Playing around with the preliminary version of the Librem 5 in the qemu virtual machine, there is a huge amount of Debian->PureOS software available to be installed. I have been able to install every GTK program that I wanted.
The problem is that very few programs are designed to fit in the tiny screen and their code will have to be adjusted to work with Libhandy.
I just tried VLC and I can only see the center menus but not the menus on the edges. Rotating horizontally makes some of the software usable, but Phosh needs to add scroll bars for when a dialog box is bigger than the screen.
Briar is kick ass. You get peer to peer communication via many ways including Bluetooth. The encryption is baked in and keys are typically exchanged dev to dev in person and can also be done in a Web of Trust way; A knows B, B knows C so B can âintroduceâ A to C cryptographically. No centralized handler of keys. It would be clutch for people reporting from war zones and so forth.
They arenât on iOS yet because of the battery manager on iOS. They keep killing the process.
This might be a silly question but wouldnât they adapt PureBrowser seeing as they already work on it for the laptop range?
To me, until convergence is working, I donât see much of a need or desire to edit LO files on a 5.7" screen. However a viewer would be a nice to have.
In the absence of convergence, one approach for a viewer would be to convert the LO file to a PDF (automatically) and use a PDF viewer, seeing as a PDF viewer will probably be needed anyway.
Any viewer will probably be more lightweight than using a full-blown editor e.g. LibreOffice itself in the case of an LO file.
Iâm not sure I want a fork of a browser that limits what I can see because Iâm an adult, but I can see how some people would want that. Itâs bad enough that the siloed world we are trying to avoid is trying to decide what we should see for their profit that I donât want to willingly get filtered like that.
I have had small input output spreadsheets that are handy even on a phone. Most of the backend calculations happen on a different tab so that makes it useable on the tiny screen.
PureBrowser is just Firefox with a few adaptions. I think it would need a lot of rework to make it usable on a mobile. But as I heard the latest Firefox will handle things better.
Anyway, they will ship the phone with GNOME Web / Epiphany. They adapted it for the L5.
Signal is the only absolute deal breaker for me. It must have signal.
If I have to change to an alternative app to achieve something, thatâs no problem. But if I have to also get my friends to change?? Not going to happen. Thatâs why signal is the only absolute must.
What about a gesture component to the keyboard for missing keys like undo and redo? Or a key that press and hold allows the loading of the Alt, Ctrl, and/or Del keys the way a single tap on shift does?
Foobar2000 Mobile (native) playing ones own hi-res files in .FLAC and .WAV at any given bitrate. Foobar2000, being open source already, has a lot of components/plug ins available and commonly used as a bit true and reliable program by audiophiles. With the Wolfson DAC the Librem 5 users deserve a complete audio playback app like this.
Highly doubt it, it does not on Windows Edge for mobile devices so I have reasons to assume it wonât work on Librem 5 either. When following the link youâll see organizations like banks in Europe do not allow for users to access their account information other than provided by dedicated and approved apps in Google Store or Apple Store.
Not having easy acces to banking information would be a dealbreaker to many potential customers. It would be a comforting thought having the banking options tested by devs.
The Purism Devs already have too much on their plate, and they frankly need to focus their time and energy on more important things, like polishing libhandy, phosh and phoc and the essential apps (Calls, Chatty, Web, Kingâs Cross, multimedia player, Calendar, Contacts, etc.).
We, the Librem 5 users, should take responsibility for testing the software and web pages not being developed by Purism.
I think that we should set up a wiki where people can start testing apps, and listing what doesnât work and testing critical web pages like banking access in order to evaluate how well they work. We are definitely going to need to do this for cellular networks, so that potential Librem 5 buyers can check how well the phone works with their local cellular provider before buying.
And thereâs no way to pick âshow desktop siteâ or the similar? In fact, if you run the ânormalâ version of Firefox, I donât see how the bank website can even know that youâre using a mobile device (IP address lookups are not useful here, since a non-negligible number of people use cellular networks for Internet access in fixed locations or via a hotspot).
If Librem 5 wants to be appealing to non tech savvy potential customers and purism will be providing the accompanied store for Librem users, people will expect a watertight solution for mobile banking. I totally agree developers should focus on the priority list. In order to end the discussion whether or not online banking will be working of the bat, I can imagine it is not to much trouble for those having access to a dev kit to collectively log into their own banking account, doing a quick check and report back if they succeeded (+name bank), especially when it comes to European banks due to the very restricting new legislation on that continent. Like willing people like @maximilian is doing in his app testing thread, I presume there are quite a few others with dev kits willing to do a 5 minute test, it would be interesting to see what they will come up with.
Proving easy access to online banking will most definitely reassure potential customers like myself who are into the Purism /Librem philosophy and concept in buying but are still on the fence about pre-ordering one. Current most heard cons in the decision making process like being more âexpensiveâ, âbulkierâ, etc compared to mainstream smartphones providing x number of RAM compared to âonly 3GB RAMâ arguments will then turn out to be almost non-existent.
Most of the apps I currently use have functions that can be accomplished through a browser, so Iâm not concerned. Bryan Lunduke showed us that we an install programs with apt, so I may do that (especially Aisle Riot)
Having confirmation and tests for European banks in particular (browser URL -> redirected to m.mobile) would still be much appreciated. Not ordering one before an official announcement banking URLâs/apps will work in Europe.
Besides the âbasicsâ that is worked on by developers, banking apps are one of the most used, one would expect these to be considered essential for Librem 5 to be accepted not only by early adopters. Failing to get those working upon delivery will be a miss. Better have it tested now.