
Librem 5 July Update - pksadiq
https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-july-update/
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dmix
Interesting, they are building their own mobile compositor based on wlroots:
[https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phoc](https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phoc)

This is the right way to do an open source phone by adopting existing modern
desktop Linux tech. Instead of going your own Androidy path like
Sailfish/Jolla is doing.

~~~
Jach
Yeah. Though I also wish someone would tackle this from a hardware perspective
too. I'm looking forward to being able to run various linux programs on a real
linux phone, but many are never going to be touch-screen friendly let alone
mobile-layout friendly. A phone with a little pointer nub and left-
click/right-click buttons would be sweet to me...

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I mean, I think if you can run real Linux programs, and a lot of your "daily
use" stuff works with touch, you can connect a Bluetooth mouse/keyboard combo
when you need it. (I already keep one in my car.) And being Linux, you can
probably script a bunch of stuff (when using your keyboard) to "just work"
when you're not using your keyboard.

The important part is you won't need to special case what you can run on a
phone versus what you can run on a desktop. A lot of stupid/simple Windows
apps I wish I could run on my phone. But even if you are on Windows Phone you
could only run apps meant for it.

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evross
Always enjoy reading these updates. It's refreshing for a company to explain
their progress in this kind of technical detail, another bonus of a free/open
source product. Congrats to the Purism team for the progress, looking forward
to seeing the new Linux phone.

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adrusi
Does anyone who follows this more closely know what mapping support there will
be? I worry that it will be hard to match the quality of Google/Apple Maps
with free software. I've tried using OsmAnd, but it's just a terrible
experience compared to commercial map apps. This is a big deal for me and I
imagine many others, because losing the traffic data and turn-by-turn
navigation of commercial map apps is a dealbreaker, but allowing me to get rid
of these most invasive apps would be a huge selling point, and would probably
get me to buy the device all on its own.

~~~
maroonshifter
Good real-time traffic data is an emergent property of being an invasive
platform. Maybe there’s a possibility of opting into position information
uploading that goes to some open mothership(?) or decentralized mesh, but this
is not going to ever be as good as google passively leveraging and aggregating
its millions of phones in cars on the road.

OsmAnd definitely has some rough edges but it has rudimentary turn by turn
navigation.

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woodrowbarlow
the latest shipping update is still Q3 2019 (so 2-5 months away) and yet the
marketing page still has a lot of _hardware_ that is TBD: memory, cameras, and
battery.

who wants to bet it will be pushed back to 2020?

~~~
NedIsakoff
Which is my I'm not pre-ordering, I'm waiting till the final specs are
released. Also I need to be able to view PDF documents, so probably gonna be a
while.

~~~
ptx
For PDF viewing, Evince seems to be working already:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8YMc06RMrc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8YMc06RMrc)

~~~
seba_dos1
I remember Evince working on GNU/Linux phones already 10 years ago, so yeah, I
wouldn't worry about PDFs :)

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mikece
Have they said anything about PWA support? If PWA is supported and on par with
Chrome on Android this would allow a lot of PWA-compliant web apps (like
Twitter, Gmail, and many more) to be ready to go right away. While not
"native" the app ecosystem would at least have a chance to be there at the
time of release.

~~~
alexkavon
They're working on a browser, so yes... I believe PWA will be possible since
they're just rebranded HTML+JS apps.

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alexkavon
It looks like the UI is coming together nicely. My only question is what
battery life will look like on these phones. I'm guessing terrible for the
first gen.

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nixpulvis
This is so exciting! I can't wait to buy one.

