Some bouldering
I hope you secured that Librem 5 well! 
Sure! In a bumper case (which offers so-so protection) and wrapped in a sweater. 
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Hello. I gave in and installed PureMaps via Flatpak. When it works, it works great. However, I have spent a lot of time lately playing with the geoclue.conf file at etc/geocle/geoclue.conf. There is a post about this file but I am too lazy to find it and link to it.
Long story short, I experimented with every GPS source in that Geoclue.conf file. I eventually resolved, last night, to turn every GPS source “on” via the “true” command in the file.
Also, and I believe this is important, I allowed Firefox browser to have access to all GPS information. Yes, yes, I know: privacy concerns. Do this at your own risk. You know what also?: the GPS works a lot better now. It works in Firefox. It works in PureMaps. I have navigation in my car now. I can use if for navigation for hiking, etc. I am happy. For now.
Caveat: I just finally discovered this last night. Might it break today or sometime in the future? Yes. But, I think it is important to go play with that Geoclue.conf file and see what works best for you.
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I have been plowing information about GPS on the Librem 5 and I have taken the phone apart to replace the WiFi card. It is still not clear to me how to apply the hardware fix to the GPS antenna. I have been in contact with support about it, but that communication ended a couple of weeks ago after a number of “I will check with my colleagues and get back to you…” So I am now in a state where I, in fact, occassionally can get a GPS fix, but it is usually very shortlived. Nothing that could be used for navigation.
See this link for the exact reply I got from Purism support regarding the antenna connection. I still did not dare to try this. I’m considering in ordering a new WiFi card and do both, fixing the antenna connection and replacing the WiFi card in one go. If someone, preferably in Europe, has experience in this type of repairs/upgrades, I would be willing to pay for having this done.
I meant to post this here, but it ended up where your link was:
When exchanging Wifi/BT card I did just that and thought it would reveal an obvious way to adjust the GNSS antennae. Unfortunately I didn’t see anything that resembled a spring contact, just the tiny metal thing I believe is the GNSS ground (see picture). Without enough information on how to bend something, I put the pieces back together and was happy not to have broken anything and that the new Sparclan card worked right the way.
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I used PureMaps to get to my sons basketball tournament today. Turn by turn navigation worked perfect.
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Just another addition to my report from France. Except for one really slow gps-response in the car, navigation on the L5 worked like charm.
It found the correct position within minutes on several occassions, and it followed our movements step by step.
It worked like a ‘normal’ smartphone, I would say. Very happy with that.
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Could you please provide some examples? Your experience with GPS seems to be in another galaxy than mine…
Lately GPS and PureMaps works pretty well right now. As in, I click on it, it mostly finds my location fairly quickly. As long as I have cellular reception with Mint Mobile, it generally follows me.
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By examples, i was referring to what you changed in your Geoclue.conf file.
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Just installed the latest OS update, including some new geoclue stuff.
It appears someone f*cked up something. PureMaps does not settle on my actual location any longer - it can’t even find it. It is a mile or so off, at best.
It gets stuck on the wrong location my GPS tends to indicated from day one (in another Dutch city, miles from where I actually am). I am back to day one.
Can I undo this ‘update’?
Why does the GPS have a preferred wrong "home’ spot, anyway?! It has been there since I started up the L5. I have never actually been in that location.
How can I get rid of it?! (Out! Damned spot!)
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Yes, probably, but it can get complicated depending on exactly what that update was.
No! Wait! I might have spoken too soon! After half an hour or so walking the dog, and then cycling to work things seem to have settled down a bit. The dart is no longer pointing to Zoetermeer (the damn spot, and a terrible city), it started to follow me pretty precise. And now it has decided on a location a hundred meters from where I really am.
Not perfect. But not as terrible as I feared.
See how this develops.
I would still really like to get rid of that ‘default’ home spot it can’t get out of its head.
Could that be accomplished by editing the geoclue.conf file?
Maybe the damned spot is coming from where it thinks the mobile tower is. It depends on which sources of location information you have enabled in the .conf file. So if you had enabled only GPS and mobile tower information and it doesn’t yet have a fix from the GPS, perhaps it is falling back to the much coarser location estimate based on the mobile tower. I don’t think you will find the answer in Macbeth though.
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The default spot it likes to settle on is about 50km from my actual location. I haven’t got the slightest clue as to why it would pick this location.
I did have a look at my geoclue.conf, though. And I noticed that the ‘modem-gps’ entry is set to ‘false’. Is this supposed to be this way? It probably is unrelated to the weird defaulting to Zoetermeer, but I do wonder why it is set this way.
Ah. Somebody answered my geoclue.conf question in another thread: it switches off the GPS antenna build into the modem. The L5 uses a seperate GNSS receiver.