Information needs to be corrected on Posts, Products, and Shop pages

Hardware Librem 5
1

This has been bothering me for a while, but I thought that Purism would eventually correct this on their own. Now that Purism is selling this new SparkLAN WiFi Module, there is too much contradicting information, and I feel the need to point this out so that it can be corrected.

The Products pages for the Librem 5 and Librem 5 USA present the following information in the Tech Specs at the bottom of the pages:

 WLAN:				Redpine Signals RS9116: 802.11 abgn 2.4GHz/5GHz
 Bluetooth:			Bluetooth 4

The Shop pages for the Librem 5 and Librem 5 USA present the following information in the Tech Specs:

 Wireless:			802.11abgn 2.4 Ghz / 5Ghz + Bluetooth 4

However, the recent Posts page for the new SparkLAN WiFi Module presents this contradicting information:

 Redpine:
 Wifi Version:		WiFi 5
 BlueTooth version:	Bluetooth 5

And the Wikipedia page for the Librem 5 presents the following information:

 Connectivity:		Redpine Signals RS9116 Wi-Fi 802.11 abgn (2.4GHz/5GHz)
					and Bluetooth 5

I think that the original plan when crowdfunding the Librem 5 was to have at least WiFi 4 (abgn) and Bluetooth 4, which was very reasonable. But the pages were never updated to show that the WiFi/Bluetooth module that was selected actually supports WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5. And now, the Posts page for the new upgraded SparkLAN WiFi Module incorrectly shows that the older Redpine Signals WiFi Module supports WiFi 5, instead of WiFi 4.

So the Products pages need to be updated to show that the Librem 5 and Librem 5 USA support Bluetooth 5. And if the Librem 5 and Librem 5 USA are now being shipped with the new SparkLAN WiFi Module instead of the old Redpine Signals WiFi Module, then the Products and Shop pages should be updated to reflect that too.

Here are the pages that need to be updated with the corrected information:

@Kyle_Rankin, correcting these pages will show that the new upgraded WiFi module is actually a bigger upgrade than it is presented to be and that the Librem 5 and Librem 5 USA have always supported Bluetooth 5.

2 Likes
2

It should indeed be corrected but …

is there any evidence that this is correct? Given the uncertainty, what is the supported 802.11 standard of the new WiFi card?

Regarding Bluetooth, the community FAQ has this to say: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#24-is-bluetooth-50-supported-what-bluetooth-profiles-are-supported

FWIW, my Bluetooth 5.1 portable keyboard works with my Librem 5 with the existing Redpine card. That doesn’t really prove anything about the Bluetooth protocol version supported by the Redpine card but at least it doesn’t fail.

1 Like
3

That’s a good point.

It’s really weird to me that https://source.puri.sm/ shows a blank page unless javascript is enabled in the browser. And in the Tor browser, enabling javascript using NoScript in Safest mode is not enough. It must be downgraded to Safer mode instead.

Out of all the Purism websites, why is https://source.puri.sm/ the only one that blocks the ability to read the page without downgrading the security of the browser?

Can’t the site be made to have a read-only mode or something so that one could conveniently browse the community wiki without reconfiguring the browser each time?

It’s really annoying and the reason I don’t visit the wiki.

4

I have no specific knowledge to answer that but I would guess that it is a consequence of the open source software being used to implement those pages. (So, yes, if Purism had unlimited resources, they could fork / update the software in order to address your implied request - but I would rather they continued to work on the phone.) As you are perhaps implying, the functionality to make those pages a wiki requires lots of complexity that can’t be done (nicely) without scripting (not to mention some of the other dynamic content that is on that domain).

I suppose also there are philosophical and practical considerations to encourage non-Purism staff to put in effort to provide information in the wiki that is useful to the community. I among many others have done that - so it is unfortunate that you will never benefit from it.

An easier approach might be just to mirror the displayed content of the site on another site (at a minimum the FAQ and the Tips).

Or perhaps Purism could develop a script that packages up all the underlying documentation content - so that you could keep a local copy up to date via apt, with the downside that you then have the marked up content, not the displayed content. However the mark-up language in use is simple enough that you could still get useful information out of it without bothering to render it.

5

Partly answering my own question … the manufacturer’s page does say 802.11ax/ac/a/b/g/n and WiFi 6 but that is not the whole story - as it would need an appropriate driver, settings, … and WiFi 6 would need to have been tested. (My access points are only 802.11ac so even if I upgraded my Librem 5 WiFi module, even if WiFi 6 worked, it would only be an upgrade from WiFi 4(?) to WiFi 5 in practice for me - and I would not be able to test WiFi 6.)

So it still needs a statement from Purism that yeah we tested WiFi 6 in the Librem 5 and we are comfortable that it works reliably.

6

F.Y.I.

You may want to take a look at docs/puri.sm / phone.

When I get there, I get a popup asking if I want to translate the page.
NOTE:
I was not at any foreign page before hand, I was reading stuff in forums.
I don’t keep a cache, or History.
I do not have any such related stuff on my desktop.
It’s the only page that does that - the landing page.
The page does not appear to contain Slovenian.

Tested with FireFox, Opera, Brave = was OK

Google Chrome browser is the culprit. Maybe ask someone else if they get the same, to be sure it’s not something in Chrome here.

I also noted a number of grammar and spelling errors.

7

Interesting observation but since I don’t have Chrome installed and prefer to avoid The Stalker’s Browser, I can’t test it myself in Chrome. What’s the exact URL of the page that is misbehaving?

