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2019, the year of an open source phone. I almost can't believe it. I'm super happy they're not reinventing the entire wheel and are using an ecosystem that alre

2019, the year of an open source phone. I almost can't believe it. I'm super happy they're not reinventing the entire wheel and are using an ecosystem that already exists (GNOME). Much of the non librem specific work is being done upstream which is great.

NedIsakoff 8y ago
Isn't 2019 the year of Linux on the desktop? :) I'm willing to put up 100CAD that it won't ship this year.
- scns 8y ago
  If you lose you should Sonate the money to them
  - NedIsakoff 8y ago
    If they ship a final product by 2019-12-31, I'll donate 500CAD to any charity they pick
    - georgyo 8y ago
      To quantify this now. Are you counting a final product as them going GA, allowing anyone to buy and get one? Or are you counting a final product one that you do not consider beta. The latter is very open to interpretation.
      - NedIsakoff 8y ago
        Going GA and shipping to customers.
    - socceroos 8y ago
      How about you commit to buying their device if they do ship it this year. I'd read those blog posts about your experience - along with any doses of humble pie you ~may~ have to eat.
      - NedIsakoff 8y ago
        I'll commit to buying one.
        acct1771 8y ago
        Please do this.
- vertexFarm 8y ago
  Pardon my ignorance but what is the criteria for a linux desktop being a thing? Is it a certain minimum market share? There's plenty of linux desktops out there. There is certainly a ways to go, I'm not trying to deny that, I'm just wondering what constitutes a successful linux desktop. User-friendliness? Where are the goalposts exactly?
  - FigBug 8y ago
    I think "year of Linux on the desktop" is mostly an old Slashdot meme. There are no specific goalposts, it's just used to make fun of Linux adoption.
    - 8bitsrule 8y ago
      As with many fine things, not everything in life is about how many people are ... , but who is. To bend Obama's words a bit: If you’ve got a computer business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
- fxfan 8y ago
  That was 2016. With wsl ;). Oh wait, the year of gnu on desktop I meant. And the year when Linux could drop any hope of being used on desktop.
- aldoushuxley001 8y ago
  I'd take you up on that bet. The Librem 5 will ship this year.
pjmlp 8y ago
Just like Maemo did, oh well.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  Maemo phones did not isolate the cellular modem from the rest of the system. Also, a number of essential packages on the Nokia N900 were (and still remain today) closed source.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  It's odd that Jolla doesn't just open-source Sailfish OS.
  - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
    Jolla doesn’t make devices any more. Their only business case is licensing their OS to paying customers. While many packages in Sailfish are open-source, naturally the company is holding back a lot of things in order to serve as the exclusive provider of the OS.
- fxfan 8y ago
  Sorry off topic but if I could follow one person for experience, not bring biased and knowledge of the state of the art of software tooling (and tonnes of other things... but tools are useful and not easy to find) then I would follow you. Your comments are very informative.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Thanks, just a random grey beard guy with too much free time between builds. :)
- purpleidea 8y ago
  Weren't a lot of the useful components for Maemo open source? Eg: the GTK+ Hildon stuff for example? Why can't/didn't Purism re-use any of that?
dogma1138 8y ago
An Open Source phone would only be actually beneficial if there will be an automated transparent and trusted global support infrastructure for it that would require zero user interaction. I use an iPhone because it’s the most secure hardware and software combination you can get and you are guaranteed to receive support for 5> years. I don’t want to have to compile my own kernels, set up my own chain of trust or deploy my own patches. It’s too cumbersome which would lead to procrastination that is if you don’t screw up something in the process to being with. Also as far as the hardware goes I have currently more faith in Apple being able to get and secure its supply chain than a small company which completely relies on Chinese OEMs for its design. The baseband will not be open source, it will have to use blobs as such other than running a more vanilla flavor of Linux I don’t see it being any different than any phone that can run AOSP.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  Strong disagree; progress is progress, and not yet being perfect does not make it pointless.
  - ianai 8y ago
    Yep. It’s a bad philosophy when it actively deflects from possible changes to the circumstances comprising progress. In this case, it’s much easier to make an open source phone than cell network. Not to mention no one has the sort of capital to setup an open cell network.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Being imperfect relative to the flagship commercial phones is a problem, because ultimately end-users have to use these things for them to remain going concerns, and it's hard to see which users are better served by a less secure phone stack.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
      That would be imperfection in terms of features, not security. And yes, users do need to be able to actually do what they want, but the bar isn't that high and it certainly isn't uniform; some of us are happy with web browser, SMS, and a shell. Further features will widen the appeal, but for starting out they seem to be doing fine. I believe that it is at least an equally secure phone stack vs most Android (granted, with the root of trust in the user rather than manufacturer, which I think is a good thing), and only might lose against Apple and Google flagships thanks to hardware features.
zozbot123 8y ago
Hopefully also the year of Linux (with the standard desktop stack) on touch-first and small-screen devices, thanks to Librem 5's choice of cooperation with the overall Linux community. Admittedly, we were there before with environments such as QTopia, GPE and Hildon, but these were niche efforts targeted to a handful of very expensive and low-performing devices (thus, their code was never shared "upstream" as is happening now)-- the situation today is quite different.
axaxs 8y ago
While I use Gnome, and like the way it looks, I feel it's a mistake on a phone unless they are doing a lot of heavy editing. While it's gotten better, the JS -still- leaks and randomly pegs the CPU. In a phone I would imagine a battery life measured in minutes.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  The in-development "Phosh" shell does not use JS at all; it is not based on GNOME Shell, even though the work on Phosh is being done as part of the GNOME project.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  Without running the exact numbers I feel like running down an entire average size cell phone battery in a few minutes would lead to everything bursting into flame. I don't think an average cell phone cpu can actually exhaust an average battery in that time frame. I feel like if it were going all out at all times for no reason it would still last a few hours. Also pretty sure this thing runs gtk apps NOT gnome which renders your analysis flawed.
  - axaxs 8y ago
    Yours and other comment did reveal my analysis was flawed, thanks for that. Re: the first two points, I really don't think so. I have a Nexus 5x that would kill the battery in around an hour if video chatting (to your point, it did get very very hot). There is also a recently revealed 'bug' in the NXP SoC being used by Librem themselves, who claimed it was killing the battery in an hour. I figure anything under 2 hours is fair game to be 'measured in minutes.'
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      How old is the battery in the nexus 5? It's a 5 year old phone at this point. Daily charging could have put it through 1000 or more charge cycles at this point.

