I don’t want to have to carry earbuds because a program doesn’t know how to select the smaller speaker on this computer. Pretty nice work around to get it to work but I will not use it that way. This whole librem 5 life is far more painful than I thought it would be. I thought they would at the very least have XMPP working properly and matrix be native as advertised and as matrix is a part of the librem one service thing.
@user1 I wonder if we could reboot this conversation and agree upon a single well-defined goal - something akin to what you’ve been driving at: an L5-focused app for voice/chat/files via XMPP.
I don’t know enough about the space to suggest a starting point from other FOSS projects, however I do know that I enjoy using Conversations from an android mobile, and that Dino seems to work from my PureOS box.
It also seems to me that this conversation should be continued somewhere in the that forum what requests apps for the L5.
What do you all think?
This whole librem 5 life is far more painful than I thought it would be
I cannot disagree with you there. I have basically given up on the whole VoLTE thing at this point, which is why I got a jmp.chat account. Had issues using that with any XMPP client, which is why I am using SIP (you can configure jmp.chat to use SIP).
However, to even consider having the Librem 5 as my one and only phone I have to have Anbox because there are some apps that are only available on Android (or iphone). For example, some banks require the phone app as two-factor authentication (at least periodically) for the bank web site authentication. I don’t even know if the Anbox will work properly with these apps because some of these apps are very particular. That is, there are some that if installed on unlocked bootloader Android phone will not work. That is why, if you want a deGoogled Android phone you should go with something like Calyx OS where you can lock the bootloader.
I found a project that gave scripts for running Anbox on the Librem 5, but it was done for Amber. I changed the script to use Byzantium instead of Amber but Anbox fails to start, probably because of a newer kernel. Assuming I can get Anbox working at some point, then I will need to find out if the few Android apps I would need will even work properly.
Next I would want the Maps application to work, but to get that working you have to apparently jump through hoops to get the GPS working properly.
Then if you want you want to use the camera, adjust the settings each time, manually etc.
I certainly underestimated how difficult the phone would be to use. I have been using Linux almost exclusively for 20+ years and I am a developer (have been a DevOps too) but it is hard for me to believe how slow progress is on the phone. I have had the phone in my hands for over 6 months now and still there is the VoLTE issue, the MMS issue (not an issue if I use jmp.chat fortunately) plus some of the other issues I mentioned.
I think maybe Purism overestimated how quickly things would improve, possibly because they expected more help from the community (possibly even from people with skills/experience like me). But for example, there were instructions months ago about how to get MMS working such that if you recompiled and installed a bunch of projects, it would work. I went through all those steps (compiling all those projects on the phone) and it did work, but then it takes months and months and months for those fixes to get pushed upstream such that the capability is available for everyone. I understand Purism can’t hire a lot of developers. I certainly don’ t have an answer. It is frustrating though to see these short videos (I would call them teasers) where they show things like SIP calls working, Anbox working etc., but then they don’t provide instructions for how someone else can get those things working. At the end of the video they of course encourage you to buy the phone (for the potential I guess?).
I was one of the people who bought the phone during the crowdfunding campaign so I guess I should be happy I got anything at all since with crowdfunding there is no guarantee of that. I at least had an idea of what a Linux phone might be like. I suspect others didn’t and they bought in because of the security/privacy promise, which admittedly they have done a good job with. But if you are not willing to go through a lot of steps, including command line etc., just to make it minimally usable, then wow.
I would like to be able to tell you that the Librem 5 will be much more usable in the near future, but I have no confidence in that. That is why I am planning to get some type of Pixel phone and put Calyx OS on it. That will give me a lot of privacy/security if I use it properly, although not the privacy I can get with the physical switches on the Librem 5. I noticed someone else mentioned the other day they were going to do the same thing, and put their Librem 5 in a drawer for a while. I will have to decide whether I want to do that under the assumption that it will be much more usable in the future, or sell it on ebay or something.
If your own personal requirements aren’t too extensive, maybe you can find the phone usable in the near future. I hope that is the case.
1 Like
Dino works pretty good after setting phone to zoom out a lot. No problem with messaging and receiving and viewing files all with OMEMO which is pretty friggin’ awesome. It doesn’t let me do things like voice calling but at least I have a messaging program that actually works unlike the one the phone comes with.
1 Like
Does that include singing telegrams?
I’m not sure I understand the joke
You said telegram is not secure.
The joke is predicated that I bet you are not old enough to remember singing telegrams.
1 Like
I don’t have a link handy, but I did find a fork of Dino a while back that has been reworked for the mobile interface. It worked well on the pinephone so I would expect it to also work well on the Librem5.
Also I’ve seen xmpp clients be picky about calls and have had to remove and re-add contacts to get the client to let me make xmpp calls. Might be worth a try for your situation.
As replied on the other thread, you can get Dino adapted to mobile with calls working from https://people.debian.org/~praveen/dino/
Another option is nheko, which I have rebuilt for phone and available from https://people.debian.org/~praveen/nheko/ (I have not succeeded in making calls, though it could be an issue with my server’s turn configuration)
4 Likes