
The Librem 5 Development Roadmap and Progress - petethomas
https://puri.sm/posts/the-librem-5-development-roadmap-and-progress/
======
freedomben
Like many, I strongly hope this succeeds. My biggest concern is that the lack
of apps and app ecosystem will doom the project to either low market adoption
and/or failure.

It would be fantastic if there were a way to run Android apps. Even if they
need to be rebuilt for the platform, at least not requiring developers to re-
write their app would be a huge start. Also getting support into things like
React Native would be good. Most developers I know (including myself) are
willing to build apps for different platforms, but aren't necessarily willing
to make big code changes or do rewrites/ports that involve lots of effort.
Whatever can be done to help make it easy for devs to get their apps running
would likely be a good investment. Developers, developers, developers!

~~~
gkya
I beleive the killer app on this kind of devices is WhatsApp, as most other
stuff like Facebook or Instagram can be used through the browser before native
apps are provided. But WhatsApp is so omnipresent that convincing them to make
an app for your platform would really help. Maybe if Ubuntu Phone managed to
get a native WhatsApp client, it would have held on.

~~~
znpy
If this phone lands and has no whatsapp, I will buy one and switch
definitively to Telegram.

Telegram is nice, works everywhere, the protocol is open, clean and relatively
easy to implement.

I also will make the rest of the family switch to Telegram. I am sure that as
long as they are able to write message to each other, they will be fine with
it.

Quite frankly, the main advantage of Whatsapp over Telegram is that it is more
widely adopted. But beside that, not much.

~~~
gkya
> Quite frankly, the main advantage of Whatsapp over Telegram is that it is
> more widely adopted. But beside that, not much.

Thing is I (and I guess most people) don't want to do app evangelism, but just
use the existing communication protocols my peers use. People in your network
will have their own networks, and so on, and telling them to quit them
networks or to add another app to their phone is going to annoy them.

~~~
znpy
If you read carefully (something I strongly advise you to do) you will find
out that I was talking about my family: they trust my judgement and I can
bring them very good reasons for what I propose.

Regarding my other contacts' networks: I certainly do not impose other people
what app to use, but at the same time I have no interest in doing something
(e.g.: running an app I honestly don't like) just because everybody is doing
it.

In all honesty, if someone has something to tell me or I have something to
tell someone, we will surely find a way to communicate. Keep in mind that, at
least for now, all mobile phones can make phone calls and send text messages
(at least to negotiate other means of communication).

------
turblety
So impressed with Purism's hard work and ethics. I'm so glad it looks like
this will reach it's funding goal.

I'm very surprised that the phone will have an open GPU. I've been looking for
a laptop replacement for ages that has an open CPU and GPU. While I can avoid
Intel like the plague and go straight for an ARM CPU, the GPU always tends to
be a closed source binary blog.

If Purism can crack this and get a full open source phone, I hope they build a
lightweight laptop using the same sort of specs. This could mean avoiding the
whole ME cleaner requirement for their Librem laptop range, removing the
spyware [1] from all Intel chips.

1\.
[https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel](https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel)

~~~
microcolonel
Any of the Qualcomm DragonBoards will perform considerably better than any
i.MX8 chipset board AFAIK. Freedreno (Qualcomm Adreno driver in Mesa) is a lot
farther along than Etnaviv for the time being. There's also v4l2-based
hardware video decode in upstream kernels for (supported) Qualcomm chipsets.

If you want a non-Intel desktop, you could also look to any of the high-
performance AArch64 or Power boards with PCIe slots in them, and slot Radeon
in.

~~~
craftyguy
I would rather support a chip maker with open hardware, even if currently not
the most performant, than one which does nothing and relies on a crowd of
volunteers to make it work.

------
microcolonel
Man, if they can make a straightforward phone with a reasonably sized screen
for people with normal hands (like my beloved Motorola Atrix HD from 2012!),
and do it with only upstream kernels and free drivers and infrastructure, I'm
in.

I love the idea of running Arch Linux on my phone, it would vastly simplify
the harsh divide between my workstation and my smartphone. There's also a
distinct possibility of running OpenBSD on my phone in the future, which is
where I'm increasingly going.

