Purism’s Librem 5 phone starts shipping–a fully open GNU/Linux phone | Hacker News Reader

Purism’s Librem 5 phone starts shipping–a fully open GNU/Linux phone

arstechnica.com

31 pointsanotherevan14 comments

I had the original Palm Pre... after two years HP cancelled the Palm Pre 2 and other upcoming phones after WebOS tanked (was mismanaged absorbed into nonpublicfacing IP). I did a Debian chroot and used the phone as a Wi-Fi only thinclient for another year then sold it (3 years of use!) for more than I had paid for the phone. In my opinion this is the first phone to rival the Palm Pre which ran Debian at its core. I look forward to owning the first phone that I will truly enjoy in over 7 years. Corporatism and clueless consumerism has not won yet. This is still truly a bastion of freedom compared to the way COMCAST/AT&T took over mom-and-pop ISPs then deleted all copper. The fight is not lost! Happy hacking!!

I wonder if you can install any linux app on it, like Wireshark, Gimp, Inkscape, LibreOffice apps, Blender, desktop Firefox and Chromium (with Web Inspector and extensions!), etc. At least, what I understand by a "linux phone" is one whose window manager is specialized for phones, and that has a few apps with their interfaces specialized for phones, but that can install and use any linux app like on any other linux machine. If they would clarify this, I think it would boost people's motivations in buying this.

I also wonder how one might go about changing the OS. Would it support live-USBs via OTG? or booting from the microSD? Do they offer an ISO of PureOS to reinstall? I wonder how difficult/easy it would be to do a normal Archlinux ARM installation, like on any other computer.

The marketing seems to focus on privacy, and being fully open source, and buying for the community benefit of promoting better tech in the market. However, if it's a "linux phone" that can run any linux app and even easily lets you run whatever distro you want, then there are practical, personal benefits to buying this, too. It wouldn't be instantly obsolete like so many people are saying.

And if the window manager and phone apps they made are distributed separately, then one can install their favorite distro, and install those programs, getting the same look and usability on their favorite distro.

I only found this secondary-source article[1] from a couple years ago that says it would support booting most distros, but is there anything official?

[1] https://www.cyberciti.biz/linux-news/the-librem-5-your-ultim...

GIMP? Chromium? Even as a decade-long gimp user: I absolutely hope not. There is a huuuge difference between GNU/Linux (of which, 32/64-bit and architecture are of course considerations) and packages. I certainly hope they aren’t handicapping the phone by enabling bloated cruft trying to keep up with this crap.

...before the downvotes: I literally use each of these daily with the exception of blender...

Edit: you want to install your own WM without messing with DE? Good luck to you, is nothing good enough? This is the first step toward freedom since the bad guys won!

I don't mean for them to come preinstalled and I don't mean that I personally would typically use all those programs specifically on a phone, but something that sucks about phones is that they have a completely different software ecosystem. If it's a linux phone, I think it should be possible to use the same programs. I can run any linux program on any raspberry-pi which also runs ARM, why not on a phone?

At least, I would like to have the option of having a web browser with a web inspector available using only the phone and the same extensions that are available for desktop.

> is nothing good enough?

I'm just concerned that the consensus seems to be that $700 is too much for the personal value this gives. The marketing even needs to resort to statements like:

> Vote with your wallet to support a future safe from digital exploitation and create a secure and respectful environment for you, your children and society as a whole.

I agree that that's nice, but for me personally, it's not reason enough to buy it at that price. We all understand the reasons why it's $700, but I think being able to install other distros and being able to install any linux app like on any other computer would motivate a lot of people. It would be an additional edge this would have over other phones.

There's at least 1 comment[1] (with upvotes) on that article that shares the view that having few apps and an incompatible ecosystem would be a concern.

This doesn't mean that they must support those programs or other distros, just their possible installation would be enough for anyone I think.

I'm just looking for ways to justify my buying it.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/09/purisms-librem-5-pho...

> I'm just looking for ways to justify my buying it.

How about the fact that you can connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse — and use it as a full desktop Linux machine running any desktop apps you like?

I’m sure gimp etc would have to package a specific .deb to run on this thing - unless as you’re saying you really might be able to mess with init system and startx.

So how many non-Android smart phones have there been past Nokia N9?

- Jolla/Sailfish is still alive, but not doing particularly well (I'm typing on one.)

- Firefox failed

- Ubuntu failed (I hear a community is still continuing with the SW, but not sure whether it runs on any phone HW)

I'm sure I missed something, but I'm sure I did not miss any real good ones.

> - Ubuntu failed (I hear a community is still continuing with the SW, but not sure whether it runs on any phone HW)

Yes, it's a community effort and yes it does run on actual hardware.[0][1] A Nexus 5 is probably most stable. All the devices that were originally launched by companies in cooperation with Canonical, are also still supported. In addition, AFAIR Ubuntu touch should run on any android devices that Halium[2] supports (the purpose of Halium is for projects like KDE Mobile, Ubuntu Touch, PureOS (?) etc. to share the code needed for "normal" (GNU) Linux to run on Android devices).

[0] https://ubports.com/devices/promoted-devices

[1] (javascript needed) https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/

[2] https://halium.org/

There’s a Firefox os fork that is commercially quite strong. KaiOS.

2nd most used mobile os in India, and I want to say it has 1% global market share, but I can’t back that up. But I’d say you missed a pretty good one :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS

The difference is expectations. I think Purism has far more modest expectations than all other ones, therefore making it more viable in long term.

There is a Tizen (Samsung) phone

True. I was sure I missed at least one, probably several. But even a giant like Samsung doesn't seem to be able to make a well-known success story with using Android.

"In other words, nearly any phone you buy today will have a more powerful, more power-efficient CPU than the Librem 5—even $160 Android phones are now packing eight-core SoCs built on more power-efficient manufacturing processes. That $700 price Purism is asking (more than a OnePlus 7 Pro!) is the price you pay for a niche smartphone with none of the economies of scale you get with normal smartphone parts."

It seems like the thing they always forget is that the first off the line product of any kind generally runs more expensive. Also, by knowing that your phone is private, it's definitely not "unknowingly" sponsored by third parties interested in information harvesting. Not many smart phones can unqualifyingly say that anymore.

boot speed seems to be much faster with Librem 5 compared to Android. I suspect that most apps will just run faster on Librem. https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-vs-android-which-boots-faster...

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