Introducing the Liberty Phone

A small cost for extending the lifespan of a technology product normally discarded within two years or less due to planned obsolescence, if you ask me.

Just to confirm my post of 1 year ago!!

I have my L5 in my nightstand drawer always turned off except for the occasional power-up to update it but, anyway, useless for my job and private life!), today I decided to begin to use it as my daily driver! So I told to myself: “c’mon, exit from your comfort zone :muscle:

So I took it, turned on it and begun to configure one of the most basic services: email! I’m still using, sadly, gmail, although my idea is to switch to purism email but I’ve to be sure that purism email is solid and fully operative before to migrate!

So I launched geary and start to configure my gmail account:

First I tried to use the preset gmail option offered by geary but it didn’t work (it warned me that my email and/or password was incorrect although I tried 10ish times checking very well every single digit (email and pw) and, of course, I know my password!
So, after it, I decided to use the general email option inserting IMAP/SMTP and other parameters manually!
But, I can’t do that because the geary insert mask go over the screen and I can’t able to scroll left (to see the right, over screen) neither scroll up (to see the down part over screen)!! and all that although I had to reduce screen size from 200% (better for me to read the screen) to 100%!!
Here the two pictures (that I took using my iPhone because I can’t take screenshots using my L5 and I can’t write posts here with gnome web due the difficulty to, for example, quoting my previous posts and type (eg: I use swipe to write and L5 keyboard doesn’t offer it)!
So, after 1 year I’ve to sadly admit that nothing or almost nothing is improved, neither basic stuff like email client!
My L5 go back to my nightstand drawer, hoping that Purism will make it working ASAP at least in basic functions! I don’t want sell it because I strongly trust in Purism idea but L5, till today, remain only a beautiful idea!
:pensive:


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You can use Phosh Mobile Settings’ Compositor to scale down apps that do not fit the screen.

You can use GNOME Screenshot:

sudo apt install gnome-screenshot

You can use Firefox ESR.

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100% what FranklyFlawless said.

About software development:
Purism had a development pause to earn some money with hardware first. As far as I know, development slowly started again. Once PureOS gets upgraded from Byzantium to Crimson, we will have access to newer GNOME-software which also improves screen size for some apps (I don’t know if they fixed all apps or just a few). Alternatively you can run Mobian instead of PureOS and have access to those right now.

About e-mail and pw:
Do you use special characters that are less common like !? Sometimes there is no support for some specific characters. This is a very common issue. Once I created an account on a website and used same pw on the client of the same company and I could not login, because § was not supported on client, but it was on website. It’s always a good idea to test out simple passwords, just to make sure it’s no character support issue.
Otherwise you also could use the web-app to get your mails.

As you said “exit from comfort” at least a bit, but this is nothing completely impossible.

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Don’t use Gmail if it makes you sad. They are literally reading the emails. I saw times when I reached out to a friend about a problem that I was having, and then back when I was in the thicket of using Google systems, my evening entertainment (sponsored by Google) would change to manipulate my thoughts and encourage parodies and laughing at people who tried to solve the problem I was having. The only way I’m aware of that they would have even known about the problem was by literally reading my Gmail and using it against me.

This is a sickness. So, I still have the sickness of desiring ease. I didn’t bother to get an email server that would do IMAP/SMTP correctly. So, I am using proton mail because it is:

  • Readable from a web browser from anywhere
  • Totally free to just make an account with 0 effort

So I think, the way I look at it is that geary+my own server is the nerd best solution, but because I didn’t invest the time to get to the good solution, using proton mail probably is like a step towards good. Presumably, this splits up my data so that I would expect proton is probably not using my data for advertising/mind manipulation, but since it is a centralized server I’m guessing if I ever do anything illegal on my proton mail the law enforcement of the land probably still has a back door into it. That’s kind of how I’m looking at it, that if we think of privacy invasion as two part – one where the mind manipulator scum get the data and use it to change who you are for profit, and two where the government captures the data to treat everyone as criminal in case they become one – I solved one of these problems but not the other. Some day, probably, I’ll go get some email server. But at the moment, I solved one of the problems. So I suggest that you make this switch to proton mail because of how it is marginally better than gmail while not requiring additional effort, and then in time when you get frustrated by proton mail for some reason, in that future you could move on to another provider.

