For me, when I think about the pressure to stop using my Librem 5 as an almost pseudo-conscious digital entity or series of entities constructed with machine learning outside of my immediate sphere of knowledge, it really makes me enjoy trying to use Librem 5 instead of any other “smart” phone whenever possible. In that kind of goal oriented thinking against us, maybe convincing you to give up is a big gain for them. Any knowledge that you have about how to make a Librem 5 work, which you take for granted as common knowledge and something discussed on the forum, will be knowledge that new folks don’t have if there is turnover in the Librem 5 users.
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I did that also few weeks ago, and I find experience to be better than “good enough”. Battery life is excellent, as is Android compatibility, I can make calls over Bluetooth in my car, and I can live with minor bugs SFOS has, it doesn’t ruin the experience.
L5 has been shelved the time being, or maybe indefinitely, time will tell. I just hope that money I paid for it paved the road to eventual manifestation of usable Linux mobile phone.
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Yes,
SFOS works really well for all daily use and also in the car.
But You will ever find people which are embarrassed about the “non-OSS” parts of Sailfish OS.
AFAIK they have also binary blobs for modem and other hardware components. And also “Silica” is closed source.
But it runs stable and satisfying. With wayland as compositor since years
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I hope that for me SFOS is just a stepping stone to something more open. It’s definitely a step forward from Android.
In retrospective, it might’ve been better to accept more compromises and go with less open hardware, using some compatibility layer for drivers, like libhybris or something. It would leave more cash to direct towards getting the userspace done, and having a fully functional phone, with better battery life.
IMO, it would be better to have something like that, than the current situation.
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Please don’t assume that everyone else is in the same boat, it depends on the usage. Personally, I prefer owning a computer phone that I can (mostly) trust and in my humble opinion, those looking for less open hardware and software should buy an Android smartphone instead. The more compromises you do, the most end users you lose because at the end, you lose those who expect the Librem 5 to be as comfortable as an Android smartphone and you lose those who expect free hardware and free software.
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If Mobian or PM-OS does not really work on the L5 ind an foreseeable timeframe, I will also go back to SFOS…
The phones are not expensive and are of really good quality
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As I said, IMO.
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The L5 AFAIK also contents critical drivers or components in a black-box mode ???
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If all of the code for L5 was upstreamed, than I might have a different stance towards it. This way, if Purism ends support for it, we’re left with software to maintain on our own. And they aren’t currently communicating their plans and timeline when we can expect anything.
Updating to Crimson is nice, but we will still be in the same situation sooner or later, if out of the tree patches to kernel, NetworkManager, and whatever else, aren’t upstreamed.
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In the end, we didn’t get what we were promised. I’d love to have working Librem5, and I don’t care about Android ecosystem and what not. I was daily driving it for about a year, and was OK with its drawbacks, thinking that at least the basic phone functionality will get better.
Well, it didn’t. I can’t rely that my phone calls will work properly, that caller will hear me, or that the bloody buzzer will stop buzzing when I answer the call, and sometimes I have important calls to take.
I daily driven it for about a year, lugged an external battery around, lived without a practical GPS, went through many hoops to use it, and now Purism is again playing dumb and quiet, without any explanation on when and if they are planning to resume improving the software.
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I am aware that there are different strokes for different folks, that’s why I’m using SFOS until a better solution comes by.
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SFOS is also heavily community driven and they have made a real noticeably reliability and usability over all the years.
For the L5 the situation is “like always”:
Big promises, a half or a little more ready system and then nothing more.
Compared to SFOS I am really some kind of shocked how Purism communicates for their customers. … barely nothing 
I think that the only chance we have to get a better phone is to support Mobian and PM-OS.
On Purism I would not bet 1 cent for the L5
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Thank you everyone for the good replies. Varied opinions, all over. Much appreciated. I do not have much to add to the discuss yet with Sailfish OS. My early impression are that:
- Running Sailfish OS on the Xperia 10 III isn’t as cool as running native linux software on the Librem 5. I miss the ease of just opening a terminal and doing what I want with the Librem 5.
- The battery, GPS, bluetooth, etc all work much better than the Librem 5.
- Package management is far superior on Sailfish. No contest. But again, using the terminal and installing what I want, when I want without the odd package handling experience is greatly missed by this user.
- Calling is about the same on both devices. Maybe Sailfish get more a nod here. The modem is more consistent and there have been fewer problems so far.
- Early conclusion: I like the Librem 5 better with the big caveats I discussed in my original post. I am not at all convinced that the Librem 5 is going to supported by Purism. I hope I am wrong. At this point, I am putting that in their hands. I am less interested in a possible “fork” or user funded development. Call me a whiner. Fine, possibly fair.
My biggest point here is not really the comparison with Sailfish OS. My goal of this post is to discuss the current perceived failings of Purism (for whatever reason) but also to compliment them and say that I still support the goal here. The Librem 5 is a very cool and (mostly) usable device. It just needs to be supported. I sincerely hope it will be, going forward.
Also, in an economy of scale, I do not know that contributing $500 - $1000 to a developer is a good use of resources unless 50 -100 people want to support the effort. I have not seen that willingness, thus far. Call me a whiner, whatever, the above point still stands.
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Yes. Specifically:
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In regards to the L5 (not discussing issues with the L14), the drivers are all FOSS.
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However, there is firmware that is proprietary (black box). Mainly the wifi modem and cellular modem (which sit on a USB2 bus, which provides some amount of isolation; there can be leakage if there are bugs in the USB2 drivers), but also DDR training blobs, etc.
Most SailfishOS phones have non-FOSS drivers. While the Sony Open Source phones are more open than many, they generally use the same drivers (and kernel) used in the Android version of the OS for the phone.
But note that I said “Most”. One could port SailfishOS to the Librem 5 and use FOSS drivers. There was some discussion about this and I wonder if anything was done. I think work progressed pretty far for SailfishOS on the pinephone. PINE64 - SailfishOS on PinePhone
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It is absolutely no problem to for example ssh in the SFOS system there and handle all like ever make in the Linux terminal there 
Under the surface works a Linux like we want it
And You also can install programs via CLI from the repo and also directly from files
Calling and call reliability were WAY better in SFOS, really WAY WAY better. have never ever had any broken or missed call
Also the energy consumption is no problem there. One battery load lasts for days
I am not really amused how far the L5 lies behind SFOS and how mony (NO) communication there is with Purism.
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If I remember correctly:
- go to Settings → Developer tools (in the System section)
- enable Developer mode
- enter password for remote connection
You should now have terminal app available. Use devel-su to run commands as root. pkcon is package manager.
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Correct, ssh and also scp are working flawlessly
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That’s the biggest issue here, I think. I’d be willing to pay a reasonable monthly subscription for ongoing L5 software development, but ONLY if they were transparent on how it’s progressing.
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With current situation, it seems like a better option. We are almost completely left in the dark on what are their plans.
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Sorry, I underestimated your problems as I use the Librem 5 only to take pictures. It became almost hot enough to be used as a frying pan when I used it for the very first time (it’s not a joke), I had to give up initially and now, I try to solve the problems one by one and I use a Pinephone daily in the meantime.
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