Librem 14 Thoughts From a CG Artist

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François Téchené

Director of Product

Latest posts by François Téchené (see all)

• Replacing the Screen of Your Librem 5 - January 25, 2024
• Working with the Librem 14 - November 22, 2023
• Introducing the Liberty Phone - June 30, 2023

In this post, I wish to explain why I am so excited about the upcoming Librem 14, and why I am proud to have been involved in its conception. This is only a subjective point of view related to what I personally like in computers and so, I will start with telling about where my interest for computers comes from.

Getting into computer graphics

It all started in 1984 when my dad came back home with an Apple Macintosh. I was only 5 years old and I was amazed by the graphical capabilities of the machine along with the fact that I could actually use it! A few years later, I started to build a great interest for graphics arts. I loved drawing and inventing imaginary worlds where I could escape away from reality.

I quickly made a link between visual creation and computing. I was seeing more and more Computer Graphics around me in the late 80s and during the 90s. The technology grew so quickly that it fascinated me. I dreamed about doing my own CG illustrations, my own 3D cartoons or my own movies.

Experimenting digital animations in 1993, as a teenager, with VideoWorks on my dad’s Macintosh SE/30.

Choosing my tools

Therefore, I kept being attracted by Apple products because they made computers with a beautiful, clean design that combined a great integration between hardware and software. They also managed to go even further with the user experience by having a very nice integration with 3rd party creative software from Adobe (and Macromedia at the time) that made the Mac the perfect platform for visual creativity. What more would I ever want ?

It is only after working as a professional in visual creation, that I understood that this perfect platform wasn’t that perfect after all. After being forced to upgrade my OS in order to keep running my expensive Adobe CC subscription, my slightly aging, but still powerful Mac Pro decided I would not get the nice experience anymore. It became extremely slow and I had to tweak the system heavily for it to become usable again. I knew that was a temporary solution until the next upgrade, or worse, until the next OS version refused to run because my hardware is not supported anymore, and I am forced to change my perfectly working hardware because some companies decided so.

This event made me understand that I never owned that hardware and how important it is to be in control of my own tools. That was in 2015.

Moving to ethical solutions

I discovered that Purism came up with an answer to the issue of hardware control and I had the chance to be involved in the promotion of the Librem 13 laptop that same year. I love the Librem 13, which is my current daily driver and it keeps reminding me that it is possible to do professional creative work with hardware that I have full control over.

A test animation I made in 2017 with Krita on my Librem 13.

Toward a dream laptop

After a few years working to improve its laptop line in term of security, privacy, convenience, and ethics, Purism is coming up with the Librem 14 and I see in this laptop almost everything that I would expect in a laptop:

• It lets me be in control of the hardware. It has the same privacy and security features as the Librem 13 with better convenience with the hardware kill switches.

• It lets me be in control of the software. It can run any FSF certified distribution out of the box and ships with PureOS by default, which integrates well with the hardware and makes it so easy to install and use. I love PureOS. It has the stability of Debian and the simplicity and beauty brought by the GNOME desktop. It is also slowly moving toward an amazing convergent experience with the great work from the Librem 5 team in that direction.

• It has the clean aesthetics that I like with Apple products and even goes further with featuring the same ethical branding approach as the rest of the Librem line, which I described in a previous post.Look at this beauty! A picture says more than a 1000 words.

• Most of all, the Librem 14 is taking a huge leap from the Librem 13 in terms of performance and that is very important when it comes to video editing and 3D rendering. It now features a latest generation high end Intel CPU, with 6 cores (12 threads!), which makes it 3 times faster than the fastest Librem 13. It can also run two M.2. drives and go up to 64GB of RAM. In terms of graphics, it is capable of driving two 4K monitors, which will seriously make my day when editing videos!

Conclusion

I think that the Librem 14 represents the Librem laptop coming to maturity. As a professional CG artist, I am looking for a computer that is able to run resource intensive software at good speed. As a person wishing for a respectful society, I am looking for a computer that remains humble in its branding, as well as respecting the people’s fundamental rights to privacy, security and control over a machine. I am also attached to the visual aspect and visual harmony of things and I think that the Librem 14 has all of that.

I am so excited, I can’t wait for it to arrive!

Our Most Secure Librem Laptop Yet

The Librem 14 is our most powerful and most secure laptop yet. If you want full control over your software with cutting-edge, powerful hardware, the Librem 14 is the best (some would say the only) choice. Be sure to pre-order the Librem 14 before our $300 off early bird discount expires on August 7th!