
Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2 - yepthatsreality
https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-2/
======
dmix
GTK for a smartphone is an interesting choice. I'm curious if the Gnome team
would ever commit to this.

The use of a stylus in the video is a bit concerning though.

Off topic but I hope Librem releases a high-end laptop in addition to their
mid-tier one, ideally with a high performance AMD CPU. Something that could be
the open-source friendly version of a Macbook Pro.

The way they disable Intel ME and add hardware toggles for
webcams/microphones, and their general good taste is a big draw for me.

Edit: looks like Gnome is backing Purism's project. Neat.
[https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/09/gnome-foundation-
partners...](https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/09/gnome-foundation-partners-
with-purism-to-support-its-efforts-to-build-the-librem-5-smartphone/)

~~~
alexkavon
I believe they're working with the Gnome team on this, as well as support for
Plasma Mobile.[0]

[0] [https://puri.sm/posts/gnome-and-kde-in-pureos-diversity-
acro...](https://puri.sm/posts/gnome-and-kde-in-pureos-diversity-across-
devices/)

~~~
dmix
> In addition, Purism is needing to lead some of the development within the
> GNOME community, since there is not a large community around an upstream-
> first GNOME/GTK+ for mobile yet.

This makes me happy. This is good news for all Gnome users.

------
logicprog
I want to like Librem's smartphone, I really do. I like having control over my
software, and I like being able to really understand how it works and tinker
with it and stuff. But I have this sinking feeling that the Librem 5 is just
vaporware, or worse, that it'll get released with a half baked UI and a
barebones list of apps. On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix
the problem. On the former, the thing is that the affordences for bad UI
design are a LOT tighter on mobile devices and it's taken a long time for
desktop Linux to get their game together. Plus, all of Librem's other stuff is
over priced and a bit cheap looking, and I'm not sure I want a phone like
that.

~~~
RandomBacon
It doesn't look like vaporware to me. The videos and updates seem legit.

> it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps.

Have you even looked into the project?

It's running Gnome, on Linux, all the regular apps are there.

Check out the videos in this link, it's not half-baked:

[https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-
week-3...](https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-3/)

~~~
the_pwner224
I have been following this for a while and am likely to buy it if/when it is
released. Even though that will require me to change to a much more expensive
cell carrier.

The software seems good. After all, it is just GNU/Linux/GNOME - all you need
to do is get a C compiler and hardware drivers and then it just works. An
older video did show major stutter during scrolling but that can probably be
mitigated.

What's concerning is the hardware side of things. I don't think many people
expected it to actually ship on the original planned release date, but the
delay has been getting quite large. All the stuff on their blog is about
software running on the dev kit; we have no idea what progress is like on the
hardware. Turning it from that bare PCB into a phone is a lot of work.

Their marketing guy also released a video a month or two ago comparing the
Librem boot time to that of an old Android phone, complete with OEM crapware.
If they have nothing better to do than make such stupid comparisons, then it
is hard to believe it isn't vaporware.

~~~
RandomBacon
I highly recommend looking into an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator).

There are inexpensive pre-paid plans that use the major cell network towers,
and you get the same speeds. I recommend Straight Talk; their plans are very
cheap for the data you get, but there might be other cheaper services.

I agree it's taking them a while, but I've never built a phone before, so I am
cutting them slack.

I find it easy to believe that it is _not_ vaporware. They have videos of
working devices, something that can be replicated in mass, not renders etc.
They've shipped dev boards.

------
meruru
This is incredibly exciting.

For those that haven't seen it, here's a bullet list of the Librem 5
differentiators:

    
    
      + Does not use Android or iOS. The Librem 5 comes with the mobile version of our FSF-endorsed operating system PureOS by default, and is expected to be able to run most GNU+Linux distributions.  
      + CPU separate from baseband, isolating the blackbox that the modem may represent and allowing us to seek hardware certification of the main board by the Free Software Foundation.  
      + Hardware Kill Switches for camera, microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, and baseband.  
      + End-to-end encrypted decentralized communications via Matrix over the Internet.  
      + We also intend the Librem 5 to integrate with the Librem Key security token in the future.

------
learnfromstory
Just shockingly ugly. If you're going to do a pixels-under-glass UI, you
really have to start with a toolkit that isn't awful, or you end up with the
openmoko which looked exactly like these demos but 12 years ago. You end up
with, in short, a phone where the user adjusts the volume using alsamixer in
an xterm because the UI wasn't really thought through.

