What functions are important for the Librem 5 as a daily driver?

In case people don’t follow that link - the software implementation of power management just isn’t sophisticated enough yet. The battery life can be much improved through software updates alone once the power management is polished, i.e. it will get better. Just give it time.

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Well I’m evergreen so I got 7-8 months ahead of me before I realistically receive the L5 . I just really hope its daily driver ready by then . time will tell the tale I suppose.

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Besides the obvious basics, following:

  • encrypted messaging of some form.
  • multi-factor/totp authenticators

We rely on Signal as a major portion of our communications at my place of work. We’re small and agile enough to adopt something else if it’s cross-platform.

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you have several options here:

  • Use chatty and own xmpp server - standard c2s encryption will cover your needs as you own server and encryption keys
  • Use chatty on shared xmpp service with omemo (lurch - signal-like encryption)
  • Use 3d party messenger eg fractal+matrix or anything else

for totp yet need to see how smartcard will work but in general you can use oauthtool for that.

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I think software improvement of the battery will be better in the future. But i think it will be not so good like in other smartphones because it’s full linux and the hardware. So I think 6 hours standby with 3 hours use time is possible. So you need 2-3 extra Batterypacks like Todd Weaver sad to the linux gamer. He needs 2 Batteries for the day, i think that’s not the true expect 3x3500mA batteries for the hole day :slight_smile: or with the 2000mA even more!

dunno, my jolla lasted for 5-7 days on 2100 battery. and jolla is linux userspace on android linux kernel.
Now with latest update it won’t last more than 2-3 days sigh

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power management, in particular, is pre-historic across Linux. This is why the Ubuntu phone failed, and essentially every other Linux phone in the past. The framework (not just power management) crucial for the mobile platform simply didn’t exist and making it is very difficult. This is why what Purism is doing is ground breaking. They are doing the work and this will be beneficial for all other Linux mobile efforts.

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It is still long enough to get you annoyed by the person ahead of you in the market checkout line.

From the bug reports and commits, it looks like Purism and NXP are working on the power management for the i.MX 8M, so I’m not sure how much this will benefit other Linux devices using other processors. However, I assume that Purism will also have to work on power management in GTK+Phosh, so that might get wider usage.

It took years to get Android’s wakelocks into mainline Linux, so it isn’t easy to make fundamental changes to make Linux more energy efficient.

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I hope that progressive web app will run smoothly.
On my LG G4, with Firefox, many applications do not work at all (Uber, MS Teams…), and the others are very slow, difficult and painful to use (Google maps, Instagram, Twitter…).

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For me, my requirements are a bit different:

• It must be able to switch to a full desktop interface within the phone’s main screen, with small enough interface elements that large programs like Blender and GIMP can work properly, as occurs when I run X11 XSDL with Linux Deploy on my Android OnePlus One. It must not have the screen cutouts of the Aspen batch, which would severely hinder this. I made a post about it, and apparently such cutouts were not going to exist in the near future, so I expect this part to be solved by the time Evergreen is released. Maybe it is already solved, but I have not yet found good-quality images to verify.

• Halfway-decent back camera support is a must for me to not need to have my old phone constantly booted and on-hand.

• The phone must be able to support USB devices and charging at the same time, so I can use an external battery or charger for long desktop-style usage sessions. Currently, on my OnePlus One, I can only get through a bit more than a single class working like this.

• Additionally, the one mobile app that is very important to me but does not have a sufficient desktop version is the Reddit client RedReader which has offline caching of posts and images, which is very important for both browsing on my slow mobile internet and for backup purposes in case a post gets deleted. This is not an issue for Purism to deal with, but I figured I would mention it anyway.

We need at least basic integration with Anbox to support Android apps. Otherwise this revolutionary phone will be unusable for a decade at least for daily use.

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… for certain people. Yes. For me? No.

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There are a tons of FLOSS apps made for Android, it will took an huge and long effort to port all on Linux but relatively simple to help Anbox work properly on Linux. Further there are some apps who is not free but nearly mandatory to work with your bank account, healthcare system, bureaucratic stuff etc. These apps could work securely in an isolated environment like Anbox container where they can’t do any big damage or data leaks.

I hear you but my primary concern is not security, rather JVM overhead - based on my experience with Jolla and its alien-dalvik. Jolla was my daily driver for more than 5 years without a single android app (and dalvik enabled).

If android apps worked out of the box there were no incentive ever to switch away from them and to develop alternatives. If ANBOX is your basic and ultimate requirement for a daily phone, the Librem might be a bit of a disappointment for you…

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I disagree. In line with that reasoning, if Android and Apple phones worked out-of-the-box (which they do), there would be no incentive to ever switch to alternatives such as the Librem 5 (which I would say is false).

The incentive to switch is ownership, privacy, and security. I would argue that, once in a final state, a lot of people would be interested in that type of phone. However, what a lot of people would not be able to do is switch all at once. I see Anbox as a bridge while apps are developed, rather than a permanent install on your phone.

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And you won’t have any of that when people run WhatsApp on anbox, which is what they will do – if it is possible.

Given the specs of the L5, it is going to be just about OK to run native apps. If people run, say, k9mail through an emulator (yes, I know anbox’s performance claims…) they will rightfully exclaim that the user experience on the Librem is a pile of manure (aka sh**).

But let us just conclude that we agree to disagree here. :pray:

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I wouldn’t say it would negate everything, so yes, agree to disagree. The great thing about freedom is that we can each use it as we see fit. I do look forward to seeing what apps turn up natively on the Librem 5.

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Find my phone feature would be nice.

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