Librem 15: A Laptop That Respects Your Rights
Details
The first high-end laptop that respects your freedom and privacy.
As Featured In
“a portable PC that combines modern parts (such as a 3.4GHz Core i7 and an optional 4K display) with software that’s accessible from head to toe.”
“It’s a fascinating product and should be really cool when it all comes together.”
“Up until this point there were few options for laptops that ran purely Free Software, much less any that had modern hardware and a modern look and feel.”
“This is a serious, slick Linux notebook, not a bit of kit for hobbyist hackers.”
“This is a laptop for serious enthusiasts of free and open software who want to have full access to as much of the software running on their system as possible.”
“Librem 15: Sexy Open Source Laptop”
“a free, open source laptop that doesn’t suck”
“The Librem laptop is designed to run on truly free software only”
“The Librem 15 open source laptop has designed to offer users a high end experience”
“a laptop that’s as open source friendly as it is technically feasible”
"Purism's laptop is almost 100 percent open source and features preinstalled privacy protection software"
“Purism discovered how to make open-source software laptops even more open”
“There are lots of Linux laptops, but none that have the Free Software Foundation’s blessings. That may change.”
“Crowdsourcing Innovation: Todd Weaver, Purism”
“for those who pursue technology free of closed software and firmware, its creation is actually a big step forward.”
“Librem 15, the first free software GNU/Linux laptop, makes funding goal”
"Purism is working to give you all the privacy and freedom they can"
Beautiful Freedom.
We believe in users’ rights!
The Purism Librem 15 is the first high-end laptop in the world that ships without mystery software in the kernel, operating system, or any software applications. Every other consumer-grade laptop you can purchase comes with an operating system that includes suspect, proprietary software, and there’s no way for you to know what that software does.
Every chip in the hardware, every line of code in the software, everything we do, is done with our belief in respecting your rights to privacy, security, and freedom. We know you will be happy with the results!
Fifth Generation Intel Processor
Two Cores, Four Threads, 3.0GHz i7-5557U
Processors are essential, they call them central processing units, for a reason. Selecting Intel i7 based processors, the fifth generation mobile version, offers the best battery life while not compromising on speed. Processor hungry applications will finish in no time at all when using the latest generation from Intel.
Fast Memory Galore
4GB, up to 32GB, DDR3L 1600MHz
Memory is a wonderful thing, Purism offers the best in class memory modules at the fastest speeds available in a laptop. You will notice how quickly software apps respond when using the highest quality freedom respecting hardware.
Fifth Generation Intel Graphics
Optimized for media, without the power drain, with Intel Iris Graphics 6100
Play movies, edit videos, render 3D, easily with a power-optimized fifth generation graphics processing unit.
Purism Kill Switches
Two hardware kill switches, microphone/camera and wireless/bluetooth, When they’re off, you know they’re off
You never really know if your microphone & camera are off, now with a physical toggle switch, you do, on is on, off is off. Wireless & bluetooth are combined into the second hardware switch to control all your radio signals inbound and outbound.
Matte Display
Enjoy your screen in all lighting conditions
Avoid the uncomfortable mirror like reflections of glossy displays, with our anti-reflection matte display you can view your screen from the position that is most comfortable for you.
Large Multitouch Trackpad
Scroll, click, zoom, scale, all with an easy-to-use multitouch trackpad
First there was a mouse, then came joysticks, eraser-heads, trackballs, now welcome the ultimate interface, the multitouch trackpad.
Perfect Keypress
Build quality starts from the first thing you touch
It’s the little things that matter, especially when you do them a thousand times an hour. Pressing a key that is responsive, easy to press but not too easy, floating high enough to feel just right when you push down. You will enjoy typing on your Librem so much, you may never stop typing, ever.
Super Sturdy Hinge
Designed to last, reinforced metal, mounted directly to the case & screen
We get odd looks getting excited about a hinge. We don’t care! Often overlooked by inadequate laptop makers, our hinge needs to be sturdy for life. Stay shut when shut. Stay put in any of the 130° of screen angle while in use. After you’ve used our hinge, we hope you’ll be as excited as us (odd looks optional).