NedIsakoff 8y ago

Isn't 2019 the year of Linux on the desktop? :) I'm willing to put up 100CAD that it won't ship this year.

scns 8y ago
If you lose you should Sonate the money to them
- NedIsakoff 8y ago
  If they ship a final product by 2019-12-31, I'll donate 500CAD to any charity they pick
  - georgyo 8y ago
    To quantify this now. Are you counting a final product as them going GA, allowing anyone to buy and get one? Or are you counting a final product one that you do not consider beta. The latter is very open to interpretation.
    - NedIsakoff 8y ago
      Going GA and shipping to customers.
  - socceroos 8y ago
    How about you commit to buying their device if they do ship it this year. I'd read those blog posts about your experience - along with any doses of humble pie you ~may~ have to eat.
    - NedIsakoff 8y ago
      I'll commit to buying one.
      - acct1771 8y ago
        Please do this.
vertexFarm 8y ago
Pardon my ignorance but what is the criteria for a linux desktop being a thing? Is it a certain minimum market share? There's plenty of linux desktops out there. There is certainly a ways to go, I'm not trying to deny that, I'm just wondering what constitutes a successful linux desktop. User-friendliness? Where are the goalposts exactly?
- FigBug 8y ago
  I think "year of Linux on the desktop" is mostly an old Slashdot meme. There are no specific goalposts, it's just used to make fun of Linux adoption.
  - 8bitsrule 8y ago
    As with many fine things, not everything in life is about how many people are ... , but who is. To bend Obama's words a bit: If you’ve got a computer business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
fxfan 8y ago
That was 2016. With wsl ;). Oh wait, the year of gnu on desktop I meant. And the year when Linux could drop any hope of being used on desktop.
aldoushuxley001 8y ago
I'd take you up on that bet. The Librem 5 will ship this year.

pjmlp 8y ago

Just like Maemo did, oh well.

