End of Year Librem 5 Update

https://puri.sm/posts/end-of-year-librem-5-update/

by mikenew • 8 years ago

137 62 8 years ago

4d66ba06• 8 years ago

Happy to see lots of progress in this update. Each month I'm saving towards purchasing the Librem 5 after I hear confirmation that it works on T-Mobile networks in the US.

dx87• 8 years ago

Same, my current Nexus phone is pretty busted up and literally held together with scotch tape, I'm just hoping the Librem 5 releases before I have to buy a new phone.

ocdtrekkie• 8 years ago

I'm sitting in the same boat, but for Verizon. This blog post actually comes with some hope, with the specific statement that the SIM7100E is supported. Verizon has already approved another SimCom chip, the 7500V: https://opendevelopment.verizonwireless.com/design-and-build...

One could hope that the code used to support the former could be adapted to support the latter. And as long as the Librem 5 is able to support an already-approved Verizon module, it shouldn't be a problem to activate the phone on Verizon.

dmos622• 8 years ago

This struck a chord with me, since I find the price a bit high as well. My consumer thinking is that if it's expensive enough that I'd have to save for it, and there's no important reason to buy it over something cheaper, it's a waste of money. Of course, thinking this way, I don't end up having the hip new stuff; is it about that?

_red• 8 years ago

One thing that I think is a strategic mistake, they should've used UBports for the OS, instead of also developing their custom OS for the device.

This market is too small and fragmented to have the wasted effort. Its difficult enough to build the open hardware device, no need to split energy / IQ by also worrying about the OS.

calvinmorrison2• 8 years ago

They're not building their own OS, they're building a few apps and dealing with hardware specific driver issues - but otherwise a lot of stuff is projects that already existed and needed improvements (which they have done upstream) or working directly with those upstream projects.

abrowne• 8 years ago

And updating libraries so they can re-use existing apps in a phone context, like GNOME Contacts and Web.

Vinnl2• 8 years ago

To emphasise, I think this is far less work than it would be to actually get UBPorts to a point where you could reasonably ship it on your device to match customer expectations.

Sir_Cmpwn• 8 years ago

I think skipping UBports was the right call. UBports is too design constrained and they shell they've been working on in its place uses much better design and should support a much wider variety of applications OOTB.

Full disclosure: I am the maintainer of a critical open-source component that influenced this design decision.

craftyguy• 8 years ago

Well, and I would MUCH prefer debian over some ubuntu-based (or influenced) thing.

(thank you for wlroots!)

mikenew• 8 years ago

They're working with UBPorts and KDE to get Ubuntu Touch and Plasma Mobile running on the phone. PureOS is where they do their work, but they're made a point of trying to upstream everything. They're doing it right.

maheart• 8 years ago

PureOS (which is the OS that will ship on the phone) is built on top of Debian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem#Operating_system -- so they're already "standing on the shoulders of giants"

calvinmorrison2• 8 years ago

2019, the year of an open source phone. I almost can't believe it. I'm super happy they're not reinventing the entire wheel and are using an ecosystem that already exists (GNOME). Much of the non librem specific work is being done upstream which is great.

NedIsakoff4• 8 years ago

Isn't 2019 the year of Linux on the desktop? :)

I'm willing to put up 100CAD that it won't ship this year.

scns• 8 years ago

If you lose you should Sonate the money to them

vertexFarm• 8 years ago

Pardon my ignorance but what is the criteria for a linux desktop being a thing? Is it a certain minimum market share?

There's plenty of linux desktops out there. There is certainly a ways to go, I'm not trying to deny that, I'm just wondering what constitutes a successful linux desktop. User-friendliness? Where are the goalposts exactly?

fxfan2• 8 years ago

That was 2016. With wsl ;). Oh wait, the year of gnu on desktop I meant. And the year when Linux could drop any hope of being used on desktop.

aldoushuxley001• 8 years ago

I'd take you up on that bet. The Librem 5 will ship this year.

pjmlp2• 8 years ago

Just like Maemo did, oh well.

Mediterraneo102• 8 years ago

Maemo phones did not isolate the cellular modem from the rest of the system. Also, a number of essential packages on the Nokia N900 were (and still remain today) closed source.

