I'm Out (for now)

Hardware Librem 5
1

Hello and goodbye. Maybe nobody cares but I bought and Xperia X III and I am switching to Sailfish OS as my daily driver, for now. I plan on reporting back with my experience, but, so far, so good.

I also wanted to say, for anybody who cares (and if you don’t care, no problem), that I mainly quit on the Librem 5 as my daily because of the recent issues with unsupported software, the AweSim outage(s), out-of-date security certificates, an unworking an unsupported APP store, etc, etc. It appears to me that Purism is falling apart before our eyes. I hope I am wrong. I mean, we are sitting here discussing the benefits of Mobian on the Librem 5. Why, because it is “arguably” supported? Really? (Does anybody remember discussing the failings of Mobian? That was sometime last summer as I recall). Is this what the initial fundraiser for the Librem 5 promised? I remember something about a supported operating system for life. Ok, marketing speak, fine, whatever. But our recent questions directly to @francois-techene , which I feel were unanswered as to software support, gave me a lot of frustration. I also advertised having my wallet out to support software development. The response? Um, not sure. Was there a true response? Maybe I am wrong, but I believe the response was either hurry up and wait or silence.

Here is what really, really bothers me: I was one of the biggest fanbody supporters of the Librem 5. I argued with the doubters. I promoted this device on the Fediverse. I am the kind of user that Purism should have been supporting. However, given the recent issues, I feel very unsupported.

If Crimson ever comes out and if Calls work very consistently, I will likely switch back to the Librem 5 as my daily. It is such a cool device with so much potential. However, the recent failings have totally turned me off to Purism and I am just plain tired of it. I sense there are other people here who feel the same.

My semi-final parting words to Purism: support your core users. Be transparent. We understand that what you are trying to do is hard. We just want to be clearly communicated with. There is, in my humble opinion, way too much double speak and marketing done by Purism. Just be honest and clear. It is not that hard. I do it every day with people because I ethically have to. Also, your efforts on the Librem 5, Phosh, Phoc, etc have been wonderful. Thank you. Congratulations. Nice work. However, you have to then support the device and your core user group.

So, with that, I’m out (for now).

(P.S. Feel free to tell me I made the wrong choice. At least that would be some kind of response).

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Absolutely “spoken out of my heart and brain”

I think of the L5 as an buried project of Purism.

We can only hope that others like Mobain and PM-OS help the existing users out of this very bad situation.

As a"long-time-fellow" of sailfish OS I wish You a good fortune and joy with the X3

Greets

Uwe

At last:

I am in computer/it business since more than 30 years. Maybe with such a long experience you “smell” it when things go worse or a business partner like Purism has no more interest in supporting a product.

I think they would be glad to abandon it :frowning:

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Externally this looks like they are out of money

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For me the L5 looks absolutely like a dead horse

Support does not answer, questions unanswered, no further development. No plan, no announcements. Even nothing.

Everybody can make his own impressions and thoughts. It does not help to classify other people’s opinions as nonsense and meaningless …

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Here was my direct response to your post:

I would appreciate a reply after you have given yourself some needed time and space.

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I think without an official statement from Purism itself this will be like “orientation in dark and intense fog”

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What? Phosh depends on Wayland. Did you mean “Waydroid”???

Most businesses would respond to the fact that the logins for Librem.one have been reported to be down for a few days. Go ahead and click on the “My Account” menu of https://librem.one/ .

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Actually I’m interested in how does Sailfish / Linux experience goes on X III.
Let me know if you plan on updating anywhere, I maybe interested in getting new daily driver.

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SFOS runs nice,

but in former time this was a profit-oriented company built SFOS for commercial use. And they get money for licensing SFOS to customers.

But the biggest licenseholder and Jolla (Company behind SFOS) break the business.And so for my information Jolla or major parts of it were sold to a big german car company with something like a star in its corporate design.

So it seems that SFOS is only maintained and built from some more or not much more devs in their spare time. Future also absolutely unforeseeable.

But I have a long time used SFOS on my Xperia phones and was never worried about using it as an daily driver.

AND … SFOS is only partial Open Source

News from Jolla

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Maybe Sailfish works for you, but it’s also another OS that’s riddled with a thousand of mildly annoying bugs and after a while you may decide to ditch it too. Speaking from experience on Xperia. Just hope you don’t get burnt out completely because of the deficiencies of those two projects. There is really probably no true replacement for the duopoly.

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Have also buried SFOS in our environment. BUT all basic things like calls, SMS, Mail with exchange capabilities, and calendar and contacts also with exchange capabilities, a working camera and a very good energy management.

The status for using it as a daily is WAY bigger than on the L5. Yes, it has another annoying bugs, but daily use is 0,000000 problem

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Likes are saying other words.

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Interesting.

I disagree. However, I’ve found many of your posts to be toxic with ad-hominem insults. For example, there is no need for you to have said “no clue about anything” or referred to “intellectual grade”. Without specific examples, it’s just name-calling.

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This post brings back memories of a similar period when the Librem 5 was not yet released, and there were many questions with few answers. It’s likely that many didn’t think the Librem 5 would ever be made, or especially delivered to the people who supported the campaign. But time passed, and Purism delivered the phones, a unique device with a Free and Open Source Software mobile operating system. I hope this time is like the past, with Purism in a “hibernation” mode to see their vision come to life.