Purism Key
A powerful key to search your computer and applications
One button to rule them all. Quickly access all your favorite apps and documents from a single key.
Freedom from All Sides
Top, Left, Right, Front, and Rear, it’s hard to go wrong with these profiles
Sleek, slender, stylish, slim, are just a few words to describe the Librem laptop in its beauty (well there is another one).
Your Privacy Is Protected Chip By Chip
Every hardware chip individually selected for being freedom-respecting
All other laptops use hardware chips coupled with software that can betray you. News stories have shown how these chips can surreptitiously transmit voice, networking, picture or video signals. Other chips are used to install spyware, malware or viruses. These built-in vulnerabilities can turn “your” computer into “their” computer. Only by selecting each and every chip in our Librem laptops can we guarantee your privacy, security and freedom are protected.
Aligned Beliefs
We believe what you believe
When you use a Purism computer you know you are operating the best hardware and software that always has your rights to privacy, security, and freedom in mind. We place respecting users’ rights to privacy, security, and freedom above all else.
PureOS
The most rights respecting operating system
Purism PureOS, from the bootloader, kernel, through to the hundreds of thousands of software applications available, is built line-by-line to fully respect your rights to privacy, security, and freedom.
PureBrowser
The most rights respecting browser
PureBrowser makes browsing the web secure, private, and freedom respecting by default. That means the moment you open up PureBrowser you will be protected from nasty web based adversaries. You won’t have to hunt around for the best plugins or add-ons to attempt to secure things yourself — you can rely on us!
Office Software Included
Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Drawing, and more
Your Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Visio, and Outlook equivalents that can easily open, edit, save, and export to PDF are all pre-installed. The Purism Office suite that comes installed on Librem laptops protects your freedom and privacy, is completely free and open source, and never sends data to the parent company.
Hundreds of Free Software Applications Available
So many software apps to choose from, all of which protect your rights
There are so many completely free software applications available there is something for everyone. Including popular software applications from categories including Education, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office, Programming, Science, Sound, and Video.
How Can We Make This Change, When Other Companies Have Not?
All other companies, when they sit down at the negotiation table, negotiate first for price, mean time between failure, quality, warranty, availability, then revisit price again. We on the other hand negotiate for users’ rights to free software, then quality, then price. Most manufacturers just need to be made aware that it matters to users, and then we discuss how best to make that happen. This is where you come in, by showing you support Purism, that gives us the leverage we need to push upstream to the manufacturers of component parts. We are here to fight for your rights - please help us do that by supporting this campaign!
Hardware Specifications
The Librem 15 is the first high-end laptop where you are in control and have complete visibility into the kernel, the operating system, and all software. Meticulously designed chip by chip to work with free/libre and open source software, the Librem reinstates your rights to freedom and privacy. We hand selected the best hardware that still honors our strict beliefs:
- RF, Mic & Camera Hardware Kill Switch
- 15.6” 4K display (3840 x 2160) - 60Hz refresh rate.
- Intel i7-5557U CPU, 3.0GHz, Dual Core (4 Threads)
- Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6100
- 14 x 9.6 x 0.86” weighing 4.4lbs (375 x 244 x 22mm weighing 2.0Kg)
- 4GB Mem (up to 32GB)
- 500GB HD (up to 1TB HD or 1TB SSD)
- 48 Wh lithium polymer battery
- 65W power adapter
- Up to 6 hours usage
- One USB 3.1 & two USB 3.0 ports
- One HDMI 2.0 port
- 802.11n WiFi (ath9k)
- 720p camera
- HD Audio
- Headphone Jack
- Full-size keyboard in a variety of languages
- Aluminum enclosure body
- SDXC card slot
- Purism PureOS 64-bit Operating System
Manufacturing Versus Sourcing
Purism is manufacturing the motherboard, and screen printing the keyboard. Purism is sourcing the case, daughter cards, memory, drives, battery, camera, and screen.
Upgradable
As shown in the video above, the HDD/SSD, RAM, wireless chipset, and battery are all accessible after unscrewing the bottom of the case. All these components are easily replaceable or upgradable.
Keyboard
The Librem 15 keyboard comes in a wide variety of language layouts. See the “keyboard” drop-down menu in any of the pledge levels to the right for a full listing of the available languages.
