Agreed. Anyone else daily the L5? Want to share your experiences in this thread?
Let’s gather a bit of shared experience in one place so when others google they can find at least a thread with real world users and their experiences.
4 Likes
Searching the internet resulted in this link:
2 Likes
For close to a year. (With a significant interuption when the modem failed and I had to fall back to another device until I could get a replacement modem from support. That was a faster support experience than my previous but I still didn’t get the sense of urgency that I believe a failed modem should receive since a phone isn’t much of a phone without the modem).
I share them as I see relevant to given threads.
And this is why I share my experiences in the conversations I find relevant. My experience is people look for and find things related to specific issues rather than a thread of “here’s my experience thus far” since one is more likely to have a fix for the issue or affirmation that they’re not alone than the other.
And my experience with people looking for other peoples experiences in general, they don’t look for existing threads but start their own and if pointed to an existing thread will ignore that asking for more current feedback and/or more tailored to them feedback.
But that all is just my experience with people throughout my life.
Separately I’ve also noticed much of my criticism gets attacked as if I am just anti-purism or wanting them to fail instead of someone that’s been daily driving for close to a year and in turn familiar with what it’s like to daily drive the Librem 5 and have the experiences I’ve had and wanting things to improve to a point where I can at least recommend this to my technical friends, most of whom would not put up with what I do in early adopter tax and pain.
4 Likes
Depends on people. For example I’m usually looking for information first, that I expect to find somewhere on the internet. I don’t want to look for hours to find an answer, but if I can find within few minutes it’s much faster than waiting for answers.
The questions is: are you a person who is lazy to wait or are you a person who is lazy to search by your own? 
3 Likes
Yes, the Librem 5 USA is my only smartphone. I have been using Crimson for the last few weeks, and Byzantium before that.
I have a lot to share, but nowhere near enough time to explain. However, I will briefly mention that I currently use my Librem 5 USA to manage various virtual private servers from OVHcloud and 1984 using OpenSSH.
https://forums.puri.sm/t/vps-usage-suggestions/21788/23?u=franklyflawless
I am more about action than discussion at this point.
5 Likes
I have followed your thread about your server adventures. Nice.
1 Like
// EDIT : Respondent pointed out that the post was written as me “training him”. He is correct, I used the word ‘give’ incorrectly. I did not actually mean it as training, I meant to share it as a perspective. Edited to remove the language that suggests that this is training for him.
Thanks for sharing.
I want to address the above post because that was me “attacking” you. If you don’t mind, let me give share with you you the training that I give my staff. This is shorthand, I don’t want to go into the whole thing. You will get out of this whatever it is that you want so we can leave it at that. Also, this only applies to male nervous systems, female nervous systems are wired differently and they cannot handle these rules.
- You are making the wrong intellectual inference because your neural network is improperly biased. Basically, you are interpreting an attack / personal slight because you have not been trained to deal with the sensory input.
Roughly speaking: Insults cannot be given. Insults can only be taken.
- Here is what I teach my staff:
a) When you get hired, you have to mentally split your self into two people:
-
You the person, the individual, the thing with a name a soul a heart, belief systems, etc.
-
You the professional.
You the professional is what does all the work and interfaces with all of the systems at the workplace. You the person is someone else, we never talk to, interact with or see that person in the office, this person interacts with us in private social settings which something I typically avoid with everyone that is “staff”.
b) It’s not as crazy as it sounds. You just split your self into two people and done. I created this strategy because I needed techs to be able to freely communicate with each other without having to worry about invisible rules they must follows. I just threw out all the rules and let everyone just be.
Basically, the office rules are this:
a) You CAN NEVER EVER EVER address or criticise the private individual, the you, the thing with the name, a heart a soul, belief systems, etc. That is simply off limits.
b) However, you absolutely can say anything that you want to the professional using ANY language that you want, no matter how rude or derogatory. You literally go into a full bore, full scale argument using any language that you want and completely deride the other person AS A PROFESSIONAL. Literally, anything from f*words on up, absolutely nothing is of the table.
I needed to set that up because I was finding techs were holding back too much. What I expected to happen was that all hell would break loose and everyone would argue all the time but after everything was vented out everything would be on the table and we could just say things and move on, like men do. What actually happened was that all techs became the most polite and professional people I have ever met. What I did not expect to happen is that by removing the need for everyone on the team to silently be always trying to figure out what each others private operating system rules are and try to interface using an invisible api, I reduced the friction inherent in human communication. Communication simply improved across the board instantly.
