Byzantium and Crimson (note “B” and “C” alphabetical order which is common for naming conventions in various linux distributions/flavours) are what is called major or point releases. These releases are kind of major versions (like ver. 2.0 or 3.0 - as opposed to 2.1 or 3.0.4 etc.). They are basically bigger changes and upgrades at once, often due to several sub systems/apps upgrading and needing to be sorted as they have complex interactions (some may have also been replaced). For comparison, take a look at Debian’s (which PureOS is based on, uses codenames based on the names of characters from the Toy Story films), or Ubuntu’s (which uses alphabetical animal names for naming and match version numbers with year and month - more or less). It can get a bit funny.
Other OS’s do similar - names are easier to remember than numbers but there is a logic (well, not with XP vs. 7 vs. Vista for example, so maybe it’s partly marketing too). There are other details and variations on how different flavors do updates and releases and naming. There is sometimes also a separate naming used for versions depending on how ready and tested the code of a version is (is it just for devs, early testers or general use etc.).
Sebastian (dos) posted on Mastodon that what’s left to get Crimson ready is to rebase the upstream patches.
Also, getting to PureOS dawn (based on trixie) after crimson (based on bookworm) shouldn’t take that long either. I’ve been trying to take care of them both at once when catching up whenever it was possible, so the remaining work is mostly going to be about rebasing patches rather than distro maintenance (and that’s all that’s left in crimson now as well).
From what it sounds like, Crimson should come relatively soon .
The most exciting thing for me is the ability to reduce the CPU clock frequency introduced by @dos! I’ve read the original datasheet some time ago and found that only two frequencies are allowed, 1 and 1.5 GHz, that should not be good for power consumption… I perform some investigation regarding to performance at different frequencies using SuperPI test:
Freq, MHz
Time, sec
1500
14.8
1300
16.3
1000
19.7
800
23.6
400
42.8
100
41.3
So, you could see that almost all freqs work as expected except the last one - 100 MHz. It looks like the CPU works at 400 MHz, but even now it is possible to play with governors much more flexible than before!
A couple of minor improvements reduce power consumption slightly. These are only a few milliamps each, or a few percent of the phone’s typical consumption, but every small change adds up to more battery life.
dos also lowered dram and sparklan frequency recently too, this will save battery. The most exciting things will be native GLES 3.0, this willl save battery, stutering and temp a lot.
1GHz already uses the lowest voltage, and the cores are getting shut down when idle, so once you’re at 1GHz going lower does not give you many benefits anymore. I enabled it because there is a tiny but measurable difference in power consumption, though I wouldn’t expect more than a few minutes more on battery from it
Aha! Thank you @spacemanspiffy.! I guess it’s so it doesn’t look like Microsoft’s versions like 7, 8, 8.5, 10, 11 - no 9, - or Internet Explorer versions. There was no version 1, but 2.01, 3.03, 5, 6, 8, no 7 is proof they still can’t count.
To be exact, these are codenames for PureOS releases.
PureOS 9 was called Amber, and it was the first release to use the current naming scheme. Incidentally, it was also the first release that the Librem 5 shipped with. The next release after Crimson, PureOS 12, is called Dawn (and is based on Debian 13 Trixie).
Every tiny bit of energy consumption … 3 minutes here, 5 minutes there … and at some point we have a whole hour more each day. I also think in direction of software optimization itself, not just about firmware and drivers.
Extreme optimization: pure terminal operated phone to cut back on GUI overhead? Or maybe voice. After all, it’s the screen and graphical elements that are a major source of energy consumption…
.
I also think in direction of software optimization itself, not just about firmware and drivers.