Also docs.puri.sm is not maintained by the community. It is maintained by Purism and randoms like me can’t directly make changes. We can however create a branch of the page, make changes in the branch and then ask Purism to merge the changes. So if the density of grammar and spelling errors is high enough, it may be worthwhile.

8

That’s what I was thinking. I don’t know the details of how that would be done, but it would be nice if Purism mirrored the data onto one of their other sites that doesn’t require javascipt (like https://docs.puri.sm).

Same for me, but I ordered it anyway for the advertised speed improvements. I will upgrade my network to WiFi 6 eventually.

Google Chrome browser is effectively malware. I would suggest never installing it on anything you care about. I remember reading an article about the Chrome browser scanning the files on the host computer a while ago. Google’s search engine and browser used to outperform all competition, but that has not been the case for several years now. At this point, they are the worst options available.

(not trying to be antagonistic, just helpful)
1 Like
9

OK, I looked into this a bit more and I don’t think your request would be easy. It looks to me that what happens when you view a page on that site is that the web server returns a JSON container and the contents therein are marked up text (using markdown syntax).

That’s why you have to have Javascript enabled. The document is rendered on the client side. (There is a clear benefit in server performance with that approach but a clear cost in terms of privacy.)

So your direct options would appear to be:

  1. Display marked up text i.e. unrendered. (Even this is not easy because the text doesn’t have actual line ends. So the bare minimum would be to remove the JSON container and resurrect the line ends.)
  2. Install a plug-in / extension / viewer of some sort into your browser that is directly capable of processing a document in the above format i.e. rendering it. (I did not search the web to see whether such a plug-in exists.)

Or persuade Purism to do something nicer for you.

10

It looks like they will be too busy with more important things for a while. They still haven’t removed google fonts from their store either. Maybe they will get around to these things in the coming years. I’ve seen others make similar requests, so I’m sure there will be more posts about this in the future.

Thanks for your detailed replies and information.

11

Actually there is a third option.

  1. Download the file ‘as is’, run a standalone converter program (outside of the browser) and then view the resulting HTML as a local file. (This is of course not as convenient but if you really want to get useful info out of the FAQ etc., it could be worthwhile.)
12

Are you saying that this is something that I could do myself right now, or that this is something that would have to be enabled or done by Purism?

13

You can download the file right now. (I did that myself so that I could have a squizz at what the document format is.) Obtaining a suitable converter program would be up to you. I didn’t investigate availability but I think it would exist as open source (given that this forum uses the open source Discourse software and that posts made in this forum use markdown or some variant thereof). So in summary you could do that right now.

14

How do I do that though?

Sorry for all of the questions, but I don’t even know what I would be converting. What is the format when downloading the page?

15

Not cleanly. :wink: Here’s how I did it (in Firefox).

Go to the actual page e.g. https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Tested%20Accessories

Press CTRL/U (i.e. View Source)

Press CTRL/F (i.e. Find)

Type data-get-wiki-content-url

Copy the URL from that attribute (which in this case at the current time is /api/v4/projects/995/wikis/Tested-Accessories?version=11df774418f94e96f80c5e486ca702532085f084)

Close the source tab

Go to the address bar of the actual page and replace the part after https://source.puri.sm with the copied URL and press Enter

A bunch of JSON will come up. You can press Save.

The thing that was just saved is “markdown” markup language marked up text in a JSON container.

You would be looking to convert that to HTML.

That’s basically what happens every time someone reads a post that someone makes in the forum. The post is created in “markdown” (but because plain text is valid “markdown” you may not be aware of that). When someone reads the post, the post has to be converted to HTML (which happens on the server side in the case of the forum software).

The piece of the puzzle that I don’t know at this stage is whether the converter software will need for you to cut the markdown out of the JSON container and whether the software will need you to convert the line ends (\n to an actual line end).

Once you’ve converted to HTML, just double click that resulting file.

1 Like
16

I set a different font (FreeSans) in Firefox’s settings.

For me, NoScript doesn’t reveal any G***** fonts on that page; you’re talking about this page, right?

I do see ajax.g*****apis.com, though. (Permanently banned by me, though.)

I also don’t allow remote fonts.

1 Like
17

We intended to have all of our product pages updated with the new WiFi/BT information along with the announcement around the SparkLAN card, because we rightly assumed that some of our detail-minded customers would immediately check those pages to see if we had updated them.

Sadly the team wasn’t able to update them in time, but they are working on it.

8 Likes
18

That is good to know. And thank you for the response on this topic.

If I may ask a related question here:

Is there progress being made on the removal of the google connections on the shop page?

I recently noticed that if I unblock the googleapis domains, the Purism shop tries to connect to gstatic, which is very concerning to me. @amarok and I may know to block all google domains, but people that are new to privacy may not know to do that, especially on a trusted page like the Purism shop.

Thanks again.

19

It is a constant issue we desperately want to correct and have been trying for a few years now. The challenge has been finding out which plugin is issuing the call, I believe at one point it was due to a particular Google font but I also believe the cause has changed over time. What happens is we track something down, resolve it (finally) and then later discover some new update, or new plugin we need to use, pulls a reference back in. It’s frustrating.

Google stuff is injected so ubiquitously into web software, if you aren’t writing everything 100% yourself it is challenge to find and root it all out, since everyone else who doesn’t share our scruples about it, sees no problem with relying on them for fonts or other helpers in their libraries.

6 Likes
20

https://docs.puri.sm/

I’ve only seen a few mistakes. Many, many years ago I worked as a beta tester - back when we got paid. Not so these days. But checking manual/docs is still in me. :slight_smile:

1 Like