When I used Android I turned all this stuff off. I also turned off the auto correction. So when I type a letter, that letter is the one to be inserted. This made my transition to Librem 5 much easier. If you have been using a trapping feature that you don’t know how to program yourself, and that you do not have the source code for, then it’s possible you might never be able to escape. It’s possible that the feature is patented or that nobody on a Librem 5 would bother to create it and contribute it, because it is pointless for them. In this case, maybe you would want to learn not to depend on this feature.

Conversely, although I use my Librem 5 every day, I never bothered to change out the keyboard. I read online that there is a different “better” keyboard for the Librem 5 with some enhancements that users can install. But I did not install it, because I was lazy. Are you certain that you have adequately done your research on this topic? There is a lot of information buried in Purism forums. Maybe we should better organize it.

Edit: My understanding is that reading proton mail from Geary is impossible without paying them, because of how proton mail is dumb in some way, so I just open the mail in a browser on the Librem 5. That’s a little slower and non ideal, but it is functional. If that bothers you, I would imagine there are still other options besides proton mail and gmail that might better serve your needs. But I think that using Gmail is unwise. If I make an email server today, and I send you an invite so that you can make an account on there for free but with the caveat that I will read all your emails in case I can profit off of you, does this sound reasonable to you?

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Definitely:

There is also a more accessible Squeekboard terminal layout:

There is a community wiki, although it only exists for the Librem 5 and 11. Otherwise, I usually bookmark anything important or internally index various references in memory. Ask questions and I will resolve local queries.

Here is a list of webmail providers:

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Yessss that’s cool!! I didn’t know that!!
Thank you!! :pray:

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I read here that FF is controlled by Microsoft (that I hate) so I’m forcing myself to use only gnome web browser! :sweat_smile:

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Ive seen that claim with the only “evidence” being that MS gave Mozilla money.

By that logic I control the FSF.

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I hope you never sell your Librem 5 and keep you with us at Purism :pray:
Purism stoped L5 development from one year now, however there are some ramdons improvements like my tar files fixes. I not using my L5 as my daily driver however i gaming with my L5 every week and i could say it ready for daily driver, however Gnu Crimson will bring a buch of optimization which i need for fully daily use it.
I fully recommend to everyone to support Purism :heart: to get Librem 5 working fancy. Do not think that Mobian or Postmarketwhatever will make Librem 5 better on contributions, this never will happen.

Yes Firefox it is driven from Opensource-Google and maybe from Opensource-Microsoft.

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Thank you so much for let me know that! I read Purism stopped Crimson development but I didn’t know they started again! That’s a great news!! :pray:

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Yes I do!! So that’s why!! Thank you! Just curious to know why special characters aren’t allowed!! So incredible for me

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Thank you so much for your post!!! :pray:
As I written, if I see Geary working well, I’ll buy Librem One service and I’ll create a new email leaving Gmail!
So I just want test Geary with Gmail

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I did not say special characters aren’t allowed in general. In fact I don’t know if Geary supports all, a few or none. I just know that special characters can cause such problems. That doesn’t mean all special characters are unsupported, but maybe some specific ones.

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What case is that?

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I modified my google password avoiding special characters and it’s working now!!
Thank you so much, Ick!! :grinning::pray:

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There are some legitimate reasons to restrict what characters can be used in a password but on the other hand any such restriction weakens the password against a brute force attack. :frowning:

Honestly, for a password that is only entered once and thereafter securely stored (such as applies to Geary on the Librem 5), you might as well choose a longer password in order to compensate for the loss of special characters. However I understand that the password may be being used on more than one device. But then I don’t understand why anyone would use gmail at all.

Many servers will mitigate against brute force attacks anyway by placing restrictions on how many guesses you can have.

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It is one of the few whitelisted webmail providers for acquiring Tor bridge relay addresses, the other being Riseup:

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Add sentence to Librem 5 Liberty Box and Manual:
Developed, Designed and Manufactured in-house by Purism.

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