~~~
RandomBacon
> Just shockingly ugly.

Are you sure about that? It looks amazing:

[https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-
week-3...](https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-3/)

~~~
the_pwner224
I'd say its better than most modern phones with their stupid flat UIs. I use
KDE on the desktop for its featured richness, but gnome is still much more 3d
and I envy its appearance. Buttons very clearly look like buttons and text
boxes look like text boxes and the whole thing just looks 'nice.'

------
liamcardenas
I’m sure people will disagree with this but I think they should focus on
getting an easy way for people to target their devices with React Native,
NativeScript, PWAs and every other cross-platform framework.

That way they can much more easily acquire software. Seriously making an app
from scratch is no small task, and often time isn’t worth it for such a small
market.

~~~
flukus
Have you seen what development for this is like? You can slap together simple
apps (the UI anyway) with a few dozen lines of C. It's extremely simple,
lightweight and fast, everything react/PWA's/etc aren't. This is what excites
me about librem the most, it's so easy to just write code with no bloated IDE,
15 xml files, AbstractFactoryBuilders and the rest of the android crapfest.

PWA's and the like can stay away, I want software from developers that
actually respect their users, software that doesn't waste resources, software
that actually looks native.

~~~
liamcardenas
I’m sure it’s just as easy as any other UI.

My point is it’s so small, nobody will focus on it. However, if they can
easily port their existing codebase, it will have more apps.

------
justforpurism
Registered just to post this. Love Purism, want it to succeed. But...

IMHO, the effort is going to fail miserably, unless folks stop wasting time
trying to build a phone UI, i.e. another attempt to build Android/iOS
ecosystem. There were Sailfish, MER, Openmoko, and whatnot attempts to make a
pure Linux-running cell phone. Just stop it. You will burn through your money
doing half-baked UI, there will be no adoption, then no developers, then no
apps, and thus no users.

As per OP link, Purism just have shown that they wasted precious time on badly
looking GNOME Clocks, Emacs, Password manager, a game, a half-baked music
player, Torrent client (on a phone!), and Drawing app made with their native
UI. What a waste of time to re-write (or port) all of this, all over again.

The only surviving plan for any Linux-phone: make it web-centric. You have to
port ONE app: Firefox. Make it fast, make it perfect. Then, automatically you
will get:

\- Adoption. [http://m.uber.com](http://m.uber.com)
[http://m.lyft.com/](http://m.lyft.com/) work out of the box. I am not leaving
home without the phone because it enables to access essential day-to-day
services. Partner with companies that develop those web-based apps.

\- Adoption. Web-based music: Spotify, SoundCloud. Out of the box. Purism
doesn't need to waste time on this. Just have pre-installed bookmarks to those
apps. Partner with companies that develop those web-based apps.

\- Adoption. Endless web apps such as "Clocks", "Notepad", Games and drawing
apps already exists. Purism don't need to waste time on this stuff. Just have
pre-installed bookmarks for those apps. Partner with companies that develop
those web-based apps.

Once basic needs satisfied, those of us who need Emacs, will be able to port
Emacs and Torrent clients themselves. Why waste _your_ time, Purism?

Focus on releasing the hardware, be different from other phones, be lean, get
immediate adoption, community will fill the blanks.

~~~
flukus
> The only surviving plan for any Linux-phone: make it web-centric. You have
> to port ONE app: Firefox.

