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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I chose pureOS for political reasons. I could no longer accept GAFAM’s lack of morals and invasion of privacy to sell advertising. But as much as I follow the news on these subjects, I know nothing about programming, nothing at all. And yet, the Librem 5 is the only phone I’ve been using for two years. There have been a few problems, but I’ve had help thanks to the forum. On the other hand, also for political reasons, I don’t use Facebook, other social media and multiple applications offered on Apple or Google. But, for what I do have to do (calls, surfing the Net, texting, taking photos -of average quality-, taking the weather, using a calendar, taking my e-mails, going on FreeTube…) it flows like water (if you use Freetube in landscape mode).
There’s only one thing that happens to me: I have to delete the text messages that are left in the Librem5’s memory every day or so, otherwise the text messages stop coming in. To do this, there’s also a page on the Forum explaining how to do it (does anyone know what to do to avoid having to erase text messages from memory???).
I confess I haven’t yet had the courage to synchronize my data backup on the “Nextcloud” cloud, because it seems a bit complicated (if anyone has any advice, it would help).
Anyway, I encourage you to get in on the adventure as soon as you feel ready! I’ll never go back to Apple or Google.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
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Hi mhnevarez,
its about computation and Turing systems…
With a computer connected to the Internet and a script - like some kind of instructions you can do EVERYTHING.
And Linux or the Librem5 is kind of that. For Power Consumption i have some Computers in the Cloud or Servers i can use for energy consumption computation to push just the important answers to me.
Like for Navigating, generating memes or Pictures or Sound files with an A.I./LLM. Or to have a copy of the Wikipedia on my L5. Sometimes its only a connection for some Service to speak with your LLM/Server over the internet.
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It is a mess of a switch for me at least, but on the plus side the more people get off of android and apple the less client side sharing type stuff goes on. It is like a mask it is more so that you don’t sneeze on other people more than to protect you. I doubt a librem will protect us from privacy invasion unless a lot more people adopt them. Kind of a neat phone though.
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I’m temporarily without my Librem 5, but IIRC a Nextcloud folder is mapped as part of connecting the account to your Librem 5 (same as on a Debian desktop). You can run the supplied Gnome Backups application (aka Deja Dup) to backup to that folder. The backup application allows you to choose/exclude folders.
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When I’m in the Backup application, I only have to select “Network server” in the “storage location”? And what do I write in the “Network location” section? Or am I mistaken?
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Again my Librem5 is being repaired, but on my Debian laptop, my Nextcloud gets mapped as davs://<username>@<nextcloud server>/remote.php/webdav/<backup folder>. (Substitute all things in <> brackets for your own items.)
My mapped nextcloud folder showed up under local folders, but the same address should work for the network server (just leave off the and put it on the folder line.
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My reasons for not making the Librem 5 my daily driver phone are possibly different than those of most people.
More than twenty years ago, I figured out that all of the mainstream social media sites use algorithms to manage my communications, to report to others when I read their profiles, and even to attempt to falsely report to me that others were attempting to contact me. They use my address book to find out which of my contacts might know eachother and to connect me with others who work where I work, all without my permission. They’ll do anything to prime the pump that feeds their machine. I want to manage my own social network myself, and all of the social media companies violate a person’s personal boundaries. So I don’t use any mainstream social media at all. I use sites like this one. The point is that I don’t miss not installing any social media apps on my Librem 5. My friends and family all have my phone number.
Mainstream web browsers do offer some privacy protections. So when any web-page link requires you to log in to their app (switch browsing tools to their custom browser) to continue, you know that even Google’s privacy protections are too restrictive to them. They want to violate your privacy more than even Google does. That’s a pretty scarry thought. Hit the “Back” button. So I don’t miss not installing any news reader apps nor other custom browsers on my Librem 5.
Banking apps are convenient at times. But I can live without them as there is usually a PC near by and I don’t do banking while driving anyway. Most phone apps can be similarly replaced by using the closest PC. I don’t need to back up my phone.
What I miss on the Librem 5 is the sophistication and connectedness of the few apps that I do need to use from my phone. Mostly, this includes the maps and map integration to the phone app. My Librem 5 does not show my location accurately. Sometimes, it puts me on the wrong continent. When I look up local businesses, I get old information and valuable missing information. If I have to do twenty minutes of Linux command line level troubleshooting of the app, just to find the nearest McDonalds, then the app and phone have failed me, even if I find that McDonalds eventually. And if I do find a local business that I want to call, I can’t just tap a phone number from the map app to call that business. No, I have to remember the phone number, close the map app, open the phone app, and then manually type-in that phone number from memory. Even in the lighest of traffic or no other traffic at all, you have to pull over and endure some discomfort to do this. And that’s only if you can find what you’re looking for in a lower quality, less-updated map. This is the biggest reason I have for not using the Librem 5 as my daily driver.
When I want to use a phone app that I do need, I just want it to work right every time and I don’t want to troubleshoot anything as I use that app. I want that app to integrate with the phone app also. Linux is more of an a-la-carte operating system to begin with. When you add a lot of security by default, you can often end up being inconvenienced routinely. Until Purism can adequately address this issue, the Librem 5 is unlikely to be fully adopted, even by experienced users. If there were one or two killer Librem 5 apps that you can’t get on any other phone anywhere, I might be willing to endure some inconvenience to have and use those killer apps. But enhanced security alone is not enough.
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Native terminal, including ssh, sshfs, X forwarding etc. All terminal tools are easily available.
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Runs any desktop GNU/Linux software (e.g., desktop Firefox with all add-ons and LibreOffice), can serve as a desktop when connected to a keyboard/screen.
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Ticket Box for accessing your tickets without unlocking the phone, and other Lockscreen widgets.
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Free choice of the development tools, no restrictions of Android Studio or the Apple alternative.
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Not every desktop GNU/Linux software is supported on ARM64.
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Technically, this is true. However, all Debian software should work, since it’s a supported architecture. Also, most free software can be recompiled for ARM.
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Most of what you said should be right up front along with the ads, maybe even blazingly on any order form.
~s
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