The thing could probably run Android applications anyway, if it really needs
to. There are projects out there that let you do this on desktop Linux today.

~~~
endgame
That's a lot of hoops for them to jump through, and I wish they succeed. At
what point do you say "this is at least a step forward and I'll buy their
stuff even though it might not be perfect"?

~~~
emXdem
I hope they succeed too. I tried to buy a laptop from them and it was a
terrible experience from order to refund (and months waiting). Despite that
I'm still rooting for them.

------
Jeaye
For those interested in pledging, here's a quick link:
[https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)

We just passed the $1M mark!

~~~
benevol
Yes, please show the Ubuntu guy that he was wrong to abandon his mobile OS.

------
knob
GO! Super happy to see the progress in this project. I was one of the early
backers (as soon as I saw the news link). Keep at it everyone. Doesn't matter
what Google announces or Apple... keep at it. This is going great places. =)

~~~
craftyguy
Agreed! I can't wait to receive my development kit next year, and phone a few
months after! I have but one regret: that I don't have more money to throw at
this campaign.

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khrm
One of the organizations endorsing them is in need of funds also.
[https://matrix.org/blog/2017/07/07/a-call-to-arms-
supporting...](https://matrix.org/blog/2017/07/07/a-call-to-arms-supporting-
matrix/)

~~~
Arathorn
not for long, hopefully :)

~~~
aloisdg
Thank you for using liberapay by the way

------
seba_dos1
When it comes to used SoC, booting GNU/Linux on it isn't really
groundbreaking. I'm much more interested in i.mx6/i.mx8m's power consumption
and heat generation. Those chips are often targeted for and used in automobile
industry, with bulkier power supply and good cooling, so putting them in a
phone might pose some big challenges.

Nevertheless, as a guy who used to be active part of Openmoko, OpenPhoenux and
Neo900 communities, I wish them luck!

~~~
Brakenshire
What smartphone SoC has open drivers? If they can make a workable smartphone
which runs on the mainline kernel, that seems like dramatic progress.

~~~
seba_dos1
It's not hard to boot plenty of SoCs on mainline kernel, plenty of open
devices use TI OMAPs, for instance, that's pretty well supported. What's hard
is to provide proper GPU acceleration, support for all included hardware and
power management tailored for particular device. Seems like i.mx6/8 are good
with the first one (sadly, OMAP sucks there), that's nice. However, regarding
the rest - you don't expect that Librem 5 will be really usable as a phone on
mainline Linux on launch and some time (possibly years) after launch, do you?

GTA04 project has had (and still has) a massive aspiration to upstream all the
kernel changes and drivers, but they're still not done after many years
(although close), because a lot of things that actually make the mobile device
usable are device specific hacks that rarely are accepted upstream. Now it
boots on upstream kernel (or not, it changes from release to release), but if
you really want to use it as a phone, you still have to use Goldelico kernel.
Which is of course completely open, just not mainline. Earlier, with Neo
Freerunner, the situation was similar, aside of the fact that amount of non-
upstreamable hacks were much higher and there was no stuff like device tree
back then, so nobody made any serious progress on upstreaming.

Also, booting is one thing. Getting everything in shape to be usable as a
every-day device with small battery is another. The road from "booting on
mainline" to "workable smartphone on mainline" isn't doable in a year or two,
when you also have to design and produce the device during that time.

However, that's not a big issue at all. Mainline eventually will get better
and better, and if you have active community and try to minimize the deviation
from mainline, rebasing isn't _that_ hard. What can be an issue is power and
thermal requirements of used chipset. I don't know about any mobile device
that has used it before (but that's doesn't mean it doesn't exist), and I've
already seen projects rejecting them as "not for mobile", that's why I'm
eagerly waiting for more info about this SoC's performance.

~~~
Brakenshire
Thanks for the answer, I'm intrigued by what you're saying about the hardware
being unsuitable for mobile, surely these are fairly standard components? The
range of CPU's they're discussing use off the peg A72 Cortex cores designed by
ARM, mixed with some lower power cores in various configurations, using
big.Little. All mobile chips massively over-run their thermal capacity, and
have to throttle after some minutes running at full power. Work on keeping
within the thermal envelope, managing the array of cores and parceling out
tasks, seems more to do with software than hardware, and work which has to be
done anyway for Linux to be able to function in that environment, and also to
be a relatively generalizable problem. That seems to be why you'd support a
project like this.

Why do you need device specific hacks, and what about the hardware is
inappropriate? Genuinely interested to know.

------
Casseres
Awesome, and I just discovered Puri.sm now accepts Monero as payment.

I'll be placing my order in a few hours using Monero (this changed my mind
from "maybe" to "definitely"), but I have a question:

In the hopefully-unlikely case that the goal isn't met, how will you refund
people who paid with either Bitcoin or Monero?

