If Todd Weaver’s daughter is supposed to use it as an alternative to the mainstream smartphones, we can expect everyone to use the Librem 5 right?
(no offense Todd)
Edit reason: Name spelling
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The goal is to reach the point where everyone, regardless of saviness, will be able to use it. I don’t think it’s going to be there on day 1, but should be pretty close by the time the later batches release in the summer.
You can see here that the early batches will still primarily rely on the terminal for updating and installing applications.
On another note, I certainly imagine Todd Weaver’s children are pretty tech savvy.
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Thanks for pointing that out. You’re probably right. Unlike the Weaver family, for the safe bet I’m going to wait for the first reviews to come in hoping the reviewers to ease my cognitive dissonances to then jump on the Evergreen hype train.
By that time the Evergreen slots will be taken, a Fir + it will be.
Thanks for that.
I will look into Nextcloud.
At the mo I use proton and signal for email and messaging, but will look into librem one as well. I imagine they will be optimised so to be a doddle to run on librem 5.
Thanks for your explanations. I’m afraid I’m more Mr Bean than Mr Robot!
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hello @f1v3 and welcome to the Purism forums !
you can replace the battery only with tools (you need a cross screwdriver to detach the back and take the battery out after you carefully “detach” it from the power-line.
the phone must be in a poweroff mode while you atempt this. you also need to be stationary in order to not lose the screws when you take them out.
hot-swapable means you just pop-out the battery after you SLIDE the back-cover out. it doesn’t require ANY tools just your hands and a second charged battery of the same type.
if you aren’t too bothered by the not-hot-swapable nature of the L5 battery you can also use what i call a middle-ground solution.
bare with me please. i will atempt to explain.
first > Librem 5 battery spec : built in or replaceable?
second > Feature request: hardware switch for system power
third > Question about long term battery life
so my solution might not work since i don’t have my L5 yet (duh!) but in theory it should work if you get a micro-usb to usb-c adapter or if you have one already. if it’s too much then you just get a power bank.
for portable power reserves (in my car) i use a “big” solar chargeable acid-lead all-in-one jack-of-all-trades battery. (12v @ 7Ah i think it is) can power 4 led 4w(12v@300lumes) LED e27bulbs for 6hrs(more or less depending on the charge level). also has radio/usb-ports etc. chinese but hey !
i hope it’s not been too much all at the same time for you and i hope you’ll make the right choice for your needs …
PS: i’m a Blackberry Q10 user currently (yes it has a hot-swapable battery and i have an extra 2 left just in case + the portable-mini charger i linked to above (just in case for ultra portability).
… but it’s not open-hardware/free-software friendly !
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Hi, and thanks for the info.
This is a very friendly community!
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None of the several Android phones that I am using on my working days are of my ownership neither is so that I am paying its carrier monthly fee. I am just the one of two to use them there, only one phone in my hands daily, or sometimes one in the morning and the other one in the afternoon (but I use five of them altogether). Those that want to reach me right away they know exactly which one I am carrying with. @Edwin, sorry for the intro, but now let me see: Did I ever installed Google Pay? Nobody is doing that for me either because those that are paying my phone bills doesn’t care about “my phones” as long as I am reachable. No I newer installed Google Pay yet it is already update-able over its Google Superstore. The whole infrastructure that Google invested into is already there for me … because I need it … right, as they know better than myself what I need. So it looks like I am illiterate as well, isn’t it? In short, @f1v3, what you choose to install on Librem 5 will be there when needed … but not to forget something important that comes with Linux OS: option to remove things (apps) that you don’t need is always there and in simple steps as giving just three words (commands) over the terminal shell: apt remove applicationname or apt purge applicationwithoutplease (Debian based when in charge as su/root owner) but some graphical equivalent may be used as well. With Librem 5 I would call myself: user/gentleman (and admin/officer when I wish/need/respect myself to be one) of my own. Therefore: Thanks Purism for all the work you’ve done so far!
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just FYI i am currently in line for a couple L5s so please disregard that reply i wrote in one of the links above about me not beeing interested. that was just me beeing undecided. proof that you CAN back-off if you want to …
Being well aware of all the positives Purism is bringing to the table here with regards to right of ownership, no bloatware et cetera. I was merely addressing the fact that one should not be ‘scared off’ by Linux or programming aspects when Librem 5 is an option and you’re supporting this great concept. As @taylor-williamc pointed out, the future iterations are likely to work for everyone, that is a truly remarkable achievement and sincerely hoping this will be a game changer to break the duopoly on the current market
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Hi and welcome 
Fellow non-techie here and I can assure you you’ll be fine.
