GTK for a smartphone is an interesting choice. I'm curious if the Gnome team would ever commit to this.
The use of a stylus in the video is a bit concerning though.
Off topic but I hope Librem releases a high-end laptop in addition to their mid-tier one, ideally with a high performance AMD CPU. Something that could be the open-source friendly version of a Macbook Pro.
The way they disable Intel ME and add hardware toggles for webcams/microphones, and their general good taste is a big draw for me.
> The use of a stylus in the video is a bit concerning though.
I imagine that's just so there isn't a big finger/hand getting in the way of the camera. And because the phone is flat on the table for the video, you can't type on it like when you're holding it with your hand.
A non-issue in my opinion. I wouldn't have given it a second thought.
I think the specs are already pretty competitive with Macbook Pro -- the only thing it doesn't have is a discrete GPU.
Unfortunately I'd guess they won't use an AMD CPU anytime soon because I don't think we know how to 'purify' it, at least with Intel we can try to disable ME.
I want to like Librem's smartphone, I really do. I like having control over my software, and I like being able to really understand how it works and tinker with it and stuff. But I have this sinking feeling that the Librem 5 is just vaporware, or worse, that it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps. On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix the problem. On the former, the thing is that the affordences for bad UI design are a LOT tighter on mobile devices and it's taken a long time for desktop Linux to get their game together. Plus, all of Librem's other stuff is over priced and a bit cheap looking, and I'm not sure I want a phone like that.
It's Linux -- if it's missing something, I can just build it. And I don't have to write my code in something horrible like Java, or boot up an emulator to test things, or submit my code to an app store, or figure out how to root it so I can remove all the bundled spyware. If I write a command line utility, I don't need to have a separate codebase between my computer and my phone. It's what I have always wanted my smartphone to be -- just a computer that I completely control, with access to a phone network.
It might be terrible. I'm kind of on the fence about it. The hardware needs to be reliable, the drivers need to be reliable, it needs to be compatible with common carriers. There a few other things. But the software on this device just needs to be passable. I don't need it to be particularly good.
When thinking about the Librem phone, mentally move it out of the iPhone category and into the Raspberry Pi category. Even if it comes out and gets terrible reviews and the software is all half-baked, even if it can't replace my normal phone for most things, I still might be tempted to buy one even just as a secondary device.
A lot of Nokia N900 users were very happy with a “barebones list of apps” and the only reason that they had to eventually abandon that phone was because the closed hardware required a specific kernel version and certain other libraries could not be upgraded for interoperability and security’s sake.
If the Librem offers a more upgradable device, then that is already enough for the hacker community. Most of my time is either spent in a web browser, Emacs, or sending SMS. Also, many Android users who eschew Google apps and install LineageOS with F-droid as their app source, would probably find Librem a comfortable enviroment.
I'm also stoked about the PinePhone. The PinePhone goals are a little more modest, and so is the price. If the Librem 5 fails to be interesting, at least it'll have a competitor at a much lower price. I'm holding off preordering either, but I may order one or the other next year once the bugs and whatnot have been ironed out.
I'm stoked to have a phone that I can tinker with like I do my Linux desktop.
> On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix the problem.
I don't understand what the problem is exactly. There already exist phones that have the latest apps. I don't think Librem is trying to be a market leader, just build a device that's more open, so to say. The demographic isn't Google or Apple users, it's those who wish more control. They're not going to fix the app gap problem because it's not a real problem, it's a meaningless metric for phone advertisements. These videos are to demonstrate that they are working on filling the mobile usability gaps as well as building a phone that can run Linux software, not just mobile UI software.
I'm getting a lot of Ouya vibes from this project. Good UI/UX is hard, and "open platform" might get some kickstarter monies, but it isn't really something 99.9% of people care about.
For those that haven't seen it, here's a bullet list of the Librem 5 differentiators:
+ Does not use Android or iOS. The Librem 5 comes with the mobile version of our FSF-endorsed operating system PureOS by default, and is expected to be able to run most GNU+Linux distributions.
+ CPU separate from baseband, isolating the blackbox that the modem may represent and allowing us to seek hardware certification of the main board by the Free Software Foundation.
+ Hardware Kill Switches for camera, microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, and baseband.
+ End-to-end encrypted decentralized communications via Matrix over the Internet.
