Advanced readers – Purism https://puri.sm/ High-quality computers that protect your freedom and privacy Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:29:47 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.28 https://puri.sm/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/cropped-purism-logo-rectangle-1-32x32.png Advanced readers – Purism https://puri.sm/ 32 32 PureOS Crimson: August 2025 – Alpha Released https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-august-2025-alpha-released/ Mon, 15 Sep 2025 17:33:02 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=84330 We have released alpha images for PureOS Crimson for all Librem devices and have closed the first milestone!

Thank you to all of our supporters and PureOS subscribers who have made this possible.

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]]> PureOS Crimson Development Report: July 2025 https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-july-2025/ Thu, 28 Aug 2025 12:18:53 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=84155 Welcome back! In our last update, we mentioned a fix in pureos-meta for some missing essential system components.

This seemed trivial at the time - just add the missing components. However, when the fix went into review and we looked deeper, it turned out to be anything but trivial.

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]]> PureOS Crimson Development Report: June 2025 https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-june-2025/ Tue, 15 Jul 2025 19:13:29 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=83640 That one task Welcome back!  As we enter the second half of 2025, we’re wrapping up the last few tasks to release the PureOS Crimson alpha for all Librem devices. In our last post, we mentioned that there was a key task remaining for gnome-control-center, the GNOME Settings application.  In that post, we referred to […]

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]]> PureOS Crimson Development Report: May 2025 https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-may-2025/ Mon, 16 Jun 2025 16:26:07 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=83461 Welcome back! If you've been following our PureOS Crimson milestones, you'll see that the few remaining tasks relate to providing ready-to-flash images for the Librem 5.

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]]> PureOS Crimson Development Report: April 2025 https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-april-2025/ Fri, 16 May 2025 13:17:45 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=83284 Thanks for tuning in! Like in March, we have a number of updates for April. We've been working up the stack to finalize the remaining packages that make up the PureOS Crimson release.

While that is ongoing, we've also made more fixes and reliability improvements to the Linux kernel used in the Librem 5. These changes benefit both PureOS Crimson and existing installations on PureOS Byzantium.

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]]> PureOS Crimson Development Report: March 2025 https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-march-2025/ Tue, 15 Apr 2025 13:12:20 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=82946 Welcome back! Since our first update in July 2024, our PureOS Crimson updates have addressed major foundational work. We've handled archive maintenance, infrastructure work, and critical functionality. These lay the foundation for a solid operating system. Now that the foundations are strong, we're working up the stack into the individual packages that form PureOS.

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]]> PureOS Crimson Development Report: February 2025 https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-february-2025/ Fri, 14 Mar 2025 12:36:08 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=82775 Great to see you again! In our January update, we worked on enabling essential functionality for the Librem 5 in PureOS Crimson. This time, we're working on something a little different - a solution to a longstanding issue that applies to both Byzantium and Crimson.

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]]> PureOS Crimson Development Report: January 2025 https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-january-2025/ Fri, 14 Feb 2025 20:48:37 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=82737 Welcome back! In our last update, we had exciting news - it's now possible to flash a PureOS Crimson image to your Librem 5.

That's a large step toward our first milestone. Now, we need essential functionality. The goal of the first milestone is to enable broad testing of applications by the community, and essential functionality has to work in order to get good feedback about applications.

For a phone, sound is about as essential as it gets.

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]]> PureOS Crimson Development Report: December 2024 https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-december-2024/ Thu, 16 Jan 2025 13:58:49 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=82700 Welcome to 2025!
It's a new year, and we are excited for the developments coming this year to Librem devices!  We know our community is eager to try PureOS Crimson on their phones.  As we wrap up 2024, what better summary is there than a development image that you can try?

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]]> PureOS Crimson Development Report: November 2024 https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-november-2024/ Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:09:48 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=82668 Welcome back!  Since our first report, this is now our fifth installment.  We appreciate our community's feedback about these updates, and we are happy to continue providing them!

