We’ve discussed many aspects of the Librem 5 ever since it was announced and our Breaking Ground post does a great job of explaining why it’s so special and how that factors into the price:
First of all, the design of the Librem 5 is unique in many ways. Most importantly the hardware is designed from the ground up by us and for us. The Librem 5 is a complete custom design, not based on any reference design, specifically designed with all the goals we all want to achieve open, safe, secure, respecting your privacy and digital rights. This rules out existing mobile phone reference designs, like from MTK, Qualcomm and the others. When we first approached hardware manufacturers almost two years ago with this project most of them instantly said “No, sorry, impossible, we can not help you.”. Others warned us, that it could never work, that it was too complicated, “the industry does not do that” and so forth.
And yet here we are, later than we wanted, but we are actually shipping first hardware! It is possible but it comes at a price.
Yet one thing we haven’t discussed much up to this point is how we have factored longevity into the design. In this (OK yes, a bit long-winded) post, I elaborate on why the Librem 5 is different from your standard, disposable Android phone with a 2-3 year shelf life.
This was the deciding factor in my choice to wait for Evergreen instead of getting Birch. As eager as I was to have the Librem 5, I wanted something I felt confident about having for several years, and I decided Evergreen was the better choice.
Great to see Purism leading the way on multiple ethical fronts.
Christmas must be close ! already we can see more of YOU around HERE !
i was tempted to open up a thread myself linking to the blog post but i decided to be patient !
i like how you compared free-software to good-wine ! well even “good-wine” has a limit to how good it can become or how difficult it gets after a certain point to KEEP it GETTING good …
it’s a great honor and responsibility if we’re to have the conversation about “making-good-wine”.
just for laughs - ancient wine was more “potent” than some of today’s Wisky (at least 40% alcohol) … and if we talk about “good-wine-making” then it’s also necessary to talk about “wooden barrels” and everything else that contributes to that good-aging-process …
Interesting, do you have a source for this? I’m interested in this kind of history and what I’ve read up to this point indicated that ancient cultures typically diluted their wine from normal strength down to 1-4%–I know the Romans certainly did.
I brew beer and live in a wine region. My understanding is that ABV limitations (outside of distilling) are based on a yeast strain’s tolerance for its own ethanol excretions. Typical wine yeast can only tolerate alcohol concentration to a certain point (typically up to 14%) with champagne yeast being able to tolerate a bit more of its own filth. This is higher than beer yeasts which start to die out starting at 7-8% with some strains able to survive a bit higher–but brewers who produce those very high ABV beers tend to start with a normal beer strain and then introduce champagne yeast (along with additional sugars) later in the fermentation.
There have been some strains genetically bred to tolerate even higher ABV, but I haven’t heard of any that survive much past 20%–that’s why alcohol is such an effective disinfectant.
I especially like when you mentioned that you are looking forward for having a laptop-dock for the phone one day. Also looking forward to this as i already mentioned in my post in other thread where I listed all my ideas, wishes, and dreams about such a device (sorry for self"quote"). Now i know that even purism employees are looking forward for such a device. Well… somehow its would be strange otherwise as this would mean that purism wouldn’t make any use of their stand alone achievement of true convergence. I hope its just a matter of time to these dreams become reality. dreaming
if you run out of space your only choice with on-board storage is deleting files or apps, or buying a new phone
or may just want keep your music collection with you at all times
While not disagreeing with the overall point, the rise of cloud storage or other online options means that you do have another choice.
I don’t have any music at all on my current phone. It is all accessed via the network. (True that this won’t work if in an area without any mobile coverage and true that it would be smarter if I set this up to cache locally on the device - something that will be impossible or impractical until I can replace my spiPhone with my Librem 5.)
However that means considering the questions of trust and privacy that relate to those online options. (In my case I would provide the online storage myself so that isn’t so much of a problem.) It also means considering the cost, if any, of the online option.
what I’ve read up to this point indicated that ancient cultures typically diluted their wine from normal strength down to 1-4%–I know the Romans certainly did.
They pretty much had to do this. Water was undrinkable; in lieu of this they drank wine, not to get drunk but just to hydrate.
With as much fluid as I consume in a day, back then I’d be plastered 24/7; in real life in the present day, I’m a teetotaler.