I still use my Librem 5 every day. I do not have many complaints. Calls and messages are reliable. The network dropouts while traveling are rare. The lack of updates recently is a bit worrying, but the phone is free and open, and it can keep going with a different operating system if PureOS fails.

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I understand your feelings @flanders51 , I’ve had similar myself.

From my perspective, I believe in the product and the company. The company may be going through some tough times right now (I honestly don’t know). It’s more that we need to be looking out for ourselves while also supporting initiatives and efforts that we value. In my life, I’ve never done things the easy or simple way, and I have a lot of respect for Pursim for bucking the trend and trying to do the right thing as a business. In a similar way I try to support Bcorp’s and other businesses that value sustainability, people and our planet.

I’m looking at my foray’s into Mobian or pre-Crimson as explorations. I do believe a stable Crimson will come at some point. But, as of today, while the L5 is my daily driver and does mostly the things I need it to do, it is a bit frustrating. I’ve had to incorporate a lot of workarounds to compensate for really old software. I figured out how to install flatpak apps on the microSD card so it doesn’t take up space on eMMC. I had to create my own desktop launchers so I can start them. This is functionally viable. Albiet performance isn’t the best, but I can get by.

So, doing this exploration of Mobian and pre-Crimson is my approach for Staying In :). My threat model (for now at least) allows me to be ok with blob’s in Mobian (I think). But, also, I’m very good now at reflashing and restoring my phone to byzantium if needed. I have backups, etc. So, if Mobian or pre-Crimson don’t work, I can go back to stable.

So, what this comes down to is where each person is at in their reliance or dependence on L5 as a daily driver today. But, you also make good points from a corporate perspective. I have been the laughing stock of my friends and family because I had to wait so long for my phone :slight_smile: I can take it, because I do things differently and everyone appreciates it. But, I have been very quiet about the struggles and frustrations at getting the L5 to be a daily driver. So, I’m not promoting it amongst my friends and family anymore.

I think of the corporate side similar to the situation with Boeing. Boeing used to make some of the best planes around. They had a culture change at the top when they bought McDonnel Douglas in the 90’s. And since then, they have gone down. Today, I am no longer confident about flying in a Boeing plane. I think Purism did some amazing work since 2014 with laptops, then servers, etc. and actually producing a viable Linux smartphone. So, I think this is a sort of watershed moment for them in terms of how their business side handles the current situation. I’m not writing them off, I do have confidence, but I also see disturbing signs. Boeing is in a situation where they are too big to fail :slight_smile: so the government will bail them out probably, or something. But, how consumer confidence will evolve for them can’t be predicted. Also, I’m wary about investing now (I had thought about it previously), even for the other thread about crowdsourcing. We could crowdsource our own efforts, but in my mind, Purism still owns the keys to the kingdom of releasing any new code. I think of it as we are on a Bus. Purism is driving the bus. We can offer to help navigate, take the steering while while they still sit in the seat and handle the brakes and gas, etc. But, the ultimate decider of whether we go or stop, or where we go will reside with Purism. Unless I’m mistaken on this?

My only question to you @flanders51 is why the Xperia (that is the Sony phone right) as opposed to something like a Pixel phone with GrapheneOS. This was my approach to try and maintain a semblance of privacy and security while I waited for the L5. And if Purism and/or L5 don’t survive that would be my fallback. I do really like GrapheneOS (with no microG).

Anyhow, thanks for sharing!

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Xperia Lena(10 III) it is my main daily driver phone for long time while i waiting Gnu Crimson to finally moving for Librem 5. However for a better experience for sailfish i advise you to get Xperia Murray which a.t.m i testing with Sailfish Sauna. However Sailfish is obsolete and hardcored through L/Android/Linux aka AD.
Yeah Sailfish OS and Sony Xperia is the best and smart option after Librem 5. :rocket:

I do not like Wayland either, Thanks to Linux Enterprises Opensource via Fedora.

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It has been a while since the last update and gnome 3.38 certainly is getting a bit old. Switching everything over to flatpak more or less has kept the phone functioning properly for me. The problem for me is mostly related to nitpicks that haven’t been fixed on the driver/hardware side and that I think are somewhat independent of the shell version. So I don’t see why work would, or should be stopped on that e.g. wake up from sleep reliably (arguable though linux across the board is terrible in that respect), phone specific options and power save modes, building software/apps to make use of the smartcard (for the average user), updating the matrix server to allow for all the new interactions that are not supported by purism one, porting over apps to flatpak (pureos VPN for example) etc…

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There was a major update to Crimson slightly over a week ago.

DId you end up reflashing to Crimson after I provided instructions to you in the thread?

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I did on my spare L5, but I am not a fan of the experience and prefer byzantium and how everything scales a little better.

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I appreciate you providing feedback on your Crimson experience. I recently added the gnome-nightly Flatpak repository and picked up a few new favourite apps there:

Apps/Nightly - GNOME Wiki!

I learned that Epiphany (Dev) works fine compared to Crimson’s Epiphany, which still does not work at all.

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