Apocryphon• 8 years ago

It's odd that Jolla doesn't just open-source Sailfish OS.

fxfan2• 8 years ago

Sorry off topic but if I could follow one person for experience, not bring biased and knowledge of the state of the art of software tooling (and tonnes of other things... but tools are useful and not easy to find) then I would follow you. Your comments are very informative.

purpleidea• 8 years ago

Weren't a lot of the useful components for Maemo open source? Eg: the GTK+ Hildon stuff for example? Why can't/didn't Purism re-use any of that?

dogma11383• 8 years ago

An Open Source phone would only be actually beneficial if there will be an automated transparent and trusted global support infrastructure for it that would require zero user interaction.

I use an iPhone because it’s the most secure hardware and software combination you can get and you are guaranteed to receive support for 5> years.

I don’t want to have to compile my own kernels, set up my own chain of trust or deploy my own patches. It’s too cumbersome which would lead to procrastination that is if you don’t screw up something in the process to being with.

Also as far as the hardware goes I have currently more faith in Apple being able to get and secure its supply chain than a small company which completely relies on Chinese OEMs for its design.

The baseband will not be open source, it will have to use blobs as such other than running a more vanilla flavor of Linux I don’t see it being any different than any phone that can run AOSP.

yjftsjthsd-h3• 8 years ago

Strong disagree; progress is progress, and not yet being perfect does not make it pointless.

socceroos2• 8 years ago

Yet you get hardware kill-switches for the baseband and mic that assures you of your privacy when you require it. Much better than any 'assurance' from Apple that you can trust them to be the good guys. Has everyone forgotten that Apple, along with every other major platform, complies with FISA requests or their foreign equivalents? How do you think Apple operates in China?

They will be good guys until they decide they will not be good guys for arbitrary reasons or if they are forced to comply with a Government decree.

I'd much rather put my trust in a good-enough hardware platform that I _know_ I can control when required.

Digital-Citizen• 8 years ago

I don't know what Librem 5 will offer in the end, but I think your response argues a false dichotomy with zero evidence. There is no "automated transparent and trusted global support infrastructure [...that requires] zero user interaction" for anything and (given how we improve things in real life) apparently such a thing is unnecessary. If you want to know how something works, you either learn how it works and do the vetting & improvement yourself, or get someone you trust to do this work on your behalf. Computer hardware and software is no different. The question is whether you're allowed to do this work at all, whether it's possible for you to hand someone you have good reason to trust the device and software to do this vetting for you.

There are many good reasons not to trust Apple or any proprietor. You claim an iPhone is "the most secure hardware and software combination you can get" but you offer no evidence to let us understand how you arrive at that conclusion. Proprietary software (such as iPhone's default OS, iOS) is untrustworthy by default because nobody but the proprietor has permission to inspect the software's source code, alter the software to fix problems or improve the software, or help the community by distributing improved software. You don't have the freedoms of free software (running, modifying, sharing published computer software including commercially). So in order to estimate Apple's trustworthiness we can't examine the thing itself in the most reasonable and thorough way. We have to fall back on something else such as Apple's reputation and consider how they treat their users. Apple left years-old remotely-exploitable security bugs in programs thus leaving users vulnerable (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8912714/Apple-iT... or https://truesecdev.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/hidden-backdoor-... for details). When it comes to iOS issues things are no better: iOS is the prototype of a software jail (hence the term "jailbreaking" to liberate one's device, and thus the user, from such control). Apple can and regularly does extract data from iPhones to give to the state (per http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/05/new-guidelines-outline-...) and Apple's claimed security improvements rely on software users can't vet, improve, or share. https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html has lots of examples of various kinds of Apple proprietary malware many examples include software iPhone users run. Apple also works against letting users get fixes without going through Apple, slows down iPhones users won't "upgrade", and disallows using older versions of iOS or non-iOS operating systems (because why let users control their computers).

