In 2014, Purism launched a crowdfunding campaign onCrowd Supply to fund the creation and production of the Librem 15 laptop,[9] conceived as a modern alternative to existingopen-source hardware laptops, all of which used older hardware.[10][11][12] The15 in the name refers to its 15-inch screen size. The campaign succeeded after extending the original campaign,[13] and the laptops were shipped to backers.[14] In a second revision of the laptop, hardware kill switches for the camera, microphone,Wi-Fi, andBluetooth were added.
After the successful launch of the Librem 15, Purism created another campaign onCrowd Supply for a 13-inch laptop named Librem 13,[15] which also came with hardware kill switches similar to those on the Librem 15v2.[16] The campaign was again successful and the laptops were shipped to customers.[17]
Purism announced in December 2016 that it would start shipping from inventory rather thanbuilding to order with the new batches of Librem 15 and 13.[18]
As of January 2023[update], Purism has one laptop model in production, the Librem 14.[19]
Phosh, the GNOME mobile shell that runs on the Librem 5.
On August 24, 2017, Purism began a crowdfunding campaign for theLibrem 5, asmartphone 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."[43] Purism cooperated withKDE andGNOME in its development of Librem 5.[44]
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.[49] 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.[50] On September 24, 2019, Purism announced that the first batch of Librem 5 phones had begun shipping.[51] The finished version of the Librem 5, known as "Evergreen", was finally shipped on November 18, 2020.[52]
Announced on 20 September 2018, the Librem Key is a hardware USBsecurity 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.[54] The Librem Key also features one-time password storage with 3xHMAC-based One-time Password algorithm (HOTP) (RFC 4226) and 15 xTime-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.[55]
Initially planning to preload its Librem laptops with theTrisquel operating system,[56] Purism eventually moved off the Trisquel platform toDebian for the 2.0 release of itsPureOSLinux operating system.[57] As an alternative to PureOS, Librem laptops are purchasable withQubes OS preinstalled.[58] In December 2017, theFree Software Foundation added PureOS to its list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions.[59][60]
In 2015, Purism began research to port the Librem 13 tocoreboot[61][62][63] 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.[64] 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.[65] Since summer 2017, new Librem laptops are shipped with coreboot as their standard BIOS, and updates are available for all older models.[66]
Purism calls a collection of these six components, involved in the boot process, as PureBoot:[67]
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, andinterdiction.[67]
^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
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