I want to switch from Apple to Purism I like the idea around L5 but after ready about it I don’t think it’s ready to be my everyday phone. I don’t have the tech knowledge to fix all the little things that come up with normal usage. Does anyone know if there is a timeframe when the makers think L5 would be ready for the mainstream.
thanks
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You are not the first one to have similar questions. No such timeline exists. There are things that can not be fixed - you will have to live with them and/or find ways around them. L5 will be an experience, maybe a hobby, and definitely a learning experience too. That being said, you’re already making an erroneous assumption and comparison expecting L5 to be anything like IPhone or Android or any other similar device from previous decades. Linux in general has never been that polished (your experience may wary). L5 is fundamentally different, admittedly partly due to the unfinished/unpolished situation - which also is and has gotten better, there are updates coming (Crimson is in testng and may solve some issues - and we are hopefully about to get an official update). But do not expect “mainstream” - L5 is also intentionally not that.
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I think this question might only be answerable if you frame it as “when will it be ready for daily use for ME?”.
The best suggestion I have is to make a list of apps/services that you cannot live without and then evaluate what the L5 can do well, do poorly, or cannot do at all against that list.
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thanks, for taking the time to answer my question.
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Ok, when I first saw the ads I thought, great. I did some research and it seems like its not very user friendly. Years ago I switch from android to apple the transition was easy to do without having any technical knowledge about the phones. I was able to make calls, text, browse the internet, take pics, save and open documents, etc. without having to fix anything to get it to work. Anyway even if the phone its not for me as is right now I will install pureos on old PC to see if its a good fit to replace my Mac in the future.
thanks
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A good starting point but that misses out the other half of the question, which is … the same thing but without the owner’s having to do any techo futzing.
So that could mean, over and above functionality,
- reliability, and
- GUI for everything.
An example might be: “changing the ringtone is important to me”.
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Hi @mhnevarez welcome to the show!
I am going to chip in and offer the idea that your question does not demand a technical answer. It truly depends on your user profile.
My Librem 5 has been my ONLY phone for almost two years, and it went from very good to almost perfect in the meantime. But I can only state that because the whole philosophy behind the Librem 5 matches perfectly MY philosophy on how I live my digital life.
Also, having been a savvy computer user for almost the entirety of my life, I already accept the fact that there is no Swiss Army knife device and operating system that will solve all your use cases. For example:
- I have a garage with my friends and we play there. It’s running Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, Cubase and old Logic. There’s no point in throwing away perfectly functional multichannel sound cards to try to migrate to a Linux solution and relearn everything, and lose access to old projects.
- I am typing from a coreboot ThinkPad X230 with Qubes OS, because it fits well my way of dealing with the Internet. It is not the only machine I browse the web from, but it is the only machine I log into or enter any personal data in.
- Unfortunately, I have another ThinkPad that dual boots Windows and FreeBSD. I use it to operate my film scanners. One of the scanners works well in Linux, but not with all the features I need. On the bright side, I managed to migrate my color grading skills from Photoshop to GIMP and gave Adobe the middle finger a year ago.
Now, back to the Librem 5…
I am quite an offline guy. I do not have Facegrams or Instabooks. I hardly ever send pictures of anything to anyone and, in general, I don’t shoot with the phone, even when I had an iPhone. My texting needs are covered by SMS: agreeing on a meeting, receving a package, getting a missed call notification. Once or twice a day, I check Signal on Waydroid because of my friends abroad. I don’t mind not having the capacity of sharing the photos of every single meal I make or filming every single bit of silliness that happens in the world in full ultraprocessed 4K glory. I also don’t mind being unable to watch 4K movies on the go.
I host my own Nextcloud and email servers, so I have it integrated via WebDAV to phosh, and also CalDAV and CardDAV. No problem with having my contacts, mail and calendars synchronized to all my devices, including an ancient Windows CE device and a 60 MHz HP workstation I use sometimes.
The camera on the Librem 5 is quite good when I want to photograph something special. It is not fast, it will not take 65 photos per second and choose the best one for you, and apply some magic sauce AI to make it look like every single other photo in the world. BUT it gives you a lovely RAW file that you can load into GIMP.
Or, if it is a photo of something I need to share with someone, let’s say, a bus time table, I can easily shoot it and share via MMS no problem.
I also don’t mind having to load Waydroid to be able to log into my bank portal. I don’t do it more than once a week anyway.
The battery life is fine for the whole day with my use pattern: listen to a podcast, call someone (even a long call), watch 15-20 minute video while waiting for the doctor, find my directions with the Maps application. I don’t mind that it won’t be the most amazing braindead nagivation experience, and I don’t mind having to look around and check the street names when I am walking around, quickly referencing the map.
It is also fine to show QR code tickets with phosh, without having to unlock the phone, works ok.
Unless you open a bloated webpage, the phone is very responsive. And I love being able to connect to my USB-C monitor and have a beautiful glorious desktop.
And my favorite part of the whole experience? I own it. I can open whatever files I want. I can expand the storage (1TB of glory on mine). The whole world of USB accessories is available to you, without Apple or Google babysitting you. Scanner? Check. Your DSLR? Check. Printer? Check. External audiophile USB headphone amplifier? Check. No crappy vendor telling me I can’t do this or that with my phone and no one telling me that “sorry, your phone is too old to be accepted by society, straight to the landfill”
For me, onboarding was pretty much:
- Open the box.
- Insert SIM card.
- Turn phone on.
- Log into my Nextcloud and email accounts.
- Install a few extensions to make Firefox usable.
- Go to the PureOS Store, install a few quality-of-life applications.
And done. I could already call, browse the web, take photos, send messages, send emails, find directions.
So the Librem 5 will never be a mainstream phone, because we are not mainstream users. If you are, like unfortunately most people nowadays, in constant need of sharing all details of your life realtime with the world, the Librem 5 will never be for you.
But, if you are willing to try changing you life for the better and getting rid of the fear of missing out and separation anxieties caused by the general state of hyperconnectivity people live in these days, the Librem 5 will make you very happy.
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It is a really nice story! Thanks for sharing your experience! 
Could you write here how you solve this point:
Thanks in advance! 
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It depends. Sharing photos or other files works fine on my Librem 5 with nheko client for Matrix. I heard other messaging clients (even Telegram and Whatsapp, with tinkering) can also be installed.
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