My L5 arrived (15!)

Hardware Librem 5
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I don’t know but if you have to ask the question then you know the answer: Once a corporation or government has your data, you no longer have any control over what happens to that data. It can be replicated, moved and sold many times over. So the only control that you have is the control not to let data leak out in the first place.

I know you directed the question to the OP but …

(I’ve had my phone for over 9 months so these are not first impressions but rather considered over many months.)

Good. Looks and feels well made. No awkward gaps. Nothing wobbles.

Solid enough. One of the smaller members of the household knocked my phone off a cupboard onto a hard floor :open_mouth: and the phone survived the fall without anything cracking or ceasing to work.

The screen is clearly exposed. If you want that protection then you need a case. However see previous.

(I would have bought a case from Purism with the original purchase if it had been an available accessory.)

It’s thick but not infeasibly thick. Honestly, I am used to it.

It also depends on what you compare against. Compared against a thin iPhone that is not in a case, the Librem 5 is thick. Compared against a bulkier late model iPhone that is in a case, the difference is less significant.

The bevel at the back of the Librem 5 reduces the visual impact of the thickness, while not of course changing the actual thickness.

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I bought an L5 from a forum member. It is kinda thick but feels very silid and good looking. Haven’t fired it up yet though. Waiting till the software is more daily driver friendly as I am not very tech savvy. Nice phone. My regular L5 order was put in Jan of 2018 so I got a little to see the software improve.

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I’m distracted more by the weight, which feels unusual, than by the thickness, which allows for a nice solid grip. But then, others have said they like the weight, because it provides heft.

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To me the weight make it seem more solid sturdy and well built. a pocket computer. Not a thin light google/apple data harvester spy trinket

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You probably mean what we name “gleichmäßiges spaltmaß” or uniform gap tolerance? That’s quite good. The switches and Buttons are equaly aligned and move smoothly. The gap of the plastic cover to body, cam & led are uniform too.

I wouldn’t say plastic is solid but here it fits nicely the frame so no need to be solid :wink:

There is no thick frame around the display (like the openmoko had) and if the phone falls display-first it will probably be damaged. I have a screen protection sheet on any phone but not on this because it’s not available. Same for the protection case. I like the rubber ones so 3d print is out.

The thickness is unfamiliar but not bad, but i am not the right person to ask because i have large hand. :smiley:

Another fact concerns me more: the warmth that is produced by the device. If you hold it and the frame gets warm and warmer.

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  1. Shipping -> Yes, we see shipping mails starting at least Sep 17 again: Estimate your Librem 5 shipping and it seems we are now at order dates around Oct 6/7 2017 being shipped.

  2. As for the opt in to SEND data to mozilla, there is a setting in /etc/geoclue/geoclue.conf to determine that, I don’t know the default value by heart, but it needs to be set to true to actually send data to MLS. Sorry, if this info was already mentioned here…

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https://shop.puri.sm/shop/privacy-screen-for-librem-5-evergreen/

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It’s off by default.

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I’m not a Mozilla employee anymore, but no it’s not kept or resold, because the push data that the push server receives is not very useful: the payload is encrypted using a key that is held on the client side in the browser (it’s up to the website to send the public key to the service app server, and it never gets the private one). The push server routes that payload using opaque subscription IDs.

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I keep seeing these tips/clues to edit a file, but nothing about how, or what the edit should be.

Is there a suggested Linux comfort zone in order to be able to operate one - efficiently, amicably and without a days research and reading novels? Now I must look up “ssh”, and how it might play a roll with the L5 is and just what SSH caliber should be fired at the phone. Perhaps there is a beginners corner somewhere where we don’t need to learn Linux commands, or what a SSH is?

`^s
I doesn’t make looking at entering the Linux phone arena an attractive idea.

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https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Tips%20&%20Tricks has a tutorial on setting up SSH on your Librem 5.

That page also has lots of other useful tips for people starting out.

If there is a tip on that page and you find that it does not provide enough information then please provide feedback and someone can improve the page.

However I think the simple reality is that for the Librem 5 as it is today you will need to learn some shell commands once you go outside basic functionality and perhaps even need to do so for basic functionality, particularly if troubleshooting is needed.