+ We also intend the Librem 5 to integrate with the Librem Key security token in the future.
Just shockingly ugly. If you're going to do a pixels-under-glass UI, you really have to start with a toolkit that isn't awful, or you end up with the openmoko which looked exactly like these demos but 12 years ago. You end up with, in short, a phone where the user adjusts the volume using alsamixer in an xterm because the UI wasn't really thought through.
I’m sure people will disagree with this but I think they should focus on getting an easy way for people to target their devices with React Native, NativeScript, PWAs and every other cross-platform framework.
That way they can much more easily acquire software. Seriously making an app from scratch is no small task, and often time isn’t worth it for such a small market.
Have you seen what development for this is like? You can slap together simple apps (the UI anyway) with a few dozen lines of C. It's extremely simple, lightweight and fast, everything react/PWA's/etc aren't. This is what excites me about librem the most, it's so easy to just write code with no bloated IDE, 15 xml files, AbstractFactoryBuilders and the rest of the android crapfest.
PWA's and the like can stay away, I want software from developers that actually respect their users, software that doesn't waste resources, software that actually looks native.
Yea, I think PWAs are a great substitute for apps. I wrote a websocket chat that my girlfriend and I use. It works great on desktop and mobile, makes for a seamless transition from commute to work. I'm less hyped about the electron ecosystem, but something performant that allowed those front end tools would be great.
Registered just to post this. Love Purism, want it to succeed. But...
IMHO, the effort is going to fail miserably, unless folks stop wasting time trying to build a phone UI, i.e. another attempt to build Android/iOS ecosystem. There were Sailfish, MER, Openmoko, and whatnot attempts to make a pure Linux-running cell phone. Just stop it. You will burn through your money doing half-baked UI, there will be no adoption, then no developers, then no apps, and thus no users.
As per OP link, Purism just have shown that they wasted precious time on badly looking GNOME Clocks, Emacs, Password manager, a game, a half-baked music player, Torrent client (on a phone!), and Drawing app made with their native UI. What a waste of time to re-write (or port) all of this, all over again.
The only surviving plan for any Linux-phone: make it web-centric. You have to port ONE app: Firefox. Make it fast, make it perfect. Then, automatically you will get:
- Adoption. http://m.uber.comhttp://m.lyft.com/ work out of the box. I am not leaving home without the phone because it enables to access essential day-to-day services. Partner with companies that develop those web-based apps.
- Adoption. Web-based music: Spotify, SoundCloud. Out of the box. Purism doesn't need to waste time on this. Just have pre-installed bookmarks to those apps. Partner with companies that develop those web-based apps.
- Adoption. Endless web apps such as "Clocks", "Notepad", Games and drawing apps already exists. Purism don't need to waste time on this stuff. Just have pre-installed bookmarks for those apps. Partner with companies that develop those web-based apps.
Once basic needs satisfied, those of us who need Emacs, will be able to port Emacs and Torrent clients themselves. Why waste your time, Purism?
Focus on releasing the hardware, be different from other phones, be lean, get immediate adoption, community will fill the blanks.
Sailfish has a lot of closed-source components and it runs on closed hardware that forces specific kernel versions and makes it difficult for the community to upgrade; one is completely at the mercy of Jolla or the device maker. It shouldn’t be compared to this project.
And seriously, basic functionality should be web-based? A phone should not be required to have an internet connection to do such things. While I am on a plane, or when I am traveling in a country but unable to buy a local SIM, then I should be able to expect that my phone’s non-communication-related apps will still work.
Do you understand what they are doing? They don't have to build the ecosystem, it already exists!
> Purism just have shown that they wasted precious time on badly looking
I think it looks good.
> What a waste of time to re-write (or port)
So you still have no idea what they are doing. Why are you taking the time to create new accounts and post long comments if you aren't taking the time to understand what they're doing?
> make it web-centric. You have to port ONE app: Firefox.
They aren't making a web-centric device. We don't want a web-centric device. They are making a privacy-focused, portable Linux device that makes calls.
---
It's weird. It seems like every Librem 5 post has new accounts that criticize it.
> The only surviving plan for any Linux-phone: make it web-centric. You have to port ONE app: Firefox.
You are aware of the failure of firefox OS right?
> Purism just have shown that they wasted precious time on badly looking GNOME Clocks, Emacs, Password manager, a game, a half-baked music player, Torrent client (on a phone!), and Drawing app made with their native UI.
