[SFS] Fwd: [Announce] The November-to-February mega news update

Wed Feb 28 11:12:17 MST 2018

Fun.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Purism Announcements" <lists at puri.sm>
Date: Feb 28, 2018 10:01
Subject: [Announce] The November-to-February mega news update
To: <announce at announce.puri.sm>
Cc:

[image: Purism logo] The November-to-February mega-update

It has been a while since our last email update in November, where we
celebrated the success of the Librem 5
<https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email> phone
campaign (still available for preorder) and the full disablement of the Intel
Management Engine <https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/> on our laptops (we
disable *and* neutralize the Intel ME at the factory while fulfilling your
orders, see our official announcement
<https://puri.sm/posts/purism-librem-laptops-completely-disable-intel-management-engine/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>
and technical explanation
<https://puri.sm/posts/deep-dive-into-intel-me-disablement/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>
).

That doesn't mean we've been sitting on our hands since then, however. In
fact, we've made so much progress and had so many good things to announce
(we published *29 blog posts*) that we've had little time left to write
news digests, other than the year in review and goals for 2018
<https://puri.sm/posts/happy-new-year-purism-goals-for-2018/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>
summary blog post! So today's email will be jam-packed full of news with a
nice high-level overview. We hope to bring you more announcements through
email soon, as we have more announcements coming in the next few days and
weeks. We have a *lot* of stuff in the pipeline this spring.
------------------------------
PureOS [image: PureOS screenshot] <https://pureos.net>

Since December, PureOS now features AppArmor activated by default
<https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-apparmor-activated-by-default/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>.
AppArmor can be thought of as “immunization” for your Operating System,
using the concept of “minimum privilege required” applied on a case by case
basis for each application profiled.

Near the end of the year, we were also delighted to see PureOS
officially *endorsed
by the Free Software Foundation*
<https://puri.sm/posts/fsf-endorses-pureos/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>.
------------------------------
Librem laptops news [image: Photo: Librem 13 with built-in TPM]
<https://puri.sm/products/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email> New laptop
inventory with TPM as a standard feature

In November, we announced the availability of our Trusted Platform Module
(read the original announcement to learn what the TPM is about, and the
features it can provide
<https://puri.sm/posts/tpm-addon-for-librem-laptops/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>),
as a $99 add-on for early adopters. The add-on fee was meant to cover the
additional parts & labor costs, as well as to evaluate market demand for
this feature. The resulting demand has been overwhelmingly positive.

Thanks to the investment of those early TPM adopters who voted with their
wallets and gave us the necessary “business case” and resources to work it
out, we are extremely proud to announce that we now include the TPM chip in
all new Librem 13 and Librem 15 orders by default
<https://puri.sm/posts/tpm-by-default-and-free-international-shipping/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>,
as a standard feature of our newest hardware revision shipping out this
month.

You may also like to read Kyle's blog posts on how the TPM can help protect
against security threats emanating from the Intel Management Engine
<https://puri.sm/posts/measuring-the-intel-me-to-create-a-more-secure-computer/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>
and how adding tamper-evident features allows us to create the most secure
laptop
<https://puri.sm/posts/librem-now-most-secure-laptop-under-full-user-with-tamper-evident-features/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>—under
full customer control—ever made to date.
German keyboards and Free International Shipping

We are now offering Free International Shipping on all orders. This is
essentially a permanent rebate of approximately 100 USD to all new
international customers!

Thanks to popular demand, we are now offering Librem 13 and Librem 15
laptops with the backlit German keyboard layout. They are available for
purchase in our store now, and will begin rolling out in mid-March.

Oh, and we're also offering a special discount to Debian Developers
<https://puri.sm/posts/purisms-debian-developer-discount-program-announcement/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>.

Qubes OS users rejoice! [image: coreboot logo]

We have added IOMMU and TPM support
<https://puri.sm/posts/qubes4-fully-working-on-librem-laptops/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>
to our new coreboot 4.7 BIOS, allowing the coreboot-enabled Librem laptops
to install Qubes 4.0 RC4 with no warning messages and to run a Qubes 4
operating system with working sys-net and sys-usb HVM VMs.