Could the Librem 5 become a “GUI only” / I-can’t-believe-it’s-Linux phone in the future? Yes.

Is that a priority for Purism? Not for me to say and I don’t know.

Coming to your implied questions … you don’t need ssh to edit a file. It is usually more convenient to do so but you can edit a file locally (directly) on the Librem 5 if you wish. For a short simple edit (like changing ‘true’ to ‘false’ or vice versa) it may be perfectly reasonable to make the edit locally.

Many Linux config files are self-documenting i.e. there are lots of comments inside the config file before each setting that explains what the setting does and what its valid values are. Is that always enough information? No, particularly not if you are not confident. Is that usually helpful? Yes.

The golden rule is always either save a copy of the config file before you edit it or make a copy of the old contents of the line in the config file before you edit it and leave the old contents commented out (or at least make notes about what config file you changed and what the change was). That will save you most of the time if your change to the config file breaks something.

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The Linux file system contains a lot of directories (folders) that house various settings, parameters, appearance, functioning, scheduled jobs, etc., of various things that the applications perform.

When someone talks about, for example, editing a file in the etc directory, which is located at /etc/foldername/filename, the usual way to do this is to open the terminal and navigate to that file, call it up, change something, then save, and exit.

When the terminal application is opened, it starts you in the Home folder; the GUI equivalent is entering the directory that is called by the user name you chose for your computer. If you need to edit a file in the etc directory, you first have to enter that directory. The command is cd /etc (“change directory to /etc”).

From there, to edit one of its files, you specify the full path to get to the file that is located inside the folder, inside the directory. But first, you usually have to elevate privileges to superuser with sudo, then specify the text editor you want to use, e.g. nano or vim, or whatever you have installed, then the rest of the path.

Example: sudo nano /etc/foldername/filename.conf (replace foldername and filename with the actual names).

So hitting Enter would open “filename.conf” in the terminal and allow you to scroll down and change entries as needed, before saving and exiting.

You can also get to this file in the GUI, by double-clicking File System, then the etc folder. In fact, you should be able to perform the same editing here instead of in the terminal, but you do have to open the folder as administrator first.

P.S. With ssh (secure shell), you can remotely log in to the terminal of a remote device on your network (say the L5) from your main computer, and issue any commands more easily there, using the full keyboard. Those commands would then execute on the remote device.

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Either cd into the directory and refer to the file with no full path, or (preferred because less typing) specify the full path to the file regardless of your current location.

Pro tip: use tab to autocomplete commands and filesystempaths, tab-tab to see all possible options.

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Just for fun though … autocomplete may not work with sudo - I mean it could be done but I don’t think it is being done.

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I gave that vague hint because I was not in Front of my phone. But given that it was only to determine the status of ‘send location data to Mozilla’s database’ (off by default) there is certainly no need to modify this file

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Oh right, I lost track of where I was located in my example. :slight_smile:

So, @Sharon, skip the part I said about cd - changing directories first; you can type something like this directly:

sudo nano /etc/foldername/filename.conf (as an example)

If you do cd into another directory first, you wouldn’t type the entire filepath, since you’re already there.

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@irvinewade, @mdt : thank you for your kind feedbacks ! The heat issue is a bit stressing, this is not what I wait from a high range phone (I talk about price), otherwise I am really happy about the good points you have mentioned.

@fabrice : thank you too, I couldn’t hope for a better answer than from a former Mozilla employee !

@dos, @spaetz : thanks also for your feedbacks.

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The high price is due to a) costs for system and software development, b) small production numbers, so no ecenomies of scale and c) the necessity to choose components that are FOSS friendly and modular, so the components are not what you would typically find in a phone. That explains partially why the dissipate more heat than components that are modular, also not all powersaving features (suspend) have been implemented yet…

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Not even powersave mode on the WiFi, never mind about suspend-to-RAM?

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Afaik wifi powersave has been disabled as it led to an unacceptable loss of wifi performance overall (I don’t think that has changed yet) and of course no suspend-to-ram yet.