Also, I almost forgot about browsers. A Firefox/Waterfox client would be very good.
It is not Purism’s responsibility to create apps for other companies. They do not have access to xyz company’s security system, data structures, etc.
If a large enough demand is placed on companies they should develop apps for the platform. I’ve also wondered, since we’ll have root access from the beginning, why couldn’t we be able to emulate or trick a website into thinking the Librem 5 is a desktop browser?
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I’m just now realizing that the online bank (which doesn’t suck) that I’m with now only allows the initiation of scheduled check payments by mail with their mobile device app. I’m going to have to jump through a hoop of an Android (or iOS) emulator to do this in the future.
I’m going to be a two device person for a while so it’s not urgent, but I can see how a money movement app on a mobile dev would be important. I guess I could do some weird trick between two banks to pull off online payments without a mobile app, but having a PureOS app that worked like GooglePay would be a solution, and (I assume without justification) since it would work on any Linux system it might pull in developers from the general population instead of just Purism.
Copied to Librem 5 - online banking app and other m.mobile websites for the narrowed topic of mobile banking.
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i vote for firefox, is the best browser with a lot of plugin and privacy feature can be enabled also in about:config
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I vote for FF since they were the OG people fighting for us in the 90s.
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It is complicated though. Purism needs to create a critical mass of apps that will be enough to sell the phone as a credible alternative. Thereafter, it is a three way juggling exercise of responsibility between: the user (this is free, right?), the company and Purism.
If it’s niche (connecting some random smartwatch manufactured by a company that is large enough to ignore us?) then it’s probably going to come down to an enthusiastic motivated user.
Indeed.
That has already been discussed, for example here: Librem 5 - online banking app and other m.mobile websites
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A wish list. Not likely but a nice to have would be:
BlueDriver ODB2 Scanner
FLIR Camera App
Both have associated hardware dongles. Everything else I need can be done by whats already built in or via web browser.
Edit:
A Unifi App would be nice but should be functional via a full featured desktop browser.
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Hi, my personal wishlist app on the L5 could be:
Browser: Firefox (duckducktogo)
Chat/messaging: Telegram
Maps & navigator: something that works also off-line; great if possible to connect to the Automotive-infotainment system of the car, like Android Auto or Mirror link
Vocal recognition (with Android-auto you can chat using Telegram)
VPN
Torch
Camera App
Translator App
Calendar App
Unit converter
E-mail
Calculator
‘Criptopocket’ (where to save data/psw)
Video player
.pdf reader
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100% agree about Silence : does anybody use it ? it is THE SMS app to have.
It send E2E encrypted message so nobody (telephone company, man in the middle, etc.) can decrypt it. I would be so happy that Purism adds Silence Protocol (which is open source) to the Librem 5 SMS app.
Regarding instant messaging app via 3G/4G, Signal might be OK, through I think there is a failure in their process : Signal centralizes your phone number and Signal contacts in their servers. They know when and how often you call them. Not to mention what I’m not sure about, namely the ability to decrypt messages since the encryption key is made in “Signal Protocol”. The goal of E2E encryption is to not trust 3rd party. Here, you have to trust Signal server and you cannot use it if you fork Signal. The company says they don’t keep data, so we have to trust it (opposite of E2E encryption).
But well, sadly I haven’t found such an open-source equivalent that is so easy to use, multy-platform, and so robust at the moment, I’m still looking. There is Nextcloud Talk, but on Android, developers use Google Cloud Messenging, which is far from good for privacy.
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Sounds cool. That should definitely be on the radar, maybe not for v1.0 though.
Even though the content is protected, SMS by its very nature leaks metadata. Who sent a message to whom? When? Approximate length of message? Was there a reply? Was there a back-and-forth conversation?
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The only two I would miss are my local transport app:
And my university security app:
https://www.uow.edu.au/about/services/security/safezone/
(for the latter, I can ask the devs directly as they are stationed across the road from me in the Uni. startup-company-incubator. 
)
Everything else I use comes to my LineageOS Nexus5x via F-droid, so - in theory at least - should be portable with varying degrees of convenience.
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These are not strictly apps, more like features.
Universal Dark Mode. Lots of apps have a dark mode setting, but frankly that’s lame. We should be able to set dark mode with a toggle on the desktop theme, and it should work for all displayed apps, windowed or full-screen.
Landscape Mode. Android has a screen-flip on/off toggle. I use a utility that lets me force the phone into portrait/landscape/auto modes.
I re-watched the daily videos and the only instance of an app in landscape was when the Gnome File Open dialog hit a certain window and flipped to landscape. It wasn’t because the user selected it, or because the user flipped the devkit orientation and responded to it – it was flat on a table the whole time. The user just kept poking along with the stylus and ignored it. The next window that popped up was in portrait mode, again, not because of anything the user did.
On the other hand, I notice some apps, like King’s Cross terminal, displayed in portrait, the full terminal window on top and the keyboard on the bottom (not blocking the terminal display). That’s pretty cool, but some apps just need landscape to make them useful.
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It probably isn’t that hard to write a little Bash script that uses the units command in the terminal to convert units.
There is nothing decent in the Linux world for voice recognition and translation if you want to use free software. I wouldn’t count on these any time soon. The rest will probably be available relatively soon, since existing GTK software can be adapted. I doubt that Pure Maps will ever be hooked into cars like Android Auto, but I don’t know enough how they work to speculate.
Are you familiar with IBM VoiceType? I used this on OS/2 Warp back in the mid-90’s. Of course, there was no reach-back to Google (which didn’t exist) to make it work – everything ran locally. It worked well, but you had to take time to “train” it to your voice. No pain, no gain.
They also had another product on OS/2; I think it was called Voice Command. This one would let you record a voice clip and associate it with a shadow (the OS/2 Workplace Shell analog of a symbolic link or shortcut). With Voice Command enabled, the shadow would execute if you said the command associated with it. This worked better than VoiceType and didn’t require training because it wasn’t interpreting your voice to words, just matching a sound clip (whistles and grunts worked as good as words).
I believe that IBM released these as open source about 10 years ago. I think that they would make a great addition to Linux in general, and PureOS in particular. Now that IBM has acquired RedHat, they should be even more inclined to support open source than before, right?
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@bed quick question: you list FLIR but what would you use as camera? Beyond IOS/Android models, have you come across any that have been tested for instance as “webcams” on linux or something (is anything in the works) or is this just being hopeful? (I’ve had similar hopes…)
i want a app for shopping as this (but with Gtk)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/groceryshoppinglist/
I was referring to this FLIR dongle. There is an android app I currently use and I fear it would become useless along with any other hardware that needs an APP instead of just working via a web interface.
Since it’s GTK, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible to use arbitrary GTK themes, including dark ones. (Though some themes might be better or worse optimised for mobile use.)
It looks like I was wrong. There are some promising voice recognition projects:
However, many of them only work in English or Chinese at this point.
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I saw in one of purism or the dev board holders video quake II running .
Anyone know if that was native or on wine and where will we be able to get quake II from when the L5 drops ?