~~~
throwaway1256
Regarding refunds: I funded the Librem 5 using Bitcoin, but the transaction
didn't go through in time. I contacted them via mail, gave them a Bitcoin
address, and got refunded. Unlike some other vendors I have dealt with in the
past, they actually understand Bitcoin. So I'm optimistic this will work.

------
CaptSpify
I'm super excited to get a _real_ linux phone. The Ubuntu phone is the only
smart-phone I've had that I didn't hate. I really hope this takes off.

------
xvilka
Too bad still closed source wireless: lte/3g/gsm modem, wifi firmware,
bluetooth firmware, etc. If limit the support just to LTE, it would be much
easier to port an existing LTE FOSS implementations. WiFi is a different
beast, but easier to implement anyway, than LTE and Co.

~~~
fabrice_d
What are the LTE FOSS implementations available? I could not find anything
that seems usable.

------
cJ0th
Looking forward to this very much. The only downer: $599 for a phone is a lot
of money. I understand that they have to cover many expenses. However, I hope
they'll also offer phones for poorer people. In the end, privacy should not be
a luxury.

~~~
Tepix
If you need something cheaper and sooner, get a Nexus 5X and install
Copperhead OS on it.

------
arca_vorago
Please note the puri.sm team is looking for people to join their team and
assist with things like UX/PureOS/Kernel stuff. Not affiliated, I justed
recently learned about Librem 5 and got all excited and saw it on their
website.

------
Tepix
In this update they now consider it highly likely that the phone will get the
i.mx8 CPU.

Releasing the $599 Librem 5 phone with the outdated i.mx6 CPU (quad core
Cortex A9, ARMv7-A from 2011, like the Samsung Galaxy S3) would be a disaster.

------
mariushn
EU should fund this, besides complaining about Google/Apple monopolies and US
companied not paying EU tax

------
martin1975
curious why not just go with Tizen as their baseline .... what else besides
Android or iOS is polished enough w/an app ecosystem to have a fighting chance
of survival?

I so want this project to succeed.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Tizen isn't fully open source, makes you beholden to Samsung, which has little
reason to fully commit since their entire business operates on Android phones,
etc.

~~~
martin1975
Thanks - I was under the impression it is entirely open source - except maybe
for proprietary blobs/drivers (in my mind, that's open source enough I
suppose). Better Samsung than Google if you ask me... Canonical/Ubuntu tried
something like this and failed miserably. I'm not sure how this is going to be
different ... without some major backing down the line. Starting things and
prototyping things is fine and dandy... but making this a viable competitor to
the established players... that's a whole different ball game.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It depends what you call viable. Who's your market? How many do you need to
sell to break even? If you're Microsoft or Amazon, you need your mobile
product to take market share from Google and Apple, but if you can make a
profit making a couple thousand phones for some people who want to buy them,
that may be a perfectly successful business model.

In my case, I want my phone to make calls, send texts, and browse the web.
It'd be nice if it had some apps, but I probably don't need more than a dozen
or two. If you don't need a giant rival ecosystem as your definition of
success, it's much easier to succeed on a smaller scale.

~~~
pjmlp
As proven by Windows Phone, WebOS, FirefoxOS, Jolla, Blackberry,....

~~~
Brakenshire
Most of the failures sold to a general consumer market though, mobile Linux
should be able to survive just like desktop Linux, catering to an enthusiastic
niche. Also, mobile Linux has the advantage that a lot of apps already use
open source stacks, between F-Droid and PWA's there is plenty of an app
ecosystem to keep things ticking over, for an audience that doesn't mind
tweaking things.

~~~
StudentStuff
F-Droid is a steaming pile though, compared to the high caliber software in
most distro's repos. Linphone, Firefox and many other apps are months or years
out of date, with known, active vulnerabilities.

