My Librem 5 is on the way. I think it will be a justified purchase. Thanks for your honest comments in another post so that I have a better expectation on how it performs.
I am asking because I saw quite a number of members said that they had to re-flash the OS for various reasons, and I remember one said that the disk was too full to upgrade so that they have to switch to boot from SD card.
If I didn’t read the documentation, I might insert a sim card when power is on, too.
I know different people have different usage patterns and there is no one-size-fits-all advice, so please don’t feel like I am asking for your advice and will come back to blame you if it doesn’t work for me. I just love listening to stories and learn from them, and hopefully will save me from destroying the phone.
Know whether you want to use LUKS (disk encryption) or “plain” (unencrypted) - because it isn’t really easy to switch between them without a reflash. I recommend the former (use LUKS).
Something to consider a bit in advance is, how are you going to handle your files - which ones on the internal eMMC, what goes to SD card and how/where do you back up. The first two is about storage space and what files need a bit more speed, the latter is about how do you connect to your backup option and if you need to get some service set up for that. And maybe think about if you are going to (can you?) save everything on L5 or need a way to move files somewhere easily. It’s good to have a plan for these, as these choices will likely be something user doesn’t want to change often (have them just work) and getting them to run as intended from the start also gives a bit of direction for the rest (how much space you have to use). This is not to say that these can’t be done later on, but it’s better to do these early.
When I attempted to dismantle the phone with a screwdriver for fun to prove I can, believing that I would not damage it, I discovered that the M.2 style modem and wifi cards in the back – although it is very cool that they are removable – are held on by wires that need to be removed carefully. If you pull on the wire until its connector comes off of the modem / wifi card – without care for how much you pull to make sure it comes off – in my case it sometimes rips off a little tiny part of the modem with it instead of detaching normally.
…Then you have to buy another modem. The Librem 5 is awesome and so that’s totally a thing you can do, but it’s a little sad to need to do that. I put a new modem in mine and now it works fine again.
People say Librem 5 battery doesn’t last long enough. But you can order more batteries, buy a $10 battery charger from Jeff Bezos or maybe from someone less villainous, and then rotate batteries. If you remove the battery while a Librem 5 is running, as long as the Librem 5 is connected to power it does not damage the device. As a result, you can take a Librem 5 while it’s still on, plug it into charger, pop the battery out, pop a new full battery in, disconnect from the charger, and walk away and have Librem 5 at 90% battery ready to go despite it being about to die seconds before. If you create a habit system of doing this, you never have to plug in your phone, it’s probably better than fast charging or long battery life. When on the go you can bring a battery and swap by powering off and on. However, extensive battery swapping will cause the backplate of the Librem 5 to eventually rip apart due to its being molded soft plastic. Ordering a 3D printed version of the backplate file – a file public provided by Purism in the spirit of open hardware – can get a backplate that is indestructible and will not tear apart.
On rare occasions it will stop receiving text messages due to a programming error. Don’t fret, it’s not the end of the device, just go into command line with the Console / Terminal app and use sudo mmcli -m any –messaging-list-sms and it will show a few messages stuck as receiving mode with a number per message. For example it might be 4 and 5 in this status. In such case, then run sudo mmcli -m any –messaging-delete-sms=4 for 4, or the same with 5 for five, and that will kill the stuck messages. Then after a few minutes it recovers and everything starts receiving again. I also like to use an SMS provider that snoops on my texts and receives a second copy of the messages to their server independent of the Librem 5, so that I can log into that (even via the Librem 5 in a browser) and check for any missed messages. But usually only MMS is missed with my provider and not SMS.
When the phone rings, instead of immediately answering, enable the mic/camera switch so that the other side can hear you talk – don’t just answer the phone. You’d be surprised how much previous phones don’t train us to do this.
Social Media and the people are almost a conscious system. When you use Librem 5 as your only phone instead of Android or iOS, the conscious system will try to hurt you. It helps if you have an in-person friend or two who also make the switch to Librem 5, and if you have lots and lots of money. In my case, after four days trying to use the Librem 5 then I forgot my unlock code to my Android and had all the backups disabled, and got stuck in trouble mode fighting uphill to seriously use my Librem 5 as my phone since I didn’t have a fallback anymore.
In my case the hard drive 32GB always seems to get full. My solution was eventually to buy a Librem 5 Liberty machine where I burn money for a version with 128GB storage, and larger 4GB ram. The larger storage is very readily apparent - I have never filled it up, floating between 60-80GB for years.
I am not much of a video game person, but I’ll tell ya I was really happy to see my favorite game on my smartphone. I keep debating requesting it be added to the official documentation because it is such a selling point for the phone but am unsure if it warrants that level of attention.
That I ordered it when Star Trek the next generation was still on the air practically and by the time it arrived Star Trek Picard had finished the final season.
For the tinkerer though, checking the firmware version of each component is something that might be of interest.
Purism would have to speak to their processes and whether that is possible.
The most visible component would be the modem and the modem firmware is in the modem, not the phone itself. So if the modem is married up with the phone as part of the fulfillment process then it depends on the processes relating to the modem.
Something I recently learned with regards to managing storage is that you need to run apt clean on a semi-regular basis. I ran that command for the first time after 3 years dailying the L5 and I freed up over 3 GB of precious space.
Maybe I was spoiled by other debian based distros that managed it in the background, so it took me so long to even think of running it.
My advice is do a search of the forums about how to conserve space. I keep the built in emmc for system and apps only and store all personal files on an SD card and run into no issues with space.
“What are the things you wish you knew when you setup your Librem 5 the first time?”
What do I wish I had known when I set up my Librem 5?
Nothing really. It was already set up with the basic, default applications, and the gestures to access and control things were mostly intuitive and/or easy to learn. The features and settings were fairly straightforward and familiar to me as a Linux Mint user.
The device I received was more or less what I expected it to be: a combined mobile phone and Linux computer, albeit a bit rough around the edges in the telephony department. Fortunately the software has improved a lot since I received it in November 2020.