As usual the touch pad is a major weakness of not only this but almost all non-Apple laptops. Apple seems to have some kind of soft monopoly on really great touch pads.
My experience of it was such that it was actually basically defective.
Review of the Purism Librem 13
21–30 of 43 posts
Re: Review of the Purism Librem 13
#22I own one of these as my personal laptop. I pretty much agree with this review. Unless you care about more niche things like coreboot, there is nothing really special about the laptop. There is nothing really bad about it, either. It meets my practical needs, and I am happy to support the limited market of more-"free" hardware. I have not tried to use PureOS. As soon as I received it, I tried to install Qubes OS, but…
Would the touchpad be usable for precise design work (e.g. working with pen tools/bezier curves in vector programs)?
This review talks about using a Wacom tablet with it: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article341/review-purism-librem13...
I find the touch pad to be accurate and usable on Manjaro, but I only use it to move around the terminal, IDE, and VMs.
Re: Review of the Purism Librem 13
#23I own one of these as my personal laptop. I pretty much agree with this review. Unless you care about more niche things like coreboot, there is nothing really special about the laptop. There is nothing really bad about it, either. It meets my practical needs, and I am happy to support the limited market of more-"free" hardware. I have not tried to use PureOS. As soon as I received it, I tried to install Qubes OS, but…
Would the touchpad be usable for precise design work (e.g. working with pen tools/bezier curves in vector programs)?
I am not sure. I almost never do anything graphical, and I mainly work from the keyboard.
Re: Review of the Purism Librem 13
#24Why do people regard the fn position as right or wrong? Especially if you come from Apple clearly lenovo does it "right". Isn't it all about flavor?
Although.. Can't we all agree putting fn right to space would be right?
Re: Review of the Purism Librem 13
#25I own one of these as my personal laptop. I pretty much agree with this review. Unless you care about more niche things like coreboot, there is nothing really special about the laptop. There is nothing really bad about it, either. It meets my practical needs, and I am happy to support the limited market of more-"free" hardware. I have not tried to use PureOS. As soon as I received it, I tried to install Qubes OS, but…
What had you hung up on Qubes? I used it for some time on my librem and it worked well, but I generally needed better Windows in a VM support for work.
After the installation, it would not boot from the drive. I tried to reinstall, and it still didn't work. I wasn't in the mood to troubleshoot it, so I just gave up and installed Debian. It was likely I would have switched to Debian later on, anyway.
Re: Review of the Purism Librem 13
#26I have a librem 13v2, too.
While I like it from an idealistic point of view - in terms of hardware build quality the current generation does just not get anywhere near a macbook pro. Maybe the next generation can close this gap further. As long as it is that big it cannot become my main device.
Re: Review of the Purism Librem 13
#27I bought one a few weeks ago and I'm now in the process of returning it. - First, I don’t mean any slight on Purism. At all. This is meant as an honest review. Physically the Librem 13v3 is a bit bigger than a 13 inch MacBook Air. A little thicker but nothing significant. It does need two hands to open it though. The trackpad, while good is unreliable. I found myself frequently trying to select text in a terminal and…
I'm curious if most of your issues were related to Pure OS. And if that's the case.. why ship with it installed?
Overall I'm not a fan of these additional spins of linux. System76 does this too with PopOS.
Our experiences are nearly polar opposite and the only difference I can detect is the OS.
I can say that the bluetooth works as expected (currently using a mouse). There is a bit of configuration that had to be done to get a Plantronics headset to work with LinPhone for my VoIP line, but that really isn't something I'd expect to work seamlessly in my environment.
For the headphone jack mine clearly works as expected. Though I haven't tried Apple's earbuds which may be a more common test item. I'm using Shure earbuds and the connections are flipped.
That load is high. I'm averaging 0.71. Maybe you're doing something more intense than I am, but generally I have a Windows VM (MS Office open) and Firefox/Slack/WebStorm running.
Re: Review of the Purism Librem 13
#28I remember how much praise the Purism laptops got for the hardware kill switches on the microphone/camera. It seems like it would be easier for the 90% of the target audience, who probably never uses the mic or the camera anyway , to just remove those pieces from the hardware altogether and let those who need it plug in a USB mic or webcam.
I added a hardware switch to my x230 camera (I had it opened up anyway to do the FHD mod so I figured why not). It switches the power line of the internal USB port that the camera connects to. I placed a subminiature slide switch next to the camera, cut a notch in the casing, cut the supply trace between the camera's connector and filter capacitor, and soldered wires to the switch to either side of the cut trace. Then I drilled two 0.5mm deep holes with a drill bit held by hand for the bumps of the switch to sit in, and glued it in place. Works fine. I added a touch of glitter paint to one side of the switch slider so it's glittery when the camera has power. I haven't got around to doing the same for the mic.
(yes, I do electronics for a living)
Re: Review of the Purism Librem 13
#29I bought one a few weeks ago and I'm now in the process of returning it. - First, I don’t mean any slight on Purism. At all. This is meant as an honest review. Physically the Librem 13v3 is a bit bigger than a 13 inch MacBook Air. A little thicker but nothing significant. It does need two hands to open it though. The trackpad, while good is unreliable. I found myself frequently trying to select text in a terminal and…
I'm curious if most of your issues were related to Pure OS. And if that's the case.. why ship with it installed? Overall I'm not a fan of these additional spins of linux. System76 does this too with PopOS. Our experiences are nearly polar opposite and the only difference I can detect is the OS. I can say that the bluetooth works as expected (currently using a mouse). There is a bit of configuration that had to be don…
I tried booting Ubuntu on it, similar problems.
What model do you have?
Re: Review of the Purism Librem 13
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would the touchpad be usable for precise design work (e.g. working with pen tools/bezier curves in vector programs)?
This review talks about using a Wacom tablet with it: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article341/review-purism-librem13... I find the touch pad to be accurate and usable on Manjaro, but I only use it to move around the terminal, IDE, and VMs.
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