Unboxing the Purism Librem 5 Evergreen

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Peertube link is here if someone wants an alternative to YT - https://devtube.dev-wiki.de/videos/watch/66ea3360-2b2a-4e3e-8796-de7ae271ac1b

Haven’t watched yet but excited to see Linmobs take!

Edit: Written thoughts here - https://linmob.net/2021/01/28/purism-librem5-first-impressions.html sharing so more can see this comment the following comment for discussion:

I really suggest the Purism team to package up all libhandy/GTK apps that are beyond a “WIP” state and add them to the amber-phone repo. Maybe the community can help out here with a few instructions.

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One question remain: Who at Purism is the chess fan?

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I think it has more to do with which games were adaptive at the time we did the initial selections for the base image. There are of course many flashier games now like supertuxkart, but that requires hundreds of megs of space which would not only take up more space on the phone itself, but would also make all of our images we flash a lot larger.

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Should have gone with AisleRiot and Reversi. :slightly_smiling_face:

Congratulations, @linmob! Soon you’ll have two of them!

Edit: You might find these links useful:



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He mentioned Gentoo toward the end of the video. I was going to comment on the YT video that we almost have a Gentoo image available for the Raspberry Pi (3 or 4), and it’s a good introduction to the distro if you have one available (uniform hardware, precompiled image, good way to dip your toes in).

Unfortunately, google has decided not to let me sign in on account of my browser not being on their whitelist. Not sure how that isn’t an anti-trust issue… They claim it’s for security, but that’s obviously BS: they still let me sign in to a throwaway account from my ancient phone (with known rootkits), and Falkon is using their Blink engine. Also, I have 2 factor auth enabled on the account. Anyway, guess that will make moving away from spytube easier.

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Thank you for that tip!

I have added another footnote to my blog post this morning and will add another one after this.

With PureOS, now that I think about it more, there are some obvious omissions:

  • An official getting started page preinstalled as a web app, that lists helpful links like the ones @amarok just supplied;
  • making some of these unnecessary - in my testing, libevolution makes contact sync available, evolution itself (which I use on my PinePhone, btw, seems unnecessary), so preinstall it,
  • add a few apps: GNOME Maps 3.38 is a fine, basic maps app, EOG 3.38 and Lollypop are obvious additions that make the phone seem more competent.

Remember: People are unbelievably lazy, I witness that on social media daily when I get asked whether I have made video on $topic, when it’s still on the first page of my channels. So don’t expect them to figure things out, they have to be in place or and if that’s not possible, provide access to that information on the home screen.

Also, while I am here: I would love to add a PureOS column to my App List https://linmobapps.frama.io, but given that I have an enormous backlog of Apps I need to run and then add, I won’t get to it soon and would appreciate contributions.

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the channel is here > https://invidious.snopyta.org/channel/UCR-_DvrwKkk3rpQbzCRFHOw

L5 unboxing for EU instance > https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=5WdnPw537nU

good stuff :+1:

is it on lbry dot tv yet ?

yes it is

channel > https://open.lbry.com/@linmob:

L5 unboxing > https://open.lbry.com/@linmob:3/unboxing-the-purism-librem-5-evergreen:e

FYI > https://github.com/lbryio/lbry-desktop/releases

No longer supporting 32 bit windows

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I tried to nudge Purism in that direction, but from the response there it seems they either don’t feel onboarding to be important or that it’s already good. I don’t understand it.

Are you aware of the librem5-goodies package? It contains this:

I actually enjoy playing chess so I’m OK with it and actually hope it’s a good quality game version!

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There’s also this Librem 5 manual, which is mentioned in the Quick Start guide that ships with the phone:

https://docs.puri.sm/Librem_5.html

I’m guessing many recipients will not even look at it.

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Thank you for your review / unboxing!

I am also interested in what you think of the phone after some days or weeks of usage. :slight_smile:

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https://tracker.pureos.net/w/pureos/mobile_optimized_apps/
https://tracker.pureos.net/w/pureos/3rd-party_mobile_optimized_apps/

We have a Librem 5 User Guide application preinstalled, or at least it’s on my own phone and I believe it’s part of the default install.

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All that said, the initial suite of pre-installed applications was set probably a year ago, based on what worked well at that time. A lot has changed since then so it might be time to revisit our default applications. The challenge will be to balance that with having a relatively small footprint for the install image.

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Solution: have a selection window on first boot - what to install on next update (that should be done/recommended at first boot, asap-ish, anyway). Add to that what @dos hinted at, getting rid of the mandatory apps (metapackage).

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I like the fact that the store keeps the verified adaptive apps separate from the entire software repo. This is probably more useful than installing a bunch of apps by default (except for the ones necessary to the functioning of the phone and its hardware).

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Well, sounds cool, but I never noticed it on any screenshot or list. (e.g. here or here).
Maybe I just don’t see it.
But it’s good if it’s intended to be there and you’ll revisit at some point :slight_smile:

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This is incredibly important, because the default Gnome Software application is essentially full of applications that won’t fit. Therefore a new user who tries to install applications will quickly get frustrated (I know I did) as all their attempts result in non-adaptive apps that give them a bad experience.

The applications we show in PureOS Store are ones that we feel would give the user a good experience on the screen while still allowing more advanced people to access the larger suite of software either through the search function or of course through apt on the command line. I’d rather show a handful of apps that work well, than hundreds of apps that don’t.

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