You are aware of the failure of firefox OS right?

> Purism just have shown that they wasted precious time on badly looking GNOME
> Clocks, Emacs, Password manager, a game, a half-baked music player, Torrent
> client (on a phone!), and Drawing app made with their native UI.

They haven't wasted time, pretty much all of these are existing apps, you can
run most of them on a gnome desktop.

> Focus on releasing the hardware

That is what their doing and what differentiates them from most previous
efforts like sailfish, they are a hardware company making a phone the runs
linux, others were trying to re-create android and leave the hardware for
others.

~~~
justforpurism
> You are aware of the failure of firefox OS right?

Right. And this was a mistake by Mozilla: they tried to make an OS, and a
browser and interact/negotiate with 3rd-party phone vendors. I did not care
for FirefoxOS-based phones indeed because they where "same old ridden-with-
firmware black boxes".

Mozilla makes a good browser, they'd rather keep doing that.

Purism is a different story. It seems they understand that some folks
appreciate open hardware, privacy-focused designs. Cool, one ingredient for
the success: check. But in order to be a successful product, the phone has to
be useful out-of-the-box. And if the hardware company will attempt to make a
whole "native" software stack, they will fail the same way as Mozilla failed
at being an OS-company and HW-facing company: not enough resources.

So, how about Purism makes a great hardware (+ drivers), and integrates
exactly three apps: 1. a phone app that is able to make/receive calls, 2. a
short-text messaging app 3. and a blazing-fast browser to access the world.
Done. Basics are there: I can make calls, I can receive/send messages, I can
access email, slack, hail uber/lyft, use web-based maps/navigation, listen to
online podcasts/music, use web-based calendars, etc. A phone I could use
everyday.

~~~
RandomBacon
Purism pretty much is doing what you're suggesting.

They're working with upstream packages so that when you install Linux on it,
it just works, no hunting for additional drivers to make it work.

Those apps already exist. Again, they're working with those apps to make the
phone "just work" when you install the apps/programs/packages/whatever. They
don't need to reinvent Firefox, they can let Mozilla focus on that, and Purism
can focus on what they're doing.

------
joey_bob
If someone were to develop an iphone-quality design with the same objectives
as the librem 5, I'd pay $3000 for it. How much would the market shrink if
that was the price of what would become the librem 5? It's rather niche to
begin with, but there isn't any real competition the meets the same
objectives, and I assert that the customer base has the money to afford it.

~~~
mac01021
I'm considering ordering a librem 5, but I would go without any phone at all
rather than spend thousands on one.

------
mikece
Is there any reason why applications cannot be written for the Librem 5 with
Flutter? The Flutter framework compiles to ARM binary and the UI is rendered
with Skia, a C++ UI layer. It's not like a bunch of widgets would need to be
written and supported on Librem, just the Skia layer. What am I missing?

~~~
maheart
That would be a massive amount of work. In my opinion, Purism correctly
limited the scope of the original proposal -- a FOSS phone that can make
calls, and send messages (and maybe use a web browser?). libhandy (the library
that allows GTK applications to "shrink" their UI for a phone) is intended to
minimise work by allowing Purism to take advantage to existing software (e.g.
Settings, Web browser). Even this is a huge amount of work (I've written about
it here/Reddit in the past).

------
shmerl
I'd welcome more push behind Plasma Mobile for it. There is practically no
progress now. It could benefit from moving towards more touch oriented design,
Sailfish like, dropping lingering elements inherited from the desktop UI.

------
jijji
Any demos of the phone making an actual phone call, sending an sms text
message?

~~~
alexkavon
[https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-
report-12/](https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-12/)

------
panpanna
Has anyone here attempted to develop software for librem?

Mind share your experience with us?

------
dman
Any idea on when this ships?

~~~
meruru
Q3 according to the videos.

------
jplayer01
What was the reasoning for going with Gnome/GTK instead of Qt?