With our latest coreboot update available for download
<https://puri.sm/posts/february-2018-coreboot-update/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>
or preloaded with new shipping laptops, once the final release of Qubes OS
4.0 comes out and we reconfirm it works as expected, we will offer it as an
option in place of Qubes OS 3.2 on our order page.
Reverse-engineering the Intel FSP has begun

Shortly before the end of the year, we published a primer guide to reverse
engineering
<https://puri.sm/posts/primer-to-reverse-engineering-intel-fsp/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>,
taking the Intel FSP reverse engineering work we began as a case study. It
is a highly technical writeup for those of you who wish to help us with the
effort—or those who would like to better understand what
reverse-engineering is like, and why it takes a long time.
------------------------------
Librem phone news [image: Librem 5 i.MX 6 development test board connected
to a 5.5-inch screen]

Shortly after the end of the campaign, we started running some initial tests
<https://puri.sm/posts/running-plasma-mobile-on-an-imx6-test-board/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>
to see how Plasma mobile runs on i.MX 6 development boards. We also
announced the contest winners for our ringtone contest
<https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-ringtone-contest-winners/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>
and confessed our love for the Ethical Design Manifesto
<https://puri.sm/posts/we-love-ethical-design/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>
.

>From November to January, we interviewed over a hundred candidates who
applied to work on developing the Librem 5 phone with us. Through this
process, we hired and onboarded a dozen new developers, leading us to a
position where we could begin proper development of the phone platform
starting in January. As such, in January we began posting weekly about our
progress, alternating between product UI+UX design, hardware testing and
software development. Here are the updates up to now:

   1. Tech/dev update 1
   <https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-1/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>:
   hiring update, i.MX 6 vs i.MX 8M SoC choices, prototype displays
   2. Design update 1
   <https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-2/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>:
   hiring update, light vs dark theme, convergence
   3. Interlude
   <https://puri.sm/posts/gnome-and-kde-in-pureos-diversity-across-devices/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>:
   a reminder of why (and how) we can support both GNOME and KDE communities
   with the Librem 5 project
   4. Tech/dev update 2
   <https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-3/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>:
   development path for a Wayland-only, baggage-free mobile compositor and UI
   shell
   5. Design update 2
   <https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-4/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>:
   our take on convergence, base mobile design principles, first look at the
   UI shell design
   6. Tech/dev update 3
   <https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-5/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>:
   5.5" screen testing on i.MX 6 development boards, first SMS successfully
   sent, and explanation of the mobile industry's evolution from the chip
   design and economic perspective
   7. Design update 3
   <https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-6/?pk_campaign=2018-02-27-email>:
   a UI shell design update regarding edge-based gestures

------------------------------
Events [image: Francois presenting at the Capitole du Libre]

In November and December we attended le Capitole du Libre
<https://puri.sm/posts/le-capitole-du-libre-2017/> and the Chaos
Communications Congress
<https://puri.sm/posts/purism-attends-chaos-communication-congress/>. At
the turn of February we attended FOSDEM
<https://puri.sm/posts/meet-us-at-fosdem-2018/> to answer the public's
questions and discuss with community members. The next community events
where we will have a presence is LibrePlanet <https://libreplanet.org/2018/>
(Boston, MA, USA) and JDLL <http://www.jdll.org/jdll-presentation-generale/>
(Lyon, France) near the end of March, GUADEC <https://guadec.org> in July
(Almería, Spain), and the Debian Developer Conference
<https://www.debconf.org/> in August (Hsinchu, Taiwan). We hope to meet you
there, and possibly at other events throughout the year.
------------------------------

We will have lots of *very* exciting news coming in the next few weeks,
which we're sure you'll be happy to share around you! The contents of this
email are CC-by-SA, so feel free to forward it to who you want.

Thanking you for your continued support,
— the Purism team (feedback at puri.sm)
------------------------------

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