Purism sells a line of laptops that ship with GNU/Linux software and which support privacy features including physical kill switches for the cameras, microphones, and wireless cards. The social purpose corporation is also developing the Librem 5 smartphone, which should ship with a Linux-based operating system later this year. Now Purism is moving beyond hardware […]
Purism’s Librem 5 smartphone’s Lockdown Mode will shut off all sensors
Purim’s upcoming Librem 5 smartphone has two key selling points. First, it will ship with free and open source GNU/Linux software featuring as little proprietary code as possible. And second, it features three hardware hardware kill switches that can disconnect: The mic and cameras WiFi and Bluetooth Cellular baseband In other words, it’s a phone […]
Lilbits 351: More multi-camera phones
Phones with three rear cameras are becoming common. Even that weird Energy Power Max 18K that was unveiled today has three rear cameras. But right now there’s only one smartphone with five rear cameras: The Nokia 9 PureView. It probably won’t be the last though. Nokia developed the phone using multi-camera technology from Light, and […]
Purism’s newest Librem laptops ship with newer (but still old) chips
Purism’s first smartphone is set to launch this year, but the corporation got its start making laptops that ship with free and open source software and privacy-oriented features like physical kill switches for the mic, camera, and wireless radios. Now Purism is updating its laptop lineup with new models sporting upgraded processors. And by upgraded, […]
Dev kits for Purism’s Librem 5 Linux smartphone are now shipping
Purism hopes to ship its first smartphone in the first half of 2019 which wouldn’t be all that unusual if Purism weren’t a rather unusual company. Actually company’s not even the right word — Purism is a “social purpose corporation” that prioritizes software and hardware freedom, privacy, and security over profit. All of the laptops […]
Lilbits 344: Winter… I mean Black Friday is coming
Singles Day has come and gone (although some sales live on). But Black Friday is just under two weeks away. Best Buy, Walmart, HP, and Samsung have revealed some of their sale prices over the past few days, and I’m continually updating Liliputing’s Black Friday mobile tech deals page with the latest bargains. There are […]
Lilbits 338: Multi-factor security
You may already be using multi-factor authentication to login to some devices or services. Your bank may send you a text message with a security code when you attempt to login to its website. I use a smartphone app that gives me a code to use when logging into Google, LastPass, or a handful of […]
Purism’s Librem 5 Linux smartphone to ship in April, 2019
Purism has been building and selling computers with free and open source GNU/Linux software for the past few years, and last year the corporation announced plans to build its first smartphone. When Purism launched a crowdfunding campaign for the upcoming Librem 5 smartphone, the goal was to ship the phone in January, 2019. Now Purism […]
Lilbits 331: Non-IFA news edition
The IFA show in Berlin technically begins on Thursday, but Intel, Acer, and Dell have already kicked things off with a series of announcements related to new processors and a whole bunch of new laptops. But not all the news this week is coming out of IFA. The Information reports that Amazon is getting ready […]
Purism wants to create a GNOME mobile shell for Linux smartphones (and other Librem 5 phone update)
Linux computer maker Purism hopes to ship their smartphone in January, and the corporation has been providing updates about development of the upcoming Librem 5 smartphone periodically since launching a crowdfunding campaign last September (that campaign eventually raised more than $1.5 million through pre-orders). We know that the phone will feature an NXP i.MX8 processor, that it […]
Librem 5 Linux smartphone will support Ubuntu Touch, PureOS, or PureOS with KDE Plasma Mobile
After raising more than $2 million last year to build a Linux-powered smartphone with a focus on privacy and open source software, Purism hopes to deliver the first Librem 5 smartphones early next year. The phone is expected to ship with an NXP i.MX8M 64-bit, ARM Cortex-A53 processor, feature 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a […]
Purism’s Linux laptops now ship with Intel Management Engine disabled
Most computers that ship with recent Intel processors include something called Intel Management Engine, which enables hardware-based security, power management, and remote configuration features that are not tied to the operating system running on your PC. For free software proponents, this has been a pain in the behind, because it’s a closed-source, proprietary feature designed […]