Hello fellows,
I’m currently looking in 13-14" laptops with no immediate needs for one but just because it’s exciting. I love my Dell XPS but I feel I should support companies with which I share more common views. I could make the effort to go a with a less attractive look (especially for bezels) but I don’t want to go wrong with hardware so what are your thoughts on Framework, Starlab, Purism, and System76? I’ll be running Arch and I tend to have a preference for Framework for now.
Do you have feedback (positive and negative) to share on any of these companies?
Thanks for the knowledge you’ll bring me. That’ll be extremely useful when time comes to go with a new machine.
Update 1: Still wonderful to be part of such a great community. Thanks for all the great feedback (looking for more :) ).
So far everyone is standing behind Framework. Anyone with a less positive experience or who would like to speak for the other companies?
Update 2: Thank you fellows for the time you’ve spent to share your honest feedback! I didn’t want to influence your inputs but you all confirmed the Framework picture I had in mind. It’s a piece of mind to read real world experience so thanks again. I was surprised to not see the system76 community speaks louder. Anyway, when time comes I will (virtually) push Framework shop’s door.
Sure do, though not for all the claims I’ll make here as that was from me obsessively watching the purism forumns and reddit over the 5 or so years this was going on. They promised a phone which most people didn’t get for five years. When it shipped the specs were not great especially for the already pricy cost they had it at. This, after quite heavily suggesting they were nearly good to go. When it came close to the end of waiting, they added a second option (no phones were in hands yet) to upgrade their order, at a cost, to skip the line and get it quicker. Suggesting that if it didn’t sell the company couldn’t ship the original either after taking money both from a crowdfunding campaign and their site. Though a few were eventually able to refund, they sneakily changed their policy to include “no refunds” when at time of purchase they stated clearly refunds would be available at request. There’s also been an issue with their laptops which were advertised as fully FOSS, etirely non-proprietary before eventually shipping with some proprietary software. All around, their customer service is terrible and their responces to allagations and critisism has been childish threats and legal attacks. All around bad group.
here’s some blog posts and an article:
https://jaylittle.com/post/view/2019/10/the-sad-saga-of-purism-and-the-librem-5-part-1 (read all 3 parts)
https://anarc.at/blog/2020-07-13-not-recommending-purism/
https://www.pcworld.com/article/422917/why-linux-enthusiasts-are-arguing-over-purisms-sleek-idealistic-librem-laptops.html
Here’s Luis Rossman (Not always correct on what he reports, but by my memory quite good here):
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IjUryQOlgk
Piped - https://piped.adminforge.de/watch?v=-IjUryQOlgk
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKegmu0V75s
Piped - https://piped.adminforge.de/watch?v=wKegmu0V75s
Wow. Yeah, that’s shady and shitty as hell. The cost was always enough to keep me away from them, but knowing they’re a shit company will make me sure to warn others off as well.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=-IjUryQOlgk
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=wKegmu0V75s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.