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Comment by noja | Hacker News Reader

I can't see it working unless they support WhatsApp and friends. No network effect means it will die. Unfortunately.

The Librem 5 isn't designed for people who use WhatsApp. Signal and some other actually private messengers should work as they already have official Linux clients.

That said I currently don't plan on buying it, simply because right now I'm not heavily relying on the phone. It is however the first phone released in the last ~5 years that I'd call interesting and unique.

Signal's Linux client uses Electron. I wonder how well it will work on a resource-constrained phone.

Also, Linux signal was missing video chat support the last time I tried it.

In many regions, using WhatsApp is not really a choice.

There was life before WhatsApp. I can confirm there is life after WhatsApp. Join us.

This is one of the problems the Librem 5 is designed to solve.

How? If you are stuck in one of the countries where more than 90% of citizens use WhatsApp, your choices are not to use WhatsApp, or to get an Android or IOS smartphone.

Individuals might be willing to contact you via other channels, but group chats won't move to another platform unless you are dealing with people who actually care about their privacy.

I don't use WhatsApp (can't use it due to not having an approved smartphone, and not wishing to accept Facebook's terms of use), and I miss things. Not a lot, and nothing critical, but my partner and I do miss out on some social things.

> How? If you are stuck in one of the countries where more than 90% of citizens use WhatsApp, your choices are not to use WhatsApp, or to get an Android or IOS smartphone.

So you decide for the former.

That is fine, but it doesn't answer the question how Librem is purportedly solving that problem.

> That is fine, but it doesn't answer the question how Librem is purportedly solving that problem.

By not supporting WhatsApp, it forces the user to solve the problem that he/she makes a very bad decision with respect to his/her privacy.

I fully support that approach, but this effectively means accepting that the majority uses a tool you cannot or will not use. Librem is never going to be in a position with sufficient market share to counter the network effect of WhatsApp in countries that are hooked on it.

Hence my question in response to gregknicholson's statement:

>> This is one of the problems the Librem 5 is designed to solve.

> How?

By providing a coherent set of easy-to-use, privacy-respecting alternatives.

It makes it easier for those who _want_ to switch, but don't have the confidence/skill/energy to figure everything out on their own.

Similarly, Disroot made it easy to switch away from Google, by providing a complete (for my purposes) drop-in replacement; Ubuntu made it easy to switch from Windows.

Quite right, but they still need enough buyers to stay in business, which looking how things in FOSS hardware and software business go, that isn't a guarantee.

> Quite right, but they still need enough buyers to stay in business, which looking how things in FOSS hardware and software business go, that isn't a guarantee.

The problem rather is that many FOSS advocates are not willing to pay a multiple of the money (i.e. they do not put their money where their mouth is). If FOSS advocates were a very financially lucrative clientel, companies would care a lot more for them.

This is because the vast majority of "FOSS advocates" are really "i dont want to pay for stuff" advocates - or to put it differently, what they like is the "Free as in beer" with the "Free as in speech" being a convenient excuse that also allows them to be preachy about their choice despite its shortcomings.

All those people who work in IT / development etc and advocate FOSS, do you really think that they couldn't pay for commercial software if they wanted? I certainly could.

It isn't about "could" is about "would", notice that i wrote "i dont want to pay" not "i cannot pay". After all that money you save on buying XXX is money you can spend on something you actually value.

In other countries, the salaries in the IT/development sector are not that great.

Purism already sells 2 Linux-only laptop models and seems to be fine. Smartphones are definitely a different market, but I think they have higher chances than most past attempts. They're actually selling something unique, which already makes it more interesting than e.g. the Ubuntu phones or FirefoxOS phones back then. And because in theory you could run anything that runs on Linux the app support problem isn't quite as extreme.

I don't think this phone was built for the masses. It's a boutique device offering functionality for a tiny niche audience.

it's a great step toward chipping away at the sad stuff everyone currently pays for

If I can install Signal or use bridges in the Matrix client, I don't see that being a problem.

There’s a WhatsApp bridge?

I haven't tried it, but it looks like it[1]!

1: https://matrix.org/bridges#whats-app

There is but it's powered by Whatsapp Web.

Essentially, you scan a barcode which means notifications are received via Matrix but only so long as your device is on.

If you have a physical server, you might want to opt for a cheap device that can sit next to your server, essentially meaning you're online 24/7

If you use a VPS, notifications will still be forwarded but only work while your phone is powered on. It's not a true replacement for Whatsapp as you still need it running on a device somewhere.

Or stick it into an Android emulator. It uses hardware virtualization extensions and works pretty fast these days.

That is definitely true! I have no idea about the logistics of running an Android emulator headless on a VPS. Maybe you'd have to use VNC or something at first otherwise just host it locally?

To the average consumer it's slower, bigger and more expensive than the alternatives - I suspect that'd kill it even if it had WhatsApp. They seem very aware of both issues though. In the talk their CTO mentions that they see it being used alongside another device. She also mentions they are only making 10,000 units so mass adoption clearly isn't the target.

I think this first version is for getting the infrastructure in place to go on to the next which should be easier to develop and possibly have a bigger audience.

> To the average consumer it's slower, bigger and more expensive than the alternatives

I do not believe that they target the average consumer.

Assuming that community is actually behind them, those 10,000 should sell out as hot cakes.

Then they can focus on improving other stuff.

A collogue worked for Conaonical. Apparently they tried to build a Whatsapp client, but Whatsapp wouldn't let them and insisted they pay them a few million (can't remember the exact figure) to implement a client.

What's "and friends" here? Not everywhere WhatsApp is unavoidably strong, and many competitors can be used on "weird" devices like this.

One of WhatApp competitors, which is quite strong in some Eastern Europe countries, Viber, just dropped GNU/Linux support.

The executable is still there to download, it barely works though.

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