Power Adapter
The Librem 15 laptop comes with the power adapter pictured below. As input, the power adapter takes up to 1.6A at 100-240V and 50-60Hz. As output, the power adapter provides up to 3.4A at 19V. The power adapter plug is available in EU, UK, and US styles and can be easily swapped out by the end user.
Warranty
Every Librem 15 laptop comes with a company-backed, two-year parts and labor warranty. We currently have one warranty facility in South San Francisco, however we are also considering and pursuing distribution and warranty repair within certain other countries.
Alternative Payment
We understand that credit cards aren’t for everyone. If you cannot or do not want to pay by credit card, contact support@crowdsupply.com to make arrangements for alternative forms of payment. We can accept check, wire transfer, PayPal, and now bitcoin pyaments via manually generated Coinbase USD invoices.
Software Specifications
Bundled with the fully free/libre, no mystery software Trisquel GNU/Linux operating system, with free/libre professional quality web browser, email, graphics, drawing, word processing, presentation, spreadsheet, and media software, users can easily replace their existing computer. Since it is a GNU-based distribution, users can add hundreds of thousands of free/libre and open source applications easily.
Painstakingly selecting every single component that goes into the Librem 15 laptop, Purism ensures they all will operate with free/libre and open source software within the kernel, the operating system, and all software applications.
What About Installing a Different OS?
Since we are using Trisquel GNU/Linux, which is the strictest of distributions and strips all binary blobs from the Linux kernel, you can easily install anything less strict, such as Debian and Ubuntu. We have not yet tried installing a non-GNU/Linux-based operating system.
What About the BIOS and firmware?
Though the bootloader, Linux kernel, GNU OS, and all software applications are completely free/libre software without any binary blobs, the BIOS does use coreboot, which includes a binary from Intel, called FSP. Here is a diagram that summarizes which components are free/libre and which aren’t.
While the BIOS is not yet free, the Librem 15 will be the first laptop ever manufactured to ship a modern Intel CPU fused to run unsigned BIOS code, allowing for a future where free software can replace the proprietary, digitally signed BIOS binaries. This marks one of the largest hurdles to a laptop that runs 100% free software and firmware. Recognizing the importance of this critical step toward consumer freedom, Dr. Richard M. Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), states:
“Getting rid of the signature checking is an important step. While it doesn’t give us free code for the firmware, it means that users will really have control of the firmware once we get free code for it.” - Dr. Richard M. Stallman
In addition to enabling as above the development of free BIOS firmware, we are also working with Intel to allow us to scrub, release, and maintain the source for the FSP, but haven’t finalized that yet. We are devoted to freeing this binary. You can read here about the current state of our efforts to free the BIOS.
There are also hardware components, like the HD or SSD, that are flashable, and therefore upgradeable, but that currently run firmware that is not yet freed. We are working to get freed versions of this firmware! Being the first manufacturer to care about freedom and privacy, we are making a lot of progress upstream.
Hardware Companies, Freedom, and Privacy
| Description | BIOS Freed | Kernel Freed | OS Freed | Software Freed | Promotes Freedom | Promotes Privacy† | Supports Freedom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ACER | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| AAPLE | No | No | Partial* | No | No | No | No |
| DELL | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| FUJITSU | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Almost‡ | No | No | No | Partial* | No | Partial* | |
| HP | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| IBM | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| MICROSOFT | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| LENOVO | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| PURISM | Almost‡ | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| TOSHIBA | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
*Source code is released under free licenses, but other freedom and privacy restricting features exist.
†Promotes privacy by providing source code under a free license, and installing privacy supporting software by default.
‡AMD includes an AGESA binary into the BIOS, Intel includes an FSP binary into the BIOS (Purism is working to have that binary freed).
Software Companies, Freedom, and Privacy
| Description | BIOS Freed | Kernel Freed | OS Freed | Apps Freed | Promotes Freedom | Promotes Privacy† | Supports Freedom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IOS | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| MACOS | No | No | Partial* | No | No | No | No |
| CHROME OS | Almost‡ | No | Partial* | No | No | No | Partial* |
| ANDROID | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| WINDOWS | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| PURISM OS | Almost‡ | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
*Source code is released under free/libre licenses, but other freedom and privacy restricting features exist.
