Crimson Experience

I recently installed Crimson on my Librem 5 USA, and I have noticed many changes. Here is a list of them, along with photos:

  • WPA3 works.
  • The Settings app is nearly fully adaptive (excluding Displays, File History and Trash, Time Zone, and potentially others).
    • Sometimes the adaptation is not triggered, so a workaround is to drag Quick Settings slightly down to redraw the screen.
    • In Appearance, there is now a Dark style/theme.
    • In Power, there are now Power Modes (Balanced and Power Saver).
    • In About, the Purism logo has been (probably temporarily) replaced with the Debian logo.
  • GNOME Files/Nautilus is mostly adaptive.
    • Dragging within the app produces unintended context menu pop-ups.
    • Not adaptive when prompted within a different app.
  • Terminal has been renamed to Console.
  • GNOME Contacts is missing two action icons.[1]
  • Firefox ESR is fixed (no flickering).
    • Extensions can be installed by opening them in a New Tab.
    • Discourse is a completely different experience.
    • Menu drop-down is smaller and fits when the OSK is not present.
    • Firefox settings can now be dragged/panned in all directions.
      • Zoom is always accessible if changes to magnification are needed.
  • The PureOS Store is much snappier in user experience.
    • Changing installation sources is now accessed near the app name rather than the top toolbar.
    • Installing Flatpaks from the PureOS Store (along with Console) has issues due to (my limited understanding of) the /var partition being too small.
  • Millipixels and Parental Controls or whatever it was called are absent.
  • The Clocks app now has a reworked Timer tab that no longer overflows off-screen.
  • The Calendar app interface is reworked.
  • The Maps app has the same dragging issue as GNOME Files/Nautilus, being reliably produced after half a second.

29 Likes

Thanks for sharing! In addition to the UX improvements, I am looking forward to being able to use debian 11 base. There are a fair number of apps I cant use because they arent supported on deb 10.

Any improvements in squeekboard? like autocorrect?

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Did you see this thread?

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No, not as far as I know, and I do not use autocorrect. Currently, there is a bug with Squeekboard when attempting to access “Keyboard Settings”: nothing happens. Normally it links to the Settings app → Keyboard.

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I noticed a significant issue: the modem is unreliable and may not power on even after disabling the cellular hardware kill switch. In comparison, my Byzantium experience is always reliable within 10 seconds.

Even though Firefox ESR’s various flickering issues are gone, attempting to sign in to Royal Bank of Canada remains completely unusable, with the credential input text boxes and Squeekboard constantly flickering in and out.

RBC Royal Bank – Secure Sign In

There is a visual stuttering issue that still occurs when highlighting a hyperlink with a truncated context menu. This issue does not apply if the context menu is not truncated.

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I don’t suppose you know if this is being tracked anywhere? That’s kind of a big deal IMO

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No, not to my knowledge, other then this thread.

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Crimson for the L5 is in development. You can’t expect these things to work at this point in time. The phone related bits haven’t been forward ported yet. Devices like the L11 that use Crimson don’t have a modem or voice apabilities.

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Lots of things in development track what works and what doesn’t as a means of being able to tell how far along in development they are. Whether or not they’re meeing their objectives and how far along that development process they are.

There’s a difference between asking if something is being tracked and expecting it to work. I hope things like this are being tracked and that someone has some idea on the development progress beyone “it’s in development”.

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how far are we to get Crimson?
how to track?

and i don’t mean something like:
https://master.pureos.net/depcheck/
something where i do not have to dig into pusirm specifics.

some simple overview for end users?!

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It is my understanding that crimson is all about details at this point (Road to crimson (#346) · Issues · Librem5 / OS-issues · GitLab). If you don’t bother about details the best thing is to wait for the official announcement which i’m sure will also happen in the forums.

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details, librem5 has a lot details then, right!

Crimson will bring at least “fresher” user space software.
that’s already a big gain! in my opinion Crimson is still not recent enough from a user GUI perspective!

then we have user space “driver” and hardware driver!
no concerns about kernel drivers.

what about vulkan, openGL, ffmpeg, pipewire software “driver”?

i would like to keep track of all in above!
again, how?

your advice is to patience wait for some pusim announcement!
Cool!

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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
pusim needs a different managemant
@todd-weaver

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If you ask nicely, and mentioning specific, exact package names, someone who is already running Crimson (@FranklyFlawless) might tell you what version of the package(s) is currently included.

Edit: Or you could install Crimson on a spare x86 device yourself.

PS

For the benefit of those for whom this is over their head (myself included): Carthago delenda est - Wikipedia

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to make my point;
will ffmpeg hw accel with crimson, i guess no!
will vulkan hw accel apps, i guess no!
…
.

on Byzantium i have installed/compiled (partially with a crowbar) the latest version of ffmpeg and mesa.
and … no hw accel of apps or videos!

without asking @FranklyFlawless (i like u) for versions i want to have an overview (end user friendly):

  • what is planed to achieve next (milestones)!
  • when the milestones are reasonable achievable?

purism fumbles along where it’s impossible for me to see where we potentially are in 1 year!
no clue how to invest money here?!

how to build a wall? brick by brick? Stone by Milestone?

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I guess the downside for Purism is that they have been burned in the past with setting expectations that are then, for whatever reason, not met.

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I agree that may be a contributing reason for why Purism might be hesitant to state a timeline.

I however don’t see that as reasonable for a contributing reason to not have and track milestones and their completion.

As for what those milestones should be, ask 10 people and you’ll get 11 different answers.

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yeah,

just wait, drink a tee and wait.
some day the grass is surprisingly as green as you expect!

build on it!

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Here are a few more updates to my experience.

GNOME Files/Nautilus has an updated context menu with a scroll bar. You can drag anywhere up or down within the context window to display other options without selecting one, then you can tap on the option you want to execute. If you accidentally drag past the context menu, it resets to the displayed options before interaction.

GNOME Web/Epiphany launches, but immediately crashes after, so it is unusable. Setting it as the default browser does nothing to improve its stability.

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One question:

Will Crimson be more accu friendly? (more running time?)

1 Like