Mediterraneo10 8y ago
Maemo phones did not isolate the cellular modem from the rest of the system. Also, a number of essential packages on the Nokia N900 were (and still remain today) closed source.
Apocryphon 8y ago
It's odd that Jolla doesn't just open-source Sailfish OS.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  Jolla doesn’t make devices any more. Their only business case is licensing their OS to paying customers. While many packages in Sailfish are open-source, naturally the company is holding back a lot of things in order to serve as the exclusive provider of the OS.
fxfan 8y ago
Sorry off topic but if I could follow one person for experience, not bring biased and knowledge of the state of the art of software tooling (and tonnes of other things... but tools are useful and not easy to find) then I would follow you. Your comments are very informative.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Thanks, just a random grey beard guy with too much free time between builds. :)
purpleidea 8y ago
Weren't a lot of the useful components for Maemo open source? Eg: the GTK+ Hildon stuff for example? Why can't/didn't Purism re-use any of that?

dogma1138 8y ago

An Open Source phone would only be actually beneficial if there will be an automated transparent and trusted global support infrastructure for it that would require zero user interaction. I use an iPhone because it’s the most secure hardware and software combination you can get and you are guaranteed to receive support for 5> years. I don’t want to have to compile my own kernels, set up my own chain of trust or deploy my own patches. It’s too cumbersome which would lead to procrastination that is if you don’t screw up something in the process to being with. Also as far as the hardware goes I have currently more faith in Apple being able to get and secure its supply chain than a small company which completely relies on Chinese OEMs for its design. The baseband will not be open source, it will have to use blobs as such other than running a more vanilla flavor of Linux I don’t see it being any different than any phone that can run AOSP.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
Strong disagree; progress is progress, and not yet being perfect does not make it pointless.
- ianai 8y ago
  Yep. It’s a bad philosophy when it actively deflects from possible changes to the circumstances comprising progress. In this case, it’s much easier to make an open source phone than cell network. Not to mention no one has the sort of capital to setup an open cell network.
- tptacek 8y ago
  Being imperfect relative to the flagship commercial phones is a problem, because ultimately end-users have to use these things for them to remain going concerns, and it's hard to see which users are better served by a less secure phone stack.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    That would be imperfection in terms of features, not security. And yes, users do need to be able to actually do what they want, but the bar isn't that high and it certainly isn't uniform; some of us are happy with web browser, SMS, and a shell. Further features will widen the appeal, but for starting out they seem to be doing fine. I believe that it is at least an equally secure phone stack vs most Android (granted, with the root of trust in the user rather than manufacturer, which I think is a good thing), and only might lose against Apple and Google flagships thanks to hardware features.

zozbot123 8y ago

Hopefully also the year of Linux (with the standard desktop stack) on touch-first and small-screen devices, thanks to Librem 5's choice of cooperation with the overall Linux community. Admittedly, we were there before with environments such as QTopia, GPE and Hildon, but these were niche efforts targeted to a handful of very expensive and low-performing devices (thus, their code was never shared "upstream" as is happening now)-- the situation today is quite different.

axaxs 8y ago

While I use Gnome, and like the way it looks, I feel it's a mistake on a phone unless they are doing a lot of heavy editing. While it's gotten better, the JS -still- leaks and randomly pegs the CPU. In a phone I would imagine a battery life measured in minutes.

zozbot123 8y ago
The in-development "Phosh" shell does not use JS at all; it is not based on GNOME Shell, even though the work on Phosh is being done as part of the GNOME project.
michaelmrose 8y ago
Without running the exact numbers I feel like running down an entire average size cell phone battery in a few minutes would lead to everything bursting into flame. I don't think an average cell phone cpu can actually exhaust an average battery in that time frame. I feel like if it were going all out at all times for no reason it would still last a few hours. Also pretty sure this thing runs gtk apps NOT gnome which renders your analysis flawed.
- axaxs 8y ago
  Yours and other comment did reveal my analysis was flawed, thanks for that. Re: the first two points, I really don't think so. I have a Nexus 5x that would kill the battery in around an hour if video chatting (to your point, it did get very very hot). There is also a recently revealed 'bug' in the NXP SoC being used by Librem themselves, who claimed it was killing the battery in an hour. I figure anything under 2 hours is fair game to be 'measured in minutes.'
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    How old is the battery in the nexus 5? It's a 5 year old phone at this point. Daily charging could have put it through 1000 or more charge cycles at this point.