4 ms·

Most of what I have read has indicated that the Librem 5 is NOT a great daily driver (which was a huge letdown for me). How do you like it?

margalabargala 1y ago
Looking at what's missing from their roadmap here: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ No videos? Fine, I rarely take videos. No bluetooth? Mildly annoying, but especially with the 3.5mm jack, I could live without it. No GPS? This one would be a deal-breaker for me. But depending on the person I can see it being usable.
- AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
  Ouch. It seems to be even more incomplete than I thought. The lack of Bluetooth and GPS is kind of surprising, since those things have worked on Linux laptops for at least a couple of decades or so.
  - seba_dos1 1y ago
    Both work fine on Librem 5 as well and have worked for years now.
    - brewdad 1y ago
      Then why haven't they updated their site to inform potential users? It would make me worry it's about to be an abandoned project. I've dealt with enough of those in my life.
- teddyh 1y ago
  That image is seriously out of date. Bluetooth, GPS, and even recording video all work fine.
  - seba_dos1 1y ago
    Video recording implementation could be better though, but other stuff works well indeed :) In fact all things from that chart are there and have been there for years now, including 20h battery life and encrypted SIP calls.
    - pengaru 1y ago
      20h battery life? Mine comes nowhere close to that with all hw switches off and only playing mp3's... Are you quoting a when suspended figure or something?
      - seba_dos1 1y ago
        It can get up to 20h either when idle with all hw switches off or when suspended with the modem on (less with poor signal coverage, of course). Looking at a power meter right now I'd roughly expect at least 12h of music playback.
        pengaru 1y ago
        Using the latest greatest stock pureOS? My L5 gets nowhere near that listening to MP3s on road trips.
        seba_dos1 1y ago
        Check whether you get a high load average whenever Wi-Fi kill switch is off. If so, keeping it on and turning Wi-Fi off in software may give you better results. There are patches to fix that, but they need more work not to cause troubles with older cards (Redpine). There was also another issue that may have caused interrupt storms when kill switches were set to off, but that has been already fixed recently. There are some small power consumption improvements coming in kernel updates soon too, though these shouldn't make a drastic difference, just an extra hour or so.
  - margalabargala 1y ago
- jasode 1y ago
  >No bluetooth? Mildly annoying, but especially with the 3.5mm jack, I could live without it. For most people, it can be difficult to predict future scenarios for Bluetooth that's unrelated to wireless earphones. I always use wired earphones and didn't think I ever needed Bluetooth and always had it disabled. However, I was later forced to use it to configure new devices. E.g.: - internet router (Eero) from ISP has no buttons or a status display so required Bluetooth on smartphone to configure it - battery backup power station (Delta Ecoflow) require Bluetooth to configure them The common theme is for device manufacturers to avoid adding elaborate LCD displays or touchscreen interfaces to the actual device and instead -- offload the configuration UI to the customers' smartphones... which necessitates pairing via Bluetooth.
  - amlib 1y ago
    > offload the configuration UI to the customers' smartphones... which necessitates pairing via Bluetooth. And an app that eventually gets delisted or whatever and your interfaceless device gets turned into a pumpkin...
    - dzhiurgis 1y ago
      At least we can hope - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetooth_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetoo... Last week for the first time I've used WebUSB to configure flight controller for my drone/wing. Felt like magic.
craftkiller 1y ago
I'm just a single data point, but FWIW after the first week the only time I ever (literally) dust off my librem 5 is to show people what a joke of a phone I waited 4 years for. Purism had the right goals (mainline linux kernel, no run-time loadable closed sourced blobs, user-serviceable, hardware kill-switches) but the implementation is only worthy of a participation trophy. The phone would randomly drop calls (though I've heard this is finally fixed), the UI was terrible (UI elements rendered partially off-screen, a useless maps application that complained about a missing location service), the battery life is so terrible that carrying around a 2nd battery is common advice, and the hardware was anemic back when the phone was announced which made the difference even more noticeable when the phone finally came out half a decade later. I'm glad I own the phone for the same reason that I regret not holding on to my G1 (the first android phone): Its a neat piece of history. But alas, it will never see use as an actual phone.
seba_dos1 1y ago
It works fine for me, I'm typing this on one right now. I'm still waiting for something that could replace it as it gets older, but I don't see anything viable out there yet. The question is whether you're able to live without Android & iOS, perhaps with some limited help from Waydroid. If the answer is yes, as it is for me, then it's a great daily driver.

margalabargala 1y ago

Looking at what's missing from their roadmap here: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ No videos? Fine, I rarely take videos. No bluetooth? Mildly annoying, but especially with the 3.5mm jack, I could live without it. No GPS? This one would be a deal-breaker for me. But depending on the person I can see it being usable.

AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
Ouch. It seems to be even more incomplete than I thought. The lack of Bluetooth and GPS is kind of surprising, since those things have worked on Linux laptops for at least a couple of decades or so.
- seba_dos1 1y ago
  Both work fine on Librem 5 as well and have worked for years now.
  - brewdad 1y ago
    Then why haven't they updated their site to inform potential users? It would make me worry it's about to be an abandoned project. I've dealt with enough of those in my life.
teddyh 1y ago
That image is seriously out of date. Bluetooth, GPS, and even recording video all work fine.
- seba_dos1 1y ago
  Video recording implementation could be better though, but other stuff works well indeed :) In fact all things from that chart are there and have been there for years now, including 20h battery life and encrypted SIP calls.
  - pengaru 1y ago
    20h battery life? Mine comes nowhere close to that with all hw switches off and only playing mp3's... Are you quoting a when suspended figure or something?
    - seba_dos1 1y ago
      It can get up to 20h either when idle with all hw switches off or when suspended with the modem on (less with poor signal coverage, of course). Looking at a power meter right now I'd roughly expect at least 12h of music playback.
      - pengaru 1y ago
        Using the latest greatest stock pureOS? My L5 gets nowhere near that listening to MP3s on road trips.
        seba_dos1 1y ago
        Check whether you get a high load average whenever Wi-Fi kill switch is off. If so, keeping it on and turning Wi-Fi off in software may give you better results. There are patches to fix that, but they need more work not to cause troubles with older cards (Redpine). There was also another issue that may have caused interrupt storms when kill switches were set to off, but that has been already fixed recently. There are some small power consumption improvements coming in kernel updates soon too, though these shouldn't make a drastic difference, just an extra hour or so.
- margalabargala 1y ago
jasode 1y ago
>No bluetooth? Mildly annoying, but especially with the 3.5mm jack, I could live without it. For most people, it can be difficult to predict future scenarios for Bluetooth that's unrelated to wireless earphones. I always use wired earphones and didn't think I ever needed Bluetooth and always had it disabled. However, I was later forced to use it to configure new devices. E.g.: - internet router (Eero) from ISP has no buttons or a status display so required Bluetooth on smartphone to configure it - battery backup power station (Delta Ecoflow) require Bluetooth to configure them The common theme is for device manufacturers to avoid adding elaborate LCD displays or touchscreen interfaces to the actual device and instead -- offload the configuration UI to the customers' smartphones... which necessitates pairing via Bluetooth.
- amlib 1y ago
  > offload the configuration UI to the customers' smartphones... which necessitates pairing via Bluetooth. And an app that eventually gets delisted or whatever and your interfaceless device gets turned into a pumpkin...
  - dzhiurgis 1y ago
    At least we can hope - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetooth_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetoo... Last week for the first time I've used WebUSB to configure flight controller for my drone/wing. Felt like magic.

craftkiller 1y ago

I'm just a single data point, but FWIW after the first week the only time I ever (literally) dust off my librem 5 is to show people what a joke of a phone I waited 4 years for. Purism had the right goals (mainline linux kernel, no run-time loadable closed sourced blobs, user-serviceable, hardware kill-switches) but the implementation is only worthy of a participation trophy. The phone would randomly drop calls (though I've heard this is finally fixed), the UI was terrible (UI elements rendered partially off-screen, a useless maps application that complained about a missing location service), the battery life is so terrible that carrying around a 2nd battery is common advice, and the hardware was anemic back when the phone was announced which made the difference even more noticeable when the phone finally came out half a decade later. I'm glad I own the phone for the same reason that I regret not holding on to my G1 (the first android phone): Its a neat piece of history. But alas, it will never see use as an actual phone.

seba_dos1 1y ago

It works fine for me, I'm typing this on one right now. I'm still waiting for something that could replace it as it gets older, but I don't see anything viable out there yet. The question is whether you're able to live without Android & iOS, perhaps with some limited help from Waydroid. If the answer is yes, as it is for me, then it's a great daily driver.