i am one of those taking the l5 out seeing that its not usable and returning it till the next round .
last time i was beginning to warm to idea that i can use it as my daily drive. this was largly thanks to flare the signal alternative.
anyhow, now i took my l5 out of the drawer again with the hope of trying again to be surprised and indeed i was surprised - flare does not work on my fully updated l5
any advice??
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What does “doesn’t work” mean, and what version are you running?
EDIT: FWIW, it works fine on my L5
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For me, the way I see it based on the Social Dilemma video, what everyone thinks and believes is for sale. Accordingly, what I think and believe is for sale too. So, it makes sense that I might never feel like the Librem 5 was ready to be a daily driver, even if I wanted to, because what I was thinking and feeling was already for sale. Even if I don’t use Social Media, their AIs work based on world models that reportedly build “shadow profiles” on the people who aren’t using the Social Media computed based on the interactions of the people who do. I think that’s probably a simplified way of saying that the AI has a world model and an understanding, but people do not agree upon the level of understanding in a machine yet.
So, regardless, when I think about how bad that problem is, I know that the solution is for me to use the Librem 5 as my daily driver even if it is not ready. Necessity breeds invention. When I first got my Librem 5, I used it as much as possible and as a result somehow forgot the unlock code to the nonfree phone I had before it, so my solution was to put that phone in a faraday cage and leave it for a month in the hopes that I would eventually remember the unlock code. Because I needed my phone for work, this forced me to struggle to learn how to use the Librem 5 for my work. I don’t really regret that experience at all.
It can also help if you have an in-person friend who uses a Librem 5 or PinePhone. Humans are social creatures. That way, you can each share what you learn and get an additive benefit. Maybe I’ll go try to download and try flare right now!
I also had issues with flare, but then I found a native signal app for ARM64:
his repository says he is no longer using signal
also it says about using it with a wayland - what does that mean?
Thank you I got it running - it is a bit blurry
I hear what you are saying and I am with you but…
waisting time on starring in a non-responsive screen, or looking at an external monitor that is connected to device and it simply comes on/off with no apparent reason or trying to open a web browser that is supposed to be adapted to the L5 and it closes as soon as you type something in or having a almost non-functional firefox on it - these things are just too much for daily life
the ironic thing is - against my better judgment I installled waidroyed - and I get a better interent experience from the borwser on waydroid than from the epiphany browser shipped with the L5
So yup most likely soon the L5 is returnning to the drawer
Maybe I’ll get the cheaper option of the Pine Phone?
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If you don’t like the Librem 5, I would imagine you’re not going to like the pinephone. The Librem 5 was made with PureOS mobile / Phosh built up alongside it as a decent software option while still allowing the user to install any OS that works.
PinePhone as I understand it was made without a dedicated OS in mind. The company spent less money on making the product and simply allowed the users to supply the software. So for example, I have one of the “non-Pro” pinephones (cheaper option) that I bought while waiting for the Librem 5, but I literally ran Phosh on it (which is software originally developed for PureOS).
The pinephone was basically a substantially worse iteration on the concept of Librem 5 that in my case would crash frequently. More recently as an experiment I tried GloDroid on there, which basically put Android on the PinePhone, and using that software (because Google has $$$$$) the experience was much snappier than the Manjaro Phosh that my PinePhone had on it prior to that. But then when I forgot to charge it, the OS became corrupted and would never again boot. So in the end it was still shoddy, like all my other experiences with the PinePhone.
But the PinePhone, like the Librem 5, is hackable. The user is free to do whatever they want to it, in a very real sense.
No worries - If you add the wayland arguments it will fix the bluriness:
Instructions here: Signal aarch64 Flatpak
You’ll notice under tips and tricks:
Tips & Tricks
- Signal will be blurry on phosh (pinephone, Librem 5) becacuse of Xwayland scaling. To fix, run with wayland using these arguments: --use-gl=egl --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland. Signal must be opened at least once in X11/Xwayland first (just by clicking the launcher) first.
- To add the above to the launcher shortcut: copy /var/lib/flatpak/app/org.signal.Signal/current/active/files/share/applications/org.signal.Signal.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications/ and change the Exec line to this: Exec=flatpak run org.signal.Signal --use-gl=egl --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland
- Use the View menu item to zoom out a few times. It makes Signal much less cramped.
- Ctrl+Shift+c will close the current conversation and reduce idle CPU usage significantly.
- Notification sounds and mic/camera usage can be enabled in settings.
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Wasn’t the I5 discontinued in 2013? (nyuk, nyuk, nyuk).
Thank you i appreciate your help i saw this but i am not clear about what does it mean?
what is the command i need to issue to which i provide the given arguments?
As a note on this topic, I was able to download and use flare on my Librem 5, but it only worked when I got it from flathub. The pureos flatpak did not allow me to link the device, possibly because it was an older version so maybe the Signal servers rejected it.
Edit: Apparently flare was visually appearing to work but the sent messages never actually sent, so nevermind I guess
Thanks.
I’m using the signal app recommended by @mel and it seems to work so that’s good enough for me.
My experience with Flare is it’s better when deactivating the option to receive messages when it’s not running. Otherwise the background process will silently stop working when the phone suspends. Sometimes get message about websocket errors.
Also that would often make it forget the link with my Signal account and I’d have to relink.
So I disable that and only launch Flare when I need to use it and it’s been reliable, both to send and receive messages. And so far I haven’t needed to relink though it’s only been two weeks since I last had to.//
- It’s telling you to copy the file:
/var/lib/flatpak/app/org.signal.Signal/current/active/files/share/applications/org.signal.Signal.desktop
to this location:
~/.local/share/applications/org.signal.Signal.desktop
- Then, open the new file you just copied. There will be a line starting with “Exec=“ - change that line to this:
Exec=flatpak run org.signal.Signal --use-gl=egl --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland
It’s been a while since I did it so this is untested (and I’m typing from my phone so hopefully there won’t be typos). You probably want to do:
sudo cp /var/lib/flatpak/app/org.signal.Signal/current/active/files/share/applications/org.signal.Signal.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/org.signal.Signal.desktop
Then, you can open up the new file using nano:
sudo nano ~/.local/share/applications/org.signal.Signal.desktop
Make the change by replacing the Exec line with the one above and then save the file.
If you haven’t used nano before, you should be able to save the file by pressing CTRL + X and then return to confirm the save.
Good luck!
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oh that is not straight forward
I don’t think I would ever get that
thank you!
Glad it helped! 
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yes it helps and I really appreciate your time and patience
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