Purism

At the end of 2017, I gave myself a new laptop, the Librem 13 by Purism.

2018-06-08 Librem 13 by Purism Mini Review

Today, @simon_brooke asked me about the laptop I got half a year ago. How’s the build quality?

Let me start by saying that I know very little about these things. Overall, I’m happy. We still have a Mac PowerBook and I no longer use it.

The negatives:

  1. when I got it, it soon broke down and I had to get it replaced; customer service was very friendly, though
  2. they keyboard is not perfect, sometimes shift doesn’t quite register and I think it’s sometimes creaking – rare, but I noticed it
  3. the lid doesn’t move easily which means opening the lid = lifting the laptop, sometimes

While travelling in Japan I wondered whether the laptop’s wifi was worse than my phone’s wifi. I never figured it out and back at home it just means that I can’t use wifi on the balcony, with the glass door closed, 10m from the router who’s in a closet behind a wall... I think that’s OK.

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2018-05-10 Scanning & OCR

The CanoScan LiDE 25 is still with me! I have a little OCR project and wanted to use it on the Mac, but I think it no longer works. The scanner still works but the OCR tool that came with it is nowhere to be found. Instead of investing time getting it to work on the Mac I decided to try it on the new laptop.

So, here I have a bit more than 150 pages written using a typewriter, in German, and an old flatbed scanner. I tried two scanning apps on the iPad, but they were no good. On the laptop, I started with apt install yagf tesseract-ocr-deu.

“YAGF is a graphical interface for cuneiform and tesseract text recognition tools on the Linux platform. With YAGF you can scan images via XSane, import pages from PDF documents, perform images preprocessing and recognize texts using cuneiform from a single command centre. YAGF also makes it easy to scan and recognize several images sequentially.” Looking forward to cuneiform OCR!

Sadly, it crashed as soon as xsane finished scanning an image. So I decided to do the scanning and OCR myself.

First, the scanning: I have a flat bed scanner that takes a few seconds to scan a page. Whenever it is silent, open cover, take out paper, put in next page, close cover, switch to terminal, hit Enter, go back to what I was doing. It’s a workflow that works even if it is distracting.

This is the script I used:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;

print "Finding scanner...\n";
open(F, '-|', 'sane-find-scanner');
my $device;
while(<F>) {
  if (/^found/) {
    my @words = split;
    $device=$words[-1];
    last;
  }
}
if (!$device) {
  die "sane-find-scanner could not determine device\n";
} else {
  print "Found $device...\n";
}

my $base = $ENV{HOME} . "/Desktop/scan";
my $n = $ARGV[0] || 1;
while (1) {
  my $file = sprintf("$base %03d.tiff", $n);
  while (-e $file) {
    $n++;
    $file = sprintf("$base %03d.tiff", $n);
  }
  
  print "Scanning and saving as $file...\n";
  system("scanimage --device=plustek:$device --format=tiff --mode=lineart --resolution=300 -l 0 -t 0 -x 210 -y 297 > '$file'");
  print "Press Enter for another image.\n";
  my $answer = <STDIN>;
  last if $answer ne "\n";
  $n++;
}

print "Done.\n";

And now for the OCR workflow. Tesseract is a command line tool. It takes an image and generates a text file. Everything else – all the editing! – will happen later, in an editor.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;

print "OCR current directory...\n";

opendir(my $dh, ".") or die "Can't opendir: $!";
my @tiffs = grep { /\.tiff$/ } readdir($dh);
closedir $dh;

for my $tiff (@tiffs) {
  my $base = $tiff;
  $base =~ s/\.tiff$//;
  next if -s "$base.txt";
  print "tesseract $tiff\n";
  system("/usr/bin/tesseract", $tiff, $base, '-l', 'deu');
}
print "Done.\n";

This gets you images like this one:

Example Page

And text like this:

