Librem 5 - Daily driven in professional use - SUCCESS

Hardware Librem 5
42

Hello and thank you for sharing. Great success story. I like that you are using this as a “working phone” - not just a “project phone.” I get a vision of you driving around and solving problems on the fly with the terminal/etc. and also talking to people on it. Fantastic. That is the ultimate dream - that and all the freedom, privacy, etc. So great.

Since I recently fixed my at-home cellular issues, I finally feel like the Librem 5 is a robust workhorse computer/phone/tablet device that can almost do everything we were accustomed to on an Android/Iphone. That is no small achievement.

I have daily driven it for nearly 2 years. I have taken a lot of grief from family related to a myriad of issues (mainly the cellular problems). But, you know what, the issues are nearly gone. Why? Software updates. Hardware updates. I told people this was cutting-edge stuff and it would get better. It has. These are all things that Purism “promised” in the initial crowd-funding campaign, way-back-when. Has it taken, arguably, too long to get the phone up to par? Well, that is subjective and up to the end-user. I knew what I was getting into when I participated in the crowd-funding campaign. I was not at all surprised by the delay and I new things were going to be hard.

Would I love to have the video working so that I could converse with my family via the phone? Sure. Is the Bluetooth always perfect, no. Is the battery life perfect, no. Is the cellular modem wonky? Yes, a little. But, again, IT KEEPS GETTING BETTER.

I am amazed, as well, that Purism made it this far. I sincerely hope that they continue the work. I also think the community has an obligation to continue to support this work because there are very few actors in this mobile space and, from what I am seeing, the Librem 5 is probably the best pure Linux phone on the market.

Anyway, I think what I am trying to say is that the Librem 5 IS a workhorse machine, right now, today. Not later, but now. Over the last 2 years, I could not genuinely say that. Frankly, when I first got it, it was almost un-usable in a lot of respects. But lately, the bluetooth has gotten better, the GPS has gotten way better, the LTE feature works, it takes decent pictures, it has a removable SD card slot. Flatpak and other apps are mostly great. My point here is that things are really looking up. Likewise, the incessant complaining on this forum has been reduced to a trickle. All of that points to the success of the device.

I applaud Purism and the devs and the greater Linux community who work on this device and the mobile workspace. It is truly and achievement and I think underappreciated. I also think that you have to be borderline crazy to even dream a project like this. It takes some serious moxy to pull this kind of thing off. Do I think Purism has made some large errors. Yep, I do. But it takes a little crazy to make something like this work/function/not collapse under it’s own ambitious weight. Truly a SUCCESS.

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43

Just to add: There are 2 different Hard accel on Firefox like Firefox-Hard-Accel and Video-Firefox-Hard-Accel either both is enabled on right manner in L5.

Firefox-Hard-Accel is enabled through Webrender through GLES3.0(Coming up) if so enabled via cpu-lvmpipe
Video-Firefox-Hard-Accel is enabled through ffmpeg-v4l2m2m(current disabled by default on Byzantium) through Firefox-V4L2-API(at the moment just decode H.264, so on Youtube video it need a plugin to request h.2.64 than vp9)this feature is current disable on Firefox-Librem 5 looks like that va-api need disabled on Firefox Build in order to work V4L2-API, this apis has conflict to be enabled both as far i know.)
V4L2-API found in Firefox 116

Purism Community

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44

Done. You are right that I don’t have to unplug it but it doesn’t lose heat, it just keeps on getting hotter. If I unplug it it quickly goes back to normal temp. I don’t care to do additional temperature testing honestly.

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45

I appreciate the heads up on the details here. I will look further into that.

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46

Nice. Glad to see others using it. You have be daily driving yours for 2 years? I admire the commitment. The realty here is that Purism has delivered despite all the challenges. The first users have to bear the brunt of the ui/ux workflow testing and Purism keeps on delivering on the software dev front so that keeps on improving as well.

Of course, if Purism had the backing of Google, they could easily get everything polished up but we are not in that world. And, perhaps, I am glad we are not in that world because ethics are expensive and maybe that means we have to make do with what we have in terms of community and resources.

We did it with Linux desktop.

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47

So you are talking about an IVR system where you call a phone number and the IVR system answers and expects you to navigate through a bunch of menus by pressing a digit and then another digit and then another digit … and expects you to authenticate yourself by pressing more digits … until you finally get to talk to a human etc.? (In some cases, you may not need to talk to a human and you can complete the whole task by pressing digits.)

On a traditional phone line this worked via DTMF and it has been tricky with later technologies such as VoIP and now mobile phones.

If this is what you are talking about then, yes, a number of interfaces have to be working, as well as software functionality, potentially including in the modem, to be working … for this to work properly.

Sounds like there are still some software issues with that to sort out.

I must admit that I haven’t used phone banking in a very long time, instead preferring to do it via the web.

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48

That is precisely what I am describing correct. Me too, however, there were situations where I had to interface with the systems while on the road so the test was interesting. I did not realise the complexity behind the interaction, I appreciate the heads up.

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49

Hello,

I just wanted to highlight how every time you visit this page your browser clients probe my domain because this URL was shared here. Given that it will do that for any domain, in any thread, every time you load that thread, the moderators of this forum might want to investigate disabling that for privacy reasons.

Kind regards,
Dantali0n

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50

Yes, it’s a known problem that was already reported and escalated: Posts with hyperlinks to other sites can import trackers to the forums?!

I completely agree with you. It is undesirable behaviour from the perspective of the web site operator (in this case, you) and from the perspective of the user who is browsing a forum.

1 Like