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]]> PureOS Crimson Development Report: October 2024 https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-october-2024/ Thu, 14 Nov 2024 18:11:50 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=82591 Welcome back Welcome to the fourth installment in our PureOS development series!  We are pleased to provide more progress updates from October.  In addition to subscription-funded development, Purism continues to fund the infrastructure work needed to release PureOS Crimson.  Your support helps us advance PureOS for all Librem devices and for the larger FLOSS ecosystem. […]

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]]> PureOS Crimson Development Report: September 2024 https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-september-2024/ Wed, 16 Oct 2024 17:20:43 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=82503 In our last update, PureOS development was blocked in August as the Laniakea maintainer was away.  In September, we tasked another team member to start learning Laniakea and address these issues. We've now addressed the two issues that we discussed previously, and we expect to have a build worker processing the job queue soon.  This effort was funded by Purism, providing us more resources to get Crimson out to devices.

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]]> PureOS Crimson Development Report: July 2024 https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-july-2024/ Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:32:11 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=82301 As with all of Purism's software work, these updates are freely available for both subscribers and non-subscribers.  We also continue to send improvements upstream, benefiting the wider ecosystem.

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]]> Easy App Development: Text Forwarding https://puri.sm/posts/easy-app-development-text-forwarding/ Mon, 22 Jan 2024 21:55:29 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=81337 Unlike an Android or IOS phone, the Librem 5 and Liberty Phones are easily scriptable. You can bend your phone software to your will in a variety of programming languages. In this Easy App Development blog, we’ll cover making a text-forwarding system. Elements covered here can be used to take full control of your phone’s […]

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]]> Retain Your Control and Customize Everything with Modular Software https://puri.sm/posts/retain-your-control-and-customize-everything-with-modular-software/ Mon, 22 Jan 2024 21:21:57 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=81327 It’s not just the Librem 5’s or The Liberty Phone hardware that’s modular. The OS itself is incredibly modular and fully editable to your will. Our defaults and preinstalled apps are well thought out and secure, but it’s just our suggestion of software to use, not a requirement by any means. Software Smorgasbord Gives the […]

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]]> PureOS Unaffected by ext4 Data Corruption Bug https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-unaffected-by-ext4-data-corruption-bug/ Tue, 02 Jan 2024 15:57:28 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=80972 The Recent ext4 Data Corruption Bug A few days ago an ext4 filesystem bug in stable kernels was found in stable kernels that can corrupt data. Such a bug in a filesystem is one of the worst one can imagine. Nobody likes losing data. Ext4 is also very widely used; it’s the default for Debian […]

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]]> Librem 11 Memory Adventures https://puri.sm/posts/librem-11-memory-adventures/ Wed, 27 Sep 2023 13:04:42 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=80511 A Recent Memory When I started porting coreboot to the Librem 11, one of the first few tasks was to get memory working. Like the Librem 5, the Librem 11 has soldered memory (“memory down”).  This has implications on the firmware.  Socketed memory carries a small SPD EEPROM with information about the memory module.  Memory […]

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]]> PureBoot Framebuffer Boot Support https://puri.sm/posts/pureboot-framebuffer-boot-support/ Wed, 05 Jul 2023 13:00:46 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=79869 The latest release of PureBoot, Release 27, now boots memtest86+, Debian netinst, and other OSes that rely on framebuffer output! We worked with the Heads team to implement this change upstream, and it is now in our latest release. Update your firmware with our update instructions! If you’ve ever tried to boot from PureBoot, and […]

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]]> Repo stats https://puri.sm/posts/repo-stats/ Fri, 07 Apr 2023 18:14:18 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=77432 It’s no secret that I will take any opportunity to look in the warped mirror of statistics to glean insights on myself. I did it before for squeekboard, and I dug into the prehistory of my browser tabs. Recently, a new tool appeared, called Git-Heat-Map, and I asked the statistical crystal ball some questions. Which […]

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]]> Update on Librem-EC 1.12 https://puri.sm/posts/update-on-librem-ec-1-12/ Thu, 23 Feb 2023 21:00:09 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=77240 Librem-EC 1.12 for the Librem 14 has been released with a fix to the PL4 power limit to address sudden shutoffs that still remained in the 1.11 release.  Once again, the issue was in a subtle corner case, which we were able to identify with help from testers.  Update to 1.12 with our update instructions, […]

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]]> Expand the Librem 5 Hardware with The Breakout Board https://puri.sm/posts/expand-the-librem-5-hardware-with-the-breakout-board/ Mon, 06 Feb 2023 18:05:47 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=77031 The breakout board for the Librem 5 is a great way for hardware hackers to add functionality to your phone. When attached, you’ll have nicely exposed programmable pins. This allows you to use I2C, serial, and many digital sensors, much like you would on a single-board microcomputer. With this setup, you can add ambient temperature, […]