It’s not a perfect system, there is still a tiny amount of overlap and a gray area that I have to mediate, but it gets rid of all the bullshit invisible api interfaces everyone is using to communicate and streamlines everything down. Also, it doesn’t really work with women, their nervous system is wired differently and they don’t fit into this system at all.
- I mention the above because what you are describing is EXACTLY the problem I had to solve. I don’t have any advice for you, you have to figure this out for your self. I share the above to simply let you know:
-
You are interpreting communication as a personal attack. This is an unforced error you are making, not anyone else.
-
If you split your self into the person and the professional, that means that when you are posting on here you should be posting as the professional. It makes you completely invulnerable to any insult and you can just laugh at any comments and not take them personally, because, well no one is interfacing with the person. That is your private thing reserved for you, your friends and your family.
This is also why my posts read the way they do to you. You don’t realise that I am jumping in and expecting a full scale intellectual wrestling match with another professional. I am absolutely never ever going to impune or direct anything at you the person, but you the professional is up for grabs and I want to play. And, a disagreement between two professionals is merely a competence test. If you manage to demolish all of my arguments and positions, you win, I accept the loss and I will learn from that for the next match. If I win, I expect you as a professional to learn from that, accept it, and for it to make you stronger for the next professional match.
With respect to anything that I have said, the goal of my communication was to LITTERALY put a balance on the other side of the scale to even things out a little bit. If you read all of the L5 nonsense on Reddit, around here and elsewhere, it is heavily skewed towards hatred and disappointment. I recognise your contribution as an attempt to put pressure on the team to improve, but my perspective is that it is important to not only hear your perspective but to hear it in a balanced way that takes a larger picture into account.
In other words, it wasn’t an attack. It was a professional challenge to the one sided nature of the general tenor of the conversation here and elsewhere. I personally want Purism to thrive because I want the L5 version 2.0 and 3.0 and so on.
SUMMARY - I hope you find some of the above useful. It is meant to provide you with an understanding of the structure and nature of what is going on in those conversations. Fanboyism is as destructive as uneducated hatred and as such your opinions are valuable as well.
With respect to this thread, all good. It may not be for you but if anyone searches for L5 experiences, maybe they can hit this thread and read some success stories and the context within which they are a success. That is important as well. The thing about success is that it begets more success. Seeing others thrive and do interesting with the L5 will inspire others in all sorts of unexpected ways and that is as important for the ecosystem as the device it self.
1 Like
Interesting that you feel that way, i was not talking about you.
Maybe instead of trying to train me, some self reflection is in order.
3 Likes
I’m using my L5 as a daily driver over a year now, and I am pleased using it.
There are several things that I still miss, but basic functions like making a phone call and texting are OK (speaking for my own experience).
I’m convinced that the progress will continue and many of us will be made happy using the L5 as daily driver. 
4 Likes
Thank you for giving us your MO. It helps us understand where you are coming from.
1 Like
How does this have only 15 likes? I just made it 16.
@intergalacticllama you’re an inspiration, and I appreciate hearing of your successful switch to the Librem 5.
I can only wish I had the skills and knowhow to fly mine as you do - although the nature of my work is such that to be able to daily it in my professional sphere is going to to take a while.
The big hurdle for me is that text messages are still unreliable at best on 3G, and almost completely non-functional on 4G. Once that is fixed, I can start finding ways of making it work for our use case.
2 Likes
Sounds like you may need to update your modem firmware.
2 Likes
This is a great thread. Thanks!
My wife and I don’t have cell phones because they all require non-free software. I’ve wanted to get a Librem 5 but wanted to wait until it was production ready. I use Linux exclusively (Librem 14, PureOS) for my computing needs, but I still want something that “just works.”
Would it be possible to get one Librem 5 and share it with my wife? So, we each have a user account onthe phone, and we each get our own SIM cards with our own numbers, and then we switch SIMs? Is it easy to switch SIMs on this phone? Is this a reasonable ask?
I see the Librem SIMple would be better for us, since we don’t need data. These would just be emergency phones for the most part. Would it be cheaper or better to get prepaid SIMs? Would they work on this phone? Do I get them at Walmart? Dumb questions, I know, but I’ve been out of the phone loop for over a decade.
