Purism is the only company that, at its core, does everything to respect your freedom and your privacy while manufacturing brand-new hardware.

• We are a Social Purpose corporation with strong principles enshrined into its articles of incorporation.
• We hand select individual chips that will work with free and open source software, we provide the means and transparency into the BIOS (including coreboot), the kernel, the operating system, and all software applications.
• We install free and open source promoting software by default, making sure you retain your freedom and privacy during every step of your computing.

How do we compare to our main competitors?

Here is a table that shows how much Purism does above and beyond any other hardware manufacturer. Such mainstream vendors are the ones we consider our true competitors.

You may also be interested in reading more about: What makes Purism’s Librem computers better than proprietary devices from other vendors?

Threats & Corporate Control

Apple’s Mac OS X and iOS, Google’s Android and ChromeOS, and Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating systems have the following problems:

Many privacy and security risks related to these problems have received wide coverage in the media as the phenomenon has been intensifying in recent years.1"HP’s stupid audio-driver logs every keystroke you make (and it has an API!)" — BoingBoing, May 2017 2"Google admits its new smart speaker was eavesdropping on users" — CNN, October 2017 3"Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning" — The Washington Post, December 2013 4"Chrome Flaw Allows Sites to Secretly Record Audio/Video Without Indication" — The Hacker News, May 2017 5"Spying through strangers’ webcams just got easier" — CNBC, January 2016 6"How the NSA plans to infect millions of computers with malware" — The Intercept, March 2014 (see "GUMFISH", "CAPTIVATEDAUDIENCE", "GROK", etc.) 7"Wikileaks: CIA has tools to snoop via TVs" — BBC, March 2017 8"Alexa, what other devices are listening to me?" — CNN, January 2017 9"Lenovo’s Superfish security snafu blows up in its face" — CNET, February 2015 (see also the Wikipedia article) 10"The Webcam Hacking Epidemic" — The Atlantic, December 2014

When it comes to operating systems, Purism’s PureOS, combined with the “Librem” devices, is a combination that is made fully in your interest to eliminate corporate control and data capitalism. Additionally, Librem devices feature various exclusive security and privacy features, such as hardware kill switches.

Friends & Allies

Purism has a few indirect “competitors” in the GNU/Linux community, but we actually consider them as allies working toward the same goal, with a different approach. If you feel like Purism’s offering does not suit you, please consider these companies that also put an emphasis on Free Software:

• If you are interested in solid, well-made older laptops (from before Intel introduced the Management Engine in all of its chips in 2008) that currently have a 100% free BIOS and already have the FSF’s RYF certification, you should consider the various laptops from Vikings, Libiquity or Technoethical.
• If you’re looking for workstations or servers with a freed BIOS, consider Vikings’ D16 workstation or D16 rackmount server.
• If you are interested in an amazing open-hardware DIY computing platform, you should support Novena.

Liked what you read here? See why Purism to learn more about how and why we do what we do.