This is all par for the course with proprietors; proprietary software (nonfree software, software that doesn't respect a user's freedom and community) is often malware (software designed to mistreat its users). The worst part is that because these programs are proprietary, motivated and knowledgeable users are not permitted to vet, improve, or distribute software that could benefit themselves and the entire community.

codinger• 8 years ago

An Open Source phone would only be actually beneficial if there will be an automated transparent and trusted global support infrastructure for it that would require zero user interaction.

I think that's a given except for the zero interaction. Even my android phone alerts me of updates. Anyways, you make it sound like it's nearly an impossible task, but nearly every day my ubuntu laptop alerts me of updates and then updates in the background far more seamlessly than my windows workstation. Plus the distro has over 4 years of support. This is something linux distros figured out years ago.

zozbot1232• 8 years ago

Hopefully also the year of Linux (with the standard desktop stack) on touch-first and small-screen devices, thanks to Librem 5's choice of cooperation with the overall Linux community. Admittedly, we were there before with environments such as QTopia, GPE and Hildon, but these were niche efforts targeted to a handful of very expensive and low-performing devices (thus, their code was never shared "upstream" as is happening now)-- the situation today is quite different.

axaxs2• 8 years ago

While I use Gnome, and like the way it looks, I feel it's a mistake on a phone unless they are doing a lot of heavy editing. While it's gotten better, the JS -still- leaks and randomly pegs the CPU. In a phone I would imagine a battery life measured in minutes.

zozbot1232• 8 years ago

The in-development "Phosh" shell does not use JS at all; it is not based on GNOME Shell, even though the work on Phosh is being done as part of the GNOME project.

michaelmrose2• 8 years ago

Without running the exact numbers I feel like running down an entire average size cell phone battery in a few minutes would lead to everything bursting into flame. I don't think an average cell phone cpu can actually exhaust an average battery in that time frame.

I feel like if it were going all out at all times for no reason it would still last a few hours.

Also pretty sure this thing runs gtk apps NOT gnome which renders your analysis flawed.

turblety• 8 years ago

The work puri.sm are doing and the way they are doing it is just fantastic. I really hope they manage to get the phone out sometime this year. If they can make a project as big as this work, then it could really show the industry that you don't need to make restrictive, secret, proprietary software to make a success.

aesu7• 8 years ago

so some of the "hurt" GNOME used to introduce on major versions will pay off in user friendliness in a hybrid user story on handheld devices? the long con ! - I wish them luck, the presentations are impressive. So too the kde-neon folks had a convincing technological argument last I checked them out end of 2018.

Smartphones always were a downer to me. Having flashed some devices and using f-droid exclusively I sure saw good apps by good folk, but "desktop computing" always felt friendlier. The slick Apple and Google ecosystems never attracted me - and with the breaking-news stories on whatnot App SDK had some data sending somewhere I think the browser is a better sandbox for some companys and use-cases than deeper OS integration. Not that it is benign, but still.

I'm incredibly thankful to the people driving the GNU/Linux effort and foss ecosystem, offering their ingenuity for inspection by a wide audience. Computing got actually simpler as I got older and discovered tools sometimes made before my time. I never had that feeling with handhels - but this might change soon.

sir_brickalot• 8 years ago

Anybody knows if this phone is "fair" as well?

(Eco-friendly/fair worker conditions.)

Vinnl2• 8 years ago

It's very unlikely to be. The Fairphone is one of the only phones making an effort, and it's a lot of work [1] and even then they're still long ways of from being actually fair. I can't imagine Purism to have the time to invest in this, nor to do that without even so much as mentioning it.

[1] https://www.fairphone.com/en/blog/

acct17712• 8 years ago

Indeed. Hopefully one day two projects in these spaces can converge once they've learned all they need to for each niche.

dmos622• 8 years ago

Eco-friendliness and fair-trade would hike up the price and would require more work, unfortunately. If it were those things, they would probably actively advertise it.

On the bright side, this work, since it's opensource, might facilitate a similar future projects that could aim for higher responsibility standards.

Personally, this platform caught me a bit off guard, and I'm currently ecstatic with the possibilites.

adsche• 8 years ago

I'm very compelled to pre-order one but has anybody heard any news about the touchscreen or the CPU issue? I worry that there is no word on either in the recent update (like what is being done, what is missing...?)

End of Year Librem 5 Update

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