A

fuhr ich mit Gretl 32 einem Wagen, kein Auto,sondern eben einer Kalesse
nach Gaya ‚Veraniaßt dies natürlich Herr Willerth . Bei dieser Gelegen-
leit blieben wir gleich einen Nachmittag bei Elli.ä.h.bei Familie Grunt
und verbrachten wieder nette Stunden „dann gings wieäer nach Keltschan.
Ich glaube, schon erwähnt zu haben, das in keltschan eine Zuckerfabrik
war, deren Direktor Herr Willerth war.Die Zeit wer einfach wunderschön

Yüälyg

“fast möchte ich sagen, in’ Keltschan bei Willerth noch schöner wie bei

Fan. &$runt in Gaya .Ich habe mich mit Gretl wunäierbar verstanden,ich
glaube noch besser wie in der Schulzeit . 3s wurden nicht eine Woche son-
dern sehr wie 2 Wochen und dann gings wieder zu Zlli nach Gaya.Jede woll-
te, ich solle noch bei ihnen bleiben, auch die lütter von ihnen waren
dieser Keinung.Ich war also ein liebgeworäener vast.-

Vielleicht werdet Ihr Euch meine lieben Kindern wundern,wieso ich das
Alles noch weiß.Nun ja, teilweise aus neinem Gedächnis,teilweise aus
Briefen, die mir jetzt in die Hände gekonnen sind,die ich selbst damals
von Keätschan und Gaya an meinem damals herzailerliebsten Schatz, Buren
Fapa geschrieben habe, und die sind nicht wenige. Was bemerkenswert ist,
das Euer Fapa all diese Schreiben von mir sich aufgehoben hat, - aufgeho-
ben bis zu seinen Tode.-

Der August näherte sich langssam seinen Ende und ich war noch imxzer.in
Gaya, dazwischen zwar schon wieder in Keltschan,da kan eine Nachricht von
Wien xx& vonreinem llammerle und zugleich von Eurem Fapa. Noch heute sehe
ich in der Erinnerung voller Schmerz den Briefmeiner !iama lesen,was sie
mitgemacht,was sie gelitten durch eine 3rustoperation chne liarkose ,

ohne Vereisung,dabei roher Behandlung und rohen ilorten.Diese wunderbare
Kutter schrieb nir,sie wollte mir vo:her nichts von einer Üperation schrei
ben,damit ich mich nicht sorge und meine Erholung nicht gef“hrde, Sie ha-
be auch lialter gebeten, mir ja nichts. davon zu schreiben .Sie wollte erst
nachher, wenn alles gut verbei gehi,nir davon scnreiben,erst.dann wenn
ich nir nicht Sorgen über den Aunagang der Operation machen nö. So var
meine. ama, so leiden ‚aber die Kinder sollenes nicht wissen.Imner wie-
der steht das Bild vor nir,den Brief in der Kand zich in mein Ziuxer zu-
rück ziehen und heulen .Zu tief hat mich ergzfiffien, was meine ana lei-
den mußte,was muß sie ertragen haben.Ist das noch menschlich ‚frage ich
mich ? Ich erinnere micn noch gut- zu3erdem lese ich es jetzt aus diesen
alten Briefen-ich wollte das Zimmer nicht. verlassen und vergrub xich in
meinen Schmerz, wollte nichts’ essen,nicht trinken und mit niemand reden .
Frau/rüßrene zu mir ,„ sonst hätte ich mein Zimxer noch lange nicht ver -
lassen „kein Narzerle schrieb mir noch,ws für einen braven,zuten ien -
schen ich einzal zun lüiann bekonme,er kam gleich ins Spital zur liama,vwie
er davon hörte,er war beim lachhausekommen vom Spital zur Tante Eella dabei.
(in Fetzendorf).dJa,Euer Fapsch besuchte täglich nachmittags meine ilama