Also, it looks like the Librem 5 has GPS. Does this mean I’d be able to use it for navigation when driving? That’s always been one of the biggest appeals to me of a smart device, being able to use GPS plus maps for real time navigation. Can I do that with the Librem 5?
Thanks for the help!
2 Likes
A comment and a half answer:
- I want to commend you and your wife on your principled stand. I have been exploring the idea of “why” it is difficult for people to stand on principle and simply go along with the crowd. I had a conversation the other day that makes me think that it isn’t lack of principle but something closer to “I don’t see an end in sight so what is the point” sort of thing, implying that it might be possible to convince more people to stand on principle with the right communication.
However, it is incredibly rare to see couples stand unified on principle and THAT is truly inspiring.
- The answer to your question about two user using the phone is “TECHNICALLY yes, the phone software can handle multiple accounts and you would only need to switch sims and you would be able to make phone calls from your own isolate environments”. The system wide phone settings would be shared but you would have your own private files just like a computer.
However, here is the BUT.
I don’t believe (I have not checked, maybe someone knows) Phosh needs to be aware of multiple user sessions and allow for different passwords to log into individual sessions. Coding this up might not be too difficult but I don’t believe it exists.
In order to achieve something like this, you would need to install a regular desktop environment + a login manager such as lightdm that does this (thread: Multiple DE with selection at login screen) and from the desktop you should be able to start the phone + text apps and go. However, because it would be normal desktop you would lose call / messaging integration so you wouldn’t get notification when a call text comes in, you would have to manually setup screen rotation and so on. I am not aware of any competitor to Phosh that is designed to be used as a phone so that may be the only way to do that.
If you aren’t technical, I would strongly recommend against going down this route because in order to set this up correctly you need to do a few things: learn a whole bunch of new sysadmin skills, maybe learn to code a bit, spend a whole lot of time to make everything work for you and on top of that you might have to settle for a lesser user experience because writing your own equivalent to Phosh is a lot of work even if you could glue together a bunch of software to mimic what it does.
- Recommendation - If you are sure you would want a Librem 5 (it sounds like it might meet your needs as they match mine) I would buy one and try it and see for your self. If it works buy a second one for your wife. Or wait until a new version of Phosh supports multiple accounts and maybe a new device supports dual sim.
1 Like
I would be curious if you manage to resolve this issue like fslover mentioned. I have not had to deal with this issue so maybe I lucked out. Have you contacted support? I have read about flashing the firmware manually, but, I thought the software store / manager did this for you.
1 Like
Can confirm the software store does not flash firmware and the modem firmware is only available from Purism support at this time and they do not want to release the firmware nor the process outside of contacting support at this time.
3 Likes
Excellent response! Thank you!
Does L5 support GPS and maps for real time navigation, like while driving?
1 Like
I would say, generally, no. It is fiddly and some customers have messed this up. So this probably wouldn’t be the recommended course of action.
As to whether it is production ready, it’s important to remember that the Librem 5 is a general purpose computer and therefore can do so many things, potentially, but most of them won’t be important to you. So it is necessary to identify what your hard requirements are and what your “nice to haves” are.
The Librem 5 does not operate like that out-of-the-box. That is not the current design focus. I’m sure it can be made to do so. For someone who “uses Linux exclusively”, I expect that you would be able to work through the issues but you would be making life a little more difficult for yourself.
(My personal opinion is that I would like to see this standard Linux functionality re-instated as an easy GUI setting that just works - as a future low-priority change.)
Bear in mind that the Librem phone plans are only available for customers in the US (but your mention of “Walmart” suggests that you may indeed be in the US). These plans are comparatively expensive for a phone that is basically just for “emergencies”.
An existing SIM should in general just work if moved across to the Librem 5. Trying to activate a new SIM in the Librem 5 could be a problem if you have one of these authoritarian mobile phone service providers that tries to restrict what phone you can use. So I would recommend that you do your searching first - what networks / providers are available in your area and what has been the experience of Librem 5 customers in your country with that network / provider.
For an emergency phone, you are probably better off to have a single shared phone number and the default shared user account on the phone (purism). Yes, that will be more painful if you upgrade to a phone each in the future - but at least you won’t have some authoritarian mobile phone environment (Apple or Google) telling you what you can and can’t do as far as splitting the content of the phone.
3 Likes