That’s the most important part and it looks like you’ve got that down pat PureOS is based on Debian so you should be able to pull from their repositories in desktop mode (at least that’s my understanding of it right now (?)) and I think you’ll be pleased with not only Free as in Freedom editors (like libreoffice) but also tools lspecifically for writers like manuskript. Others here have already mentioned about the battery and also the terminal. I haven’t really anything to add to that except for getting around the terminal is a lot easier once you’ve learned the basics …from puppets! 
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Not a writer, but Manuskript looks quite cool.
Here is the homepage, for a better view of the features and interface:
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makes you wonder - how in the world was the Bible written without “Manuskript”
According to the shipping announcement “long term software support” is included as of the Evergreen release. What exactly does that mean?
Does it imply that the Librem 5 will then be a privacy/security/freedom respecting smartphone out of the box and terminal GNU/Linux command line editing scenarios will be a thing from the past?
Reference the above link by @reC to “Introducing friends to GNU/Linux” and specifically the comment made by @hippi makes sense to all potential customers for Librem 5 to get onboard and make them forget about the other OS.
> “a newbie will feel better if everything works out of the box and they dont even need to touch anything thats conf/install related other than the updates… newbies will discover a well-crafted stuff thats alive, and they dont need to find out how to make their wishes happen, and how to bring alive whatever stuff thats not fine as it stands…”
If by the time of the Evergreen/Fir release Pure OS store and Librem 5 have indeed developed to that point, there’s no longer any argument for to not adopt the concept, it would be the best chance for Purism and the wonderful community to get people switch to Pure OS based devices, offering the basics and go and learn from that point forward to discover the benefits of having a Linux based device.
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Hi f1v3
Don’t worry about what they say about the Linux learning curve. There is a curve, but let us guide you towards the easiest route. There are many flavors of Linux. Some of them are easy, and some are insane. If you start easy, you will be able to change over to all the others if you so wish. You will be lost for choice with all the possibilities, so let me just tell you where I wish I had started knowing what I know now…drumroll please… Linux Mint Cinammon. I’m not saying it is the best, I’m just saying that I think it is the easiest start and a darn good choice anyway.
PureOS seems to be a reasonably easy start, however… BUT I seriously don’t like the desktop that comes with Pure OS and will replace it with KDE as fast as I can If I was to use it for a computer! Sorry, I’m just being honest!
https://tracker.pureos.net/w/pureos/tips/install_kde/
Perhaps for a phone, the default desktop is actually the better choice.
Whichever system you start with (and there are Many) if you have a computer to try it on, and feel very unsure of what you are doing here is how I would do it.
- Go to the Linux download website of your choice and get the ISO file
- Read the instructions (probably given somewhere) to make a live USB from the ISO
- Make the Live USB
- So as not to endanger your current system, either clone your hard drive or physically remove it and put a new one in - that way any amateur mistakes can be fixed with no more hacking skills than a Philips screwdriver!
- Install and get used to Linux. Download Word Processors like Libre office or Install book authoring software like Scrivener (Scrivener Isn’t easy to install If you don’t know Linux yet, but it is my favorite authoring software). Easiest install by far is now obtained from https://wayoflinux.com/blog/scrivener-returns
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Thanks,
looks like the L5 might be compatible with the nexdock2, too?
That would be ace!
If I got myself up to speed, linux wise, I would be able to work out and about, keep the phone charged, and not have repeating technology on two devices.
Then all I would need is some librem/nextcloud-y thing to save my work live to a safe place so I never lose anything!
Total success!
x
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x indeed !
i dare not say since nobody has a L5 review out yet. we can speculate and if you want to do that be sure to get friendly with the forum search tool. you’d be blown away at what you find 
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“Long term software support” means that the software on Evergreen will be finalized enough that they will support whatever that batch ships with for some number of years (I forget what the standard is, but I believe it’s 5 years). Software on earlier batches may be tweaked or replaced within a short period of time (weeks or months), but by the time Evergreen ships, Purism will know what works best and will focus on keeping it up to date versus making sure it works.
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Thank you @Gavaudan for clarifying.
Still eager to know as to whether the Evergreen and/or Fir versions are expected to be rolled out without the need for terminal/GNU/Linux command line editing.