"in Hetzendorf und las ihr vor,lenkte sie ab von ihren Schmerzen. Ein ein-

maliger Schwiegersohn,sagte auch später noch meine \lama.Ch es heutzutage
auch noch solche Fälle zibt#Ich zweifle sehr daran.Es hat sich doch so
Vieles,wenn nicht alles geändert in den Fauilien.Die Jugend denkt ganz

anders .Nat;rlich kam auch Papa die arme isama besuchen,Goch er kam von

von Neulengbaeliherein und die Fahrt war teuer u.Fapa hatte ja kein Geld.
Es war ein gro3er Janmmer,Papa postenlos, Günther des-gleichen ‚ebenso
Erika und ich und nirgends ein eigenes Platzerl zum Wohnen.So etwas könnt

Ihr Zuch gar nicht vorstellen,denn trotz einer Postenlosigkeit habt Ihr

_ein Platzerl gehabt, wo Ihr den Kopf zum Schlafenf/Ainlezen könrön,einen

‘Sessel zum Ausruhen, ohne das Euch 'jenand gedrängt hat,denselben zu räu-

sie

As you can see, practically every line needs editing.

You can then concatenate all the text files into a big text file and start using a spell checker, of course. But I fear there will be a lot of manual editing involved.

Oh, and to get a non-searchable PDF:

sudo apt install libtiff-tools
tiffcp scan*tiff buch.tiff
tiff2pdf -z -o buch.pdf -a "Brunhilde Marzy" -c "Alex Schroeder" -t "Mein Leben" buch.tiff

31M isn’t too bad, is it?

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2018-05-07 Laptop Fan

Every now and then my laptop’s fan would go nuts. It turns out that one of the processes eating 100% of the CPU was tracker-store. It indexes stuff. Another thing I noticed was brltty with priority -10.

brltty is for Braille displays. Luckily, I don’t need it, so I removed it. apt remove brltty.

Removing tracker will remove gnome-photos which I never used by which actually doesn’t look so bad. But I use feh to look at images from the terminal and gimp to edit them. So I guess I’m good. apt remove tracker.

Hot air and ventilators
Cannot stop tracker from tracking
apt remove
#debian #haiku

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2018-04-12 Bad Wi-Fi

I am travelling in Japan and the hotel Wi-Fi networks I have seen are sometimes very bad. Sometimes I cannot connect. Sometimes there is terrible lag. Sometimes it feels worse than a 300 Baud modem, if you still remember those.

And I’m noticing that my Purism Librem 13 laptop feels a lot more sluggish than my iPhone 6S. Why is that? Does the iPhone have better Wi-Fi? Is this typical for laptops? Is the antenna in the wrong place? Interference? Cheap materials? Any idea?

Image 1

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Something to remember for alter when WiFi improves:

“Japanese Style Originator (TV show)”

Just now a friend recommended I watch this show on Japanese craftsmanship. Too bad I don’t have Netflix and hardly ever watch tv. It seemed super interesting. But I know myself: I’ll want to buy all the Japanese products, then. 😢

On Mastodon, Hannah wrote:

This is what an episode would look like typically (and actually a cute one because of the dog!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO890en86n4&list=PLUeD1nTTObMxeba37P5q4hzh-kFNC_F0p&index=54

One for crafts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kz7bfImxaM

Netflix offered translations but you can also try to watch via automatic translation on YouTube.

– Alex Schroeder 2018-04-18 13:28 UTC

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2018-02-02 New Old Laptop

A few weeks ago, I bought a new laptop. A few days later, it no longer worked. But today I got it back!

It even had my old hard disk in it so no recovery was necessary. Yay!

MacBook Pro 13 vs. Librem 13

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2018-01-04 Black Screen

I got a Librem 13 Version 2 a few days ago. Yesterday I powered off, today I powered on and went to make some tea, came back and I saw a black screen. I hit Enter a few times, hoping for the Login, then I pressed the power button and rebooted. Grub menu showed up and I choose my disk. “XZ-compressed data is corrupt — System halted”.

I then power cycled a few more times, hoping to get a better result. I got the message twice. Then the Grub menu showed only blue background, no text, with a few green glitch pixels. And now I can power cycle but I’m not getting anything except for the two or three white lights above the Insert/Delete keys, depending on whether the power cable is plugged in or not.

I’m not even getting a message saying the BIOS is booting. Nothing.

