I have not been doing much convergence use in a while but tried it again tonight. I have to say that I’m mostly pleasantly surprised; things are all still working with my device, and by using Invidious I was able to poke a hole through Google’s evil machinations and actually watch some videos for fun in the convergence mode as a way to test. I have seen other times that local videos are fine but network watching was throttled; but apparently Invidious overcame the Google throttling or whatever in a way that the official YouTube site does not.
This being said, I operate while ignoring some known issues:
My particular monitor is a 3840x2160 resolution 4K screen. When I connect to this with a dock, the Librem 5 uses its built in Linux kernel stuff and tries to assume it can output 4k but it cannot really. So the output that the Librem 5 thinks it’s sending does not display until I go into Settings and change the resolution to a lower value. In my experience 1920x1080 eventually overheats and has tons of issues but 1280x720 can run for long periods of time at a decent heat, especially if I keep the device somewhere cool.
The disconnect process when I finish with convergence often causes the device to restart, but that doesn’t really hurt the process of using it convergently.
The epiphany browser will flip color values (reds for blue, blues for red) on its visual outputs when docked to a monitor in some cases. I don’t know why, and I do not experience similar issues with other applications.
I never seem to be able to remove the battery and run battery-less while docked, which I find unfortunate, but charging through the dock is extremely slow so I guess it’s not really an issue.
I am not using the official Purism dock, and instead am using the most expensive USB-C dock that I found down the street at Staples. I hoped that by getting an expensive one, I would be able to remove the battery of my device while using it like a PC for indefinite periods of time at a time, but in practice although this dock does allow me to do that it will crash after ~20 minutes when docked without the battery, and it won’t start without the battery.
I wrote this post from my convergence setup on the Liberty Phone, while listening to music that was playing to my earbuds through the audio jack.
For me the biggest issue with convergence is that I bought a Librem 14 to support Purism, and it turns out the Librem 14 experience is superior to my convergence experience (and quite similar) so it becomes difficult for me to self-motivate to plug in a bunch of dongles when I can get the same software on a laptop that doesn’t require me to move around a big 4K monitor to use. I also have an OpenGL spaghetti code hobby program I wrote which functions on Intel HD Graphics but doesn’t work on the Librem 5’s GPU, because its shader dialect is different and has a lower supported OpenGL version. That is 100% a problem of my own making, and of the hobby program being specifically tailored to Intel/Nvidia chips purely by accident because that’s where I spent my time and because I wasn’t careful to follow the GLSL shader specs to the teeth.
As far as I’m concerned, all is not well with convergence. Today, the first time I plugged in the hub, nothing happened. The 2nd time, the locked screen image appeared, but the mouse cursor didn’t and I couldn’t do anything, either with the mouse or the screen. I unplugged and plugged it in again 2 times, but the TV wasn’t receiving a signal. Last month, I made several tests: the image appeared on the TV screen, the mouse cursor and keyboard worked fine. But no browser would open when I started them up. I couldn’t surf the Internet. Open office documents are very difficult too. In short, I’ve had 2 hubs since Christmas 2023 (including the one offered by Purism), I’ve made about 30 attempts, and I’ve never had any problems. Sometimes I’ve been able to listen to videos recorded on the L5USA’s memory card on my big screen. Do you have any solutions?
I have a Nexdock, and since I got my replacement phone back I have noticed that I’m getting some strange behaviour when connected to it, for example I think Network Manager is crashing because I’ll go to do a sudo apt update and it just hangs there doing nothing. Only a forced shutdown (does not gracefully shut down on it’s own) resolves the issue. I need to dig into the logs more to see what’s going on but that’s what I’ve noticed.
I just used sudo flash-kernel --force 6.5.0-1-librem5
(That worked on my old phone that I haven’t reflashed but my one that has been reflashed it did not work on.)
So I ordered a new USB hub from Purism but the one I received was not the one they show on their website. See here: USB-C Hub – Purism What brand is your hub from Purism, if I might ask? A little frustrating since it was expensive to order and ship from Purism.
I have not tried it yet, but I am a little dubious that it is any different than the two hubs I have already tried as they look very similar. I will report back if it makes any difference.
As an update to this post, I wanted to let everyone know that the USB Hub I ordered directly from Purism, from their website, works very well. It is not perfect but the flaky power issues and constant shutting off are gone. I am happy.
It still works well. Sounds transfers via HDMI. Not buggy. Sometimes the display has trouble recognizing the different monitors and I have to fiddle with it, but it works eventually.
My only complaint is that, with this hub, there is no SD card slot. The picture on the website shows an SD card slot. Small potatoes.
Update. I paid about $70.00 with Purism for this hub and I just found it on Amazon for $30.00. Annoying. Oh well.
Update 2. Sorry, one more update. I have been running the hub all day and streaming music. The power management on the hub is much improved from my prior experiences. The battery is fully charged and the phone temperature is still relatively low for all the activity. That is a plus.