They haven't wasted time, pretty much all of these are existing apps, you can run most of them on a gnome desktop.
> Focus on releasing the hardware
That is what their doing and what differentiates them from most previous efforts like sailfish, they are a hardware company making a phone the runs linux, others were trying to re-create android and leave the hardware for others.
If someone were to develop an iphone-quality design with the same objectives as the librem 5, I'd pay $3000 for it.
How much would the market shrink if that was the price of what would become the librem 5? It's rather niche to begin with, but there isn't any real competition the meets the same objectives, and I assert that the customer base has the money to afford it.
Is there any reason why applications cannot be written for the Librem 5 with Flutter? The Flutter framework compiles to ARM binary and the UI is rendered with Skia, a C++ UI layer. It's not like a bunch of widgets would need to be written and supported on Librem, just the Skia layer. What am I missing?
That would be a massive amount of work. In my opinion, Purism correctly limited the scope of the original proposal -- a FOSS phone that can make calls, and send messages (and maybe use a web browser?). libhandy (the library that allows GTK applications to "shrink" their UI for a phone) is intended to minimise work by allowing Purism to take advantage to existing software (e.g. Settings, Web browser). Even this is a huge amount of work (I've written about it here/Reddit in the past).
I'd welcome more push behind Plasma Mobile for it. There is practically no progress now. It could benefit from moving towards more touch oriented design, Sailfish like, dropping lingering elements inherited from the desktop UI.
dmix|6 years ago
The use of a stylus in the video is a bit concerning though.
Off topic but I hope Librem releases a high-end laptop in addition to their mid-tier one, ideally with a high performance AMD CPU. Something that could be the open-source friendly version of a Macbook Pro.
The way they disable Intel ME and add hardware toggles for webcams/microphones, and their general good taste is a big draw for me.
Edit: looks like Gnome is backing Purism's project. Neat. https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/09/gnome-foundation-partners...
alexkavon|6 years ago
[0] https://puri.sm/posts/gnome-and-kde-in-pureos-diversity-acro...
RandomBacon|6 years ago
I imagine that's just so there isn't a big finger/hand getting in the way of the camera. And because the phone is flat on the table for the video, you can't type on it like when you're holding it with your hand.
A non-issue in my opinion. I wouldn't have given it a second thought.
bo1024|6 years ago
Unfortunately I'd guess they won't use an AMD CPU anytime soon because I don't think we know how to 'purify' it, at least with Intel we can try to disable ME.
logicprog|6 years ago
danShumway|6 years ago
It might be terrible. I'm kind of on the fence about it. The hardware needs to be reliable, the drivers need to be reliable, it needs to be compatible with common carriers. There a few other things. But the software on this device just needs to be passable. I don't need it to be particularly good.
When thinking about the Librem phone, mentally move it out of the iPhone category and into the Raspberry Pi category. Even if it comes out and gets terrible reviews and the software is all half-baked, even if it can't replace my normal phone for most things, I still might be tempted to buy one even just as a secondary device.
Mediterraneo10|6 years ago
If the Librem offers a more upgradable device, then that is already enough for the hacker community. Most of my time is either spent in a web browser, Emacs, or sending SMS. Also, many Android users who eschew Google apps and install LineageOS with F-droid as their app source, would probably find Librem a comfortable enviroment.
beatgammit|6 years ago
I'm stoked to have a phone that I can tinker with like I do my Linux desktop.
RandomBacon|6 years ago
> it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps.
Have you even looked into the project?
It's running Gnome, on Linux, all the regular apps are there.
Check out the videos in this link, it's not half-baked:
https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-3...
alexkavon|6 years ago
I don't understand what the problem is exactly. There already exist phones that have the latest apps. I don't think Librem is trying to be a market leader, just build a device that's more open, so to say. The demographic isn't Google or Apple users, it's those who wish more control. They're not going to fix the app gap problem because it's not a real problem, it's a meaningless metric for phone advertisements. These videos are to demonstrate that they are working on filling the mobile usability gaps as well as building a phone that can run Linux software, not just mobile UI software.