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]]> How to Hardware Flash your Librem 14 Boot Firmware https://puri.sm/posts/how-to-hardware-flash-your-librem-14-boot-firmware/ Fri, 09 Dec 2022 17:49:32 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=76631 PureBoot is Purism’s solution for high security boot firmware that gives you complete control. While we design PureBoot’s defaults to meet most people’s needs, you can also create your own version with custom features, pre-approved USB keys, and all with little risk to your Librem 14 laptop. Of course, you can always flash your custom […]

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]]> Librem-EC 1.11 https://puri.sm/posts/librem-ec-1-11/ Wed, 09 Nov 2022 18:35:09 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=76155 Librem-EC 1.11 for the Librem 14 laptop includes several improvements targeting device stability and reliability.  As with our previous posts on the EC, it has been quite an adventure investigating corner cases!  Update to this release with our update instructions, and as always the source code is available. Battery Power Limits Despite several EC releases addressing […]

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]]> Kerberos authentication on the Librem 5 https://puri.sm/posts/kerberos-authentication-on-the-librem-5/ Thu, 27 Oct 2022 00:37:33 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=76149 The Librem 5 features a built-in smartcard reader. While most people use it for GPG I wanted to see if it can be used as an authenticator for services like email (SMTP, IMAP), access to web pages (HTTPS), calendars, etc. without either having to retype a password often or having to store it on the […]

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]]> How We Fixed Reboot Loops on the Librem Mini https://puri.sm/posts/how-we-fixed-reboot-loops-on-the-librem-mini/ Thu, 22 Sep 2022 14:11:37 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=75968 Firmware debugging is uniquely challenging, because most conventional software debugging tools aren’t available.  With coreboot’s specialized tooling, support from the amazing community, and a little bit of creativity, we fixed a regression in coreboot 4.17 that caused reboot loops on the Librem Mini. When coreboot makes a new release, I rebase our Librem-specific patches onto […]

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]]> Voice over IP in GNOME Calls Part 2: The Implementation https://puri.sm/posts/voice-over-ip-in-gnome-calls-part-2-the-implementation/ Wed, 13 Jul 2022 19:12:14 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=75415 In the previous blog post we looked at the relevant protocols used for VoIP (SIP,SDP,RTP) and some libraries you might use to develop a SIP softphone. Equipped with these basics let us dive into some details of our implementation after the following disclaimer: Before we continue To the uninitiated in the dark arts of Voice […]

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]]> Voice over IP in GNOME Calls Part 1: SIP Protocol and Libraries https://puri.sm/posts/voice-over-ip-in-gnome-calls-part-1-sip-protocol-and-libraries/ Fri, 08 Jul 2022 17:50:39 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=75459 GNOME Calls has supported Voice over IP (VoIP) calls for some time. And while we already mentioned it in our development review of 2021 and design review of 2021 we wanted to take this opportunity to dive a bit more into the technical aspects of how all the gears interlock to make it work in […]

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]]> PureBoot’s Powerful Recovery Console https://puri.sm/posts/pureboots-powerful-recovery-console/ Thu, 09 Jun 2022 18:39:05 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=75219 Normally when we talk about our high-security boot firmware PureBoot, it’s in the context of the advanced tamper detection it adds to a system. For instance, recently we added the ability to detect tampering even in the root file system. While that’s a critical benefit PureBoot provides over our default coreboot firmware, it also provides […]

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]]> My Recommendations for the Most Secure Librem 14 Configuration https://puri.sm/posts/my-recommendations-for-the-most-secure-librem-14-configuration/ Thu, 09 Dec 2021 20:39:50 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=73364 The Librem 14 is our most secure laptop to date. We aim to make the Librem 14 as secure as possible out of the box for the widest range of customers while also taking ease-of-use and overall convenience into account. We also avoid security measures that take control away from you and give it to […]

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]]> New PureBoot Feature: Scanning Root for Tampering https://puri.sm/posts/new-pureboot-feature-scanning-root-for-tampering/ Thu, 14 Oct 2021 15:53:17 +0000 https://puri.sm/?p=73014 With the latest PureBoot R19 pre-release we have added a number of new changes including improved GUI workflows and new security features and published a ROM image so the wider community can test it before it turns into the next stable release. To test it, existing PureBoot users can download the R19-pre1 .rom file that […]

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