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Comment by caffed | Hacker News Reader

Anybody remember Openmoko? Ubuntu Edge?

It's a great and noble idea, but really hard to pull off.

Also, there's no final specs for the Librem 5 yet they have a 4/2019 ship date. Sure... Hats off to them if that actually happens.

Does anyone have a Librem dev kit? Thoughts?

I like the Linux distro + e2e encryption support and would consider this in the future when they ship.

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Am I the only one more excited about Librem 5 than about previous efforts at the time? When Openmoko shipped, I haven't even yet considered buying any smartphone. Then when Ubuntu Edge was a subject I had a phone, but thought about the project as a me-too kind. At the time there was a plethora of alternative platforms. Now I feel that things settled with mobile OSes, so it seems that there is a place for moderate hype. I had higher hopes for FirefoxOS, but devices were weak and nothing better came up. FirefoxOS set too high expectations.

With Librem I feel it's a bit more straightforward. There will maybe be also Necuno Mobile with similar software stack, but cheaper hardware. So it's just maybe more realistic this time?

The biggest difference is expectations. Ubuntu edge had a $32m target, and failed with $6m in commitments. Prism has stated they'd be happy with $1.5m in sales.

I received mine 2 weeks ago but still didn't test it. From the dev channels, I think they're still having some software issues with the screen on the dev kit.

It's already possible to port software to the smaller screen using a QEMU image they provide https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Development_Environment/Bo... That's part of the reason why I still didn't test the dev board.

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