Librem 5 + Nextcloud

Hi,

will L5 Evergreen be able to syn with Nextcloud?
Calendar, Contacts, Files?

Will Element run on L5?

Thanks in advance.

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PureOS on Librem5 is basically a Debian. You can already try a lot of the available apps on a pinephone if you’re willing to get one or on the qemu image running the PureOS version for the Librem5.

So far the Nextcloud integration worked in Mobian (mobile Debian) like for my PureOS desktop.

I didn’t try Element, but Fractal is working fine with mobile Debian and adjusts to the small screen. There are people working towards packaging Mirage for Mobian and making it thereby available for PureOS.

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Element web will work in your web browser but it not yet optimized for small screen (WIP).
Element app for android or iOS will not work without a virtual machine like Anbox.

The electron version of Element web doesn’t exist in ARM compatible binaries as far as I know and is not optimized for small screen (it’s no more than the Element web app but package with a modified version of chromium browser).

I hope Fractal will become a good alternative when it will be fully based on the matrix-rust SDK.

I just booted PureOS on my PinePhone. It offered to sych a NextCloud account during setup, so I think the answer is “yes”. I don’t have a NextCloud account, but I’m seriously considering one.

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Mirage is being packaged for Debian: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=970814

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Tested on my Dogwood phone, with Nextcloud set up in Gnome Online Accounts:

Seems to work, have not checked full functionality

Works so-so. It seems the Gnome Contacts app uses some different fields from the Nextcloud Contacts app…
Also, Gnome Contacts often crashes when updating a contact.

Can’t tell. I installed the Nextcloud app from PureOS repo, but it doesn’t scale well to the small screen.
Also, seems it doesn’t use the Nextcloud account I have set up in Online Accounts.

As an aside, entering the Nextcloud app password in Online Accounts is painful, but I assume this will improve when cameras are working and there is a QR scanning app.

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Calendar should work, and in: it syncs events, but the calendar app still needs to be made adaptive (and yes there is work in that sense).

The Nextcloud Desktop app, the one from the repos does not get credentials from GOA, you need to set it up separately and input the credentials again.
Also that app is not adaptive yet, but it can scaled to fit the screen better.

For that you can download to your Librem 5 the scale to fit script from here:

Then from the same same folder where the script is run:

bash ./scale-to-fit desktopclient.nextcloud.com.nextcloud

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It’s sort-of usable as is (when scaled to fit), but of course buttons are way too small for comfortable handling. Even more annoying is the Create new event dialog that pops up every time you scroll… (Will report this in your issue tracker later on.)

These are clearly things that will improve when Calendar is made adaptive.

Sorry for being a bit unclear on this. I did make the Nextcloud app scale-to-fit, but it still seems to be wider than the screen. (No idea why.)

In addition, the NC app starts two QtWebEngine processes, which do not scale. Probably need to set this separately. So the slideshow/credentials thing is also too wide.

I’ll probably have a closer look later on.

Will this be finished before Evergreen shipping?

So I have to install Mobian instead of PureOS as an OS to make this work?
I do not get your point with Mobian. Sorry. This is an alternative OS, right?

That’s not easy. I’ll try again :slight_smile:

One operating system running on desktops and servers is Debian. It’s based on the linux kernel and a lot of open source software and some closed source firmware needed to use some of the hardware it is made for.

Purism took Debian and took away all the closed source parts to get endorsed by the Free Software Foundation. They added some stuff to the installer and various software packets to make PureOS more suitable for their vision of what people should get.

Purism then took PureOS and adopted it to run on the mobile device Librem5 they develop and build.

Another project took Debian and altered it to run on mobile devices like the pinephone, the pinetab and the Librem5. Their focus is to make it work technically and they do not change much the Debian policy to fit some ideals or political goals (like e.g. making the FSF happy).

The root of all theses project is Debian and at least a subset of the different software packages offered by Debian. Also the package format (the way the software is packed together to ensure that after installation in a system it can successfully be started) for all of these projects is the same.

One could draw a family tree to make a picture of the situation :slight_smile: .

This leads to the situation that stuff that is developed or improved in one of theses projects is directly usable by any of the others. The work and effort that goes into Debian directly improves PureOS.

Mobian adopted e.g. Phosh as the mobile shell from PureOS.

The situation with PureOS for desktops and mobile is even a lot closer: They are based on the same Debian sources compiled for arm64 and amd64.

Basically when nextcloud integration makes you happy on your PureOS desktop it will make you happy on your Librem5 because it is the same software running.

Thinks working in Mobian on a pinephone will - maybe with some delay - work in PureOS for Librem5 eventually. Improvements on the Librem5 GUI will show up in Mobian the same way.

These projects are really close to each other even though they follow different ideas they develop in great parts on the same software to reach their goals.

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That’s very kind, indeed. And somehow I already understood what you explained prior to that. But now you nailed it down for me.

Must be this upstream - downstream - thing I heard of. :wink:

Nextcloud is syncing contacts and calender in my Desktop running PureOS, but @lipu wrote:

So some room for improvement?!

Yes, there might be problems I do not get aware of, because there are different use scenarios.

Mine is that I use a PureOS desktop, an old Android phone and a pinephone running mobian. I do not care about the nextcloud web-interface and rarely look at it. Using contacts on PureOS and Mobian I only look at the data which I maintain on the Android device.

The contact synchronization between the three devices with this use case works good for me.

@lipu Out of interest: Did you try evolution also?

I cannot be sure of that, I am sorry

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Not really, and I realize there is a challenge in knowing what is the correct data. Once I have an idea how to ensure the pedigree of my calendar entries in this interop swamp, I’ll try experimenting with Thunderbird/Lightning, Evolution, Gnome Calendar, Nextcloud Calendar…

Is it ok if I bump this thread?

I set up Nextcloud as Online Account but it does not seem to sync the contacts within the Contacts app.

Did anyone try this with their device?

Thanks,
Antonio

I got the contacts and appointments synced.
I may need sometime.
And you have to select the nextcloud contacts to be shown in the contacts app. (Same for calendar)

Thanks for the reply

This is how I set up Nextcould in “Online Accounts”

Here what I set in Contacts

Is this correct? Because I set it up like 2 hours ago and nothing has syncronized so far. Is there anything I can verify in the logs (if so where?)

Thanks

Looks good from my point of view.

I don’t know any logs.
But may be someone else?

You could also try to search online. This is a generic gnome interface. (Not Librem5 or PureOS specific)

I have a similar setup and it works fine.