†Promotes privacy by providing source code under a free/libre license, and installing privacy supporting software by default.
‡AMD includes an AGESA binary into the BIOS, Intel includes an FSP binary into the BIOS (Purism is working to have that binary freed).
§Trisquel GNU/Linux based distribution.
About Purism
Purism is devoted, at its heart and soul, to providing the highest quality hardware available, that utilizes free/libre software, ensuring the rights of freedom, privacy, and control of your computing. Purism was founded by Todd Weaver, a free/libre software advocate since 1994, formerly the CTO of Impart Media Group, and CEO of ivi, Inc. Todd has more than 20 years of entrepreneurial experience, using, installing, and promoting free/libre and open source software.
Compare Models
See how the Librem 13 compares to the Librem 15
| Librem 13 | Librem 15 rev 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Librem 13, starting at $1,400 | Librem 15, starting at $1,800 | |
| Available | April 2016 | April 2016 |
| CPU | i5-5200U | i7-5557U |
| Generation | 5th Generation | 5th Generation |
| CPU Power | 15W | 28W |
| Battery Life | Roughly 6 to 8 hours | Roughly 4 to 6 hours |
| CPU Cores | 2 (4 Threads) | 2 (4 Threads) |
| CPU Max Frequency | 2.2 GHz | 3.0 GHz |
| CPU Graphics | Intel HD Graphics 5500 | Intel Iris Graphics 6100 |
| Physical Memory Max | 16GB | 32GB |
| Memory Speed | DDR3L 1600MHz | DDR3L 1600MHz |
| Logo Etched | No | No |
| Color | Dark grey | Dark grey |
| Thunderbolt or mini-DP | No | No |
| Webcam | 720p 1.0 Mega pixels | 720p 1.0 Mega pixels |
| Audio | Intel HD Audio | ALC892 |
| Second Drive Bay | n/a | n/a |
| PCH | H87 | HM86 |
| TPM | Yes 2.0 | Yes 2.0 |
| Screen | 13.3” 1920x1080p Matte IPS @ 60Hz | 15.6” 3840x2160p Matte IPS @ 60Hz |
| HDD or SSD | 2.5” 7.0mm SataIII | 2.5” 7.0mm SataIII |
| M.2 | M.2 22*80 | M.2 22*80 |
| NGFF | 1 Slot (used for WiFi card) | 1 Slot (used for WiFi card) |
| Wireless | Atheros 802.11n w/ Two Antenna | Atheros 802.11n w/ Two Antenna |
| RF hardware cut-off | Yes | Yes |
| Mic/Camera hardware cut-off | Yes | Yes |
| Speakers | 2 stereo speakers | 2 stereo speakers |
| Ethernet | 1000M Realtek RTL8168 | No |
| RJ45 | Yes, Pop-down | No, USB Adapter Required |
| Power Port | 1 DC-in Port | 1 DC-in Port |
| Audio Port | 1 Jack, Mic/Line out | 1 Jack, Mic/Line out |
| USB Port | 1 USB 3.0 Port 1 USB 2.0 Port 2 USB 2.0 Ports | 2 USB 3.0 Ports 1 USB 3.1 Port |
| HDMI | 1 HDMI 2.0 Port | 1 HDMI 2.0 Port |
| Card Reader | Yes, 2-in-1 SD/MMC | Yes, 2-in-1 SD/MMC |
| LED Indicators | Power (white), Battery Status (white/amber), Wifi Status (white) | Power (white), Battery Status (white/amber), Wifi Status (white) |
| Reset Key | 1 Reset Hole | 1 Reset Hole |
| Touchpad | BYD all-in-one | BYD all-in-one |
| Thermal Design | Low noise fan | Low noise fan |
| Dimensions | 325mm x 219mm x 18mm (12.75” x 8.62” x .70”) | 375mm x 244mm x 22mm (14” x 9.6” x 0.86”) |
| Weight | 1.4Kg (3.0lbs) | 2.0kg (4.4lbs) |
| Backlit Keyboard | No | Yes |
| Librem 13, starting at $1,400 | Librem 15, starting at $1,800 |
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