Any ideas? I sent an email to their support address. Right now it looks like my laptop is bricked.

Well, after a short break I got to the grub rescue menu!

Image 1 for 2018-2018-01-04 Black Screen

But that got me into memtest:

Image 2 for 2018-2018-01-04 Black Screen

After that I got the regular grub menu and when I picked the first option as I usually do, I was back at this prompt:

Image 3 for 2018-2018-01-04 Black Screen

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Comments on 2018-01-04 Black Screen

Looks like your disk is broken? Grub can’t extract it’s boot image.

– Andreas Gohr 2018-01-04 08:47 UTC


Yes. 😢

– Alex Schroeder 2018-01-04 09:33 UTC


Actually, it’s worse. I am currently exchanging emails with their support.

After the message shown above I never got another message.

I flashed an USB drive and tried to boot from it, but no success. The problem is that the laptop never gets into the BIOS stage. When I press the power key for a bit, the white lights atop the keyboard go off and only the orangle/white battery charging light remains lit. I press the power key for a bit, and the two lights to the left and right of the battery charging light go on – and nothing else happens. The screen remains black. Thus, I cannot boot from the USB stick even though it is plugged in – I need to see the Pure Logo, the box, the SeaBIOS message, or something.

When the BIOS doesn’t start, then I’m thinking of memory corruption.

– Alex 2018-01-05 09:32 UTC


“We couldn’t fix your laptop. We’ll send you a new one in a few days.”

– Alex 2018-01-18 20:35 UTC

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2017-12-23 New Laptop

Got a new laptop!

First order of the day: removing the annoying air bubbles. 😭

Laptop screen with protector and air bubbles

After a while I got fed up with it and could not not get rid of the last few small bubbles. What’s your opinion on this: is this screen protector thing even required? I always removed mine from the phones I have, and I don’t think the Apple laptops ever came with it. But then again I haven’t bought a laptop in a long time.

Oh well. I removed mine.

OK, what's next? I copied some files over from the Mac laptop. I love watching myself and noting the order in which I do things.

  1. browser works, bookmark my blog, and two Mastodon instances: octodon.social and dice.camp
  2. install Emacs
  3. install git

Not sure what to do next. Browser add-ons, I guess? What is this Purebrowser thing? It looks like GNU IceCat because “Get Add-Ons” leads me to the GNU IceCat Overview. The add-on search is unusable, but the links in the table work.

Currently installed: HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, uMatrix. I guess the IceCat defaults are not installed? Also, I can’t install from Firefox directly: HTTPS by default says I must install Firefox, first.

Next up is bitlbee. I’m going to run it as a service again. So now I need to copy and chown all the stuff from my old ~/.bitlbee. And the Emacs config is all wrong. Oh well.

Things I have noticed:

  1. just now the system told me it had upgrades pending and a restart was required – this surprised me, because using apt practically never requires a restart
  2. after the restart, updates were installed, it restarted again, and I was presented with a white-on-blue dialog where I could choose between memory tests and two options of booting the system – after a few seconds it booted PureOS; I bet that must confuse non-technical people
  3. I’m still confused by the keyboard every now and then: sometimes key presses don’t register

Still wondering whether I should practice harder with my external Atreus keyboard. But then everything just takes so much longer.

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What I’ve seen twice in the last few days, now: at night, I close the laptop lid when the laptop is on batteries, sending it to sleep, plug it in, and the next morning I unplug the laptop, carry it elsewhere and open the lid, and the ventilators come on and blow like crazy and nothing seems to stop them except for a complete shutdown.

Reboot and the ventilators don’t come back up, so it really isn’t the heat. It’s a bug somewhere.

– Alex 2018-01-02 09:49 UTC


The laptop had to be replaced... See 2018-01-04 Black Screen.

– Alex Schroeder 2018-01-23 10:07 UTC


A review by the Pepper & Carrot person.

– Alex Schroeder 2018-04-23 06:14 UTC

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In January 2018, Purebrowser and its add-ons work without a hitch.

– Alex Schroeder 2018-02-05 20:03 UTC


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