password storage with 3x HMAC-based One-time Password algorithm (HOTP) (RFC 4226) and 15 x Time-based One-time Password algorithm (TOTP) (RFC 6238) and an integrated password manager (16 entries), 40 kbit/s true random number generator, and a tamper-resistant smart card. The key supports type A USB 2.0, has dimensions of 48 x 19 x 7 mm, and weighs 6 g.[56]
Initially planning to preload its Librem laptops with the Trisquel operating system,[57] Purism eventually moved off the Trisquel platform to Debian for the 2.0 release of its PureOSLinux operating system.[58] As an alternative to PureOS, Librem laptops are purchasable with Qubes OS preinstalled.[59] In December 2017, the Free Software Foundation added PureOS to its list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions.[60][61]
BIOS
In 2015, Purism began research to port the Librem 13 to coreboot[62][63][64] but the effort was initially stalled. By the end of the year, a coreboot developer completed an initial port of the Librem 13 and submitted it for review.[65] In December 2016, hardware enablement developer Youness Alaoui joined Purism and was tasked to complete the coreboot port for the original Librem 13 and prepare a port for the second revision of the device.[66] Since summer 2017, new Librem laptops are shipped with coreboot as their standard BIOS, and updates are available for all older models.[67]
Purism calls a collection of these six components, involved in the boot process, as PureBoot:[68]
Multi-factor authentication that unlocks disk encryption using the Librem Key
PureBoot protects the users from various attacks like theft, BIOS malware and kernel rootkits, vulnerabilities and malicious code in the Intel Management Engine, and interdiction.[68]
^IEEE Consumer Electronics, Vol 5, Number 1, 2016 January, "Veillance Integrity by Design A new mantra for CE devices and services", pp. 33-143, By Steve Mann
^Purism Aims To Build A Philosophically Pure Laptop, TechCrunch, Jan 23, 2015 by John Biggs (@johnbiggs)
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