TylerE|6 years ago
meruru|6 years ago
For those that haven't seen it, here's a bullet list of the Librem 5 differentiators:
learnfromstory|6 years ago
RandomBacon|6 years ago
Are you sure about that? It looks amazing:
https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-3...
liamcardenas|6 years ago
That way they can much more easily acquire software. Seriously making an app from scratch is no small task, and often time isn’t worth it for such a small market.
flukus|6 years ago
PWA's and the like can stay away, I want software from developers that actually respect their users, software that doesn't waste resources, software that actually looks native.
Apaec|6 years ago
Contrary to popular trends, programmers can know more than a couple of languages and not everything has to be javascript.
I'm sure many hackers would be more excited to make an app with go, rust, haskell, etc than to do js, that just feels like work.
TACIXAT|6 years ago
justforpurism|6 years ago
IMHO, the effort is going to fail miserably, unless folks stop wasting time trying to build a phone UI, i.e. another attempt to build Android/iOS ecosystem. There were Sailfish, MER, Openmoko, and whatnot attempts to make a pure Linux-running cell phone. Just stop it. You will burn through your money doing half-baked UI, there will be no adoption, then no developers, then no apps, and thus no users.
As per OP link, Purism just have shown that they wasted precious time on badly looking GNOME Clocks, Emacs, Password manager, a game, a half-baked music player, Torrent client (on a phone!), and Drawing app made with their native UI. What a waste of time to re-write (or port) all of this, all over again.
The only surviving plan for any Linux-phone: make it web-centric. You have to port ONE app: Firefox. Make it fast, make it perfect. Then, automatically you will get:
- Adoption. http://m.uber.com http://m.lyft.com/ work out of the box. I am not leaving home without the phone because it enables to access essential day-to-day services. Partner with companies that develop those web-based apps.
- Adoption. Web-based music: Spotify, SoundCloud. Out of the box. Purism doesn't need to waste time on this. Just have pre-installed bookmarks to those apps. Partner with companies that develop those web-based apps.
- Adoption. Endless web apps such as "Clocks", "Notepad", Games and drawing apps already exists. Purism don't need to waste time on this stuff. Just have pre-installed bookmarks for those apps. Partner with companies that develop those web-based apps.
Once basic needs satisfied, those of us who need Emacs, will be able to port Emacs and Torrent clients themselves. Why waste your time, Purism?
Focus on releasing the hardware, be different from other phones, be lean, get immediate adoption, community will fill the blanks.
Mediterraneo10|6 years ago
And seriously, basic functionality should be web-based? A phone should not be required to have an internet connection to do such things. While I am on a plane, or when I am traveling in a country but unable to buy a local SIM, then I should be able to expect that my phone’s non-communication-related apps will still work.
RandomBacon|6 years ago
Do you understand what they are doing? They don't have to build the ecosystem, it already exists!
> Purism just have shown that they wasted precious time on badly looking
I think it looks good.
> What a waste of time to re-write (or port)
So you still have no idea what they are doing. Why are you taking the time to create new accounts and post long comments if you aren't taking the time to understand what they're doing?
> make it web-centric. You have to port ONE app: Firefox.
They aren't making a web-centric device. We don't want a web-centric device. They are making a privacy-focused, portable Linux device that makes calls.
---
It's weird. It seems like every Librem 5 post has new accounts that criticize it.
Is there someone who doesn't want it to suceed?
flukus|6 years ago
You are aware of the failure of firefox OS right?
> Purism just have shown that they wasted precious time on badly looking GNOME Clocks, Emacs, Password manager, a game, a half-baked music player, Torrent client (on a phone!), and Drawing app made with their native UI.
They haven't wasted time, pretty much all of these are existing apps, you can run most of them on a gnome desktop.
> Focus on releasing the hardware
That is what their doing and what differentiates them from most previous efforts like sailfish, they are a hardware company making a phone the runs linux, others were trying to re-create android and leave the hardware for others.
Apaec|6 years ago
Honestly, I've been noticing this trend of bashing the newcomers or defending the monopolists more and more here on HN.
It doesn't really feel more like a startup/hacker news.
Just trying to promote awareness here.
joey_bob|6 years ago
mac01021|6 years ago
mikece|6 years ago
maheart|6 years ago
RandomBacon|6 years ago
shmerl|6 years ago
jijji|6 years ago
alexkavon|6 years ago
panpanna|6 years ago
Mind share your experience with us?
dman|6 years ago
meruru|6 years ago
jplayer01|6 years ago