What is the quality of the latest L5 updates?

Hardware Librem 5
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The L5 is now my lifeblood and as a daily it has been an amazing tool. I am a little leery of Purism updates, if for no other reason than their small team and the nature of the gargantuan task of building hardware + the essential software stack necessary for a smartphone to function as such being a monstrous commitment. I stopped my updates a few months ago with the hope of upgrading only at significant increments where I can control the upgrade process → rollback process if necessary, and it is about time for an update once again I think.

However, I have read over the last 4 or 5 months the occasional murmurs of issues with updates on the L5. Questions:

  1. Do the latest updates have any issues? I am not seeing anything on the forums that indicates there would have been any recently.

  2. Over the last 4 or 5 months, has anyone experienced issue with upgrades such as call related issues, hibernation issues and texting issues?

Any feedback is appreciated.

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No issues on last update, moreover some fixes.

It was an issue on Core(Lnx) making a lot issues everywhere, however is fixed on last Core update.

L5 still lack some crucial acceleration to work like butter but WIP.

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Let’s say, nothing that we care too much about. The last core update was the most important one we needed. I had a stability issue after over 2 weeks of uptime, but that was something different I guess and I don’t expect it any time soon again.

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I’ve been happy with the latest updates. 1 thing I noticed after the latest kernel update is that my Bluetooth headphone will connect, but I cannot play any audio (and everything is greyed out in Sound settings). Since I’ve not heard anyone on these forums mentioning this issue, I suppose it might be a fluke on my side (maybe it doesn’t currently like my Sony WX-1000H :person_shrugging:)

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I want to say thank you to every single one of you. Your feedback is incredibly important and very much appreciated.

Thank you.

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I’ve had no problems with updates. In fact, I had multiple problems and they are now solved:

  • several slowdowns in convergence mode have been resolved
  • I can now surf the Web and use all applications in convergence mode, everything works fine. I just need to configure my screens in “mirror” mode.
  • when I received several images by text message, the text message application stopped working and I had to delete all the messages in memory so that I could start receiving my text messages again. This problem seems to have been solved.
  • the web app didn’t work or didn’t work properly. Now they work fine.

(Did you have these bugs on your L5?)
In short, I have the impression that one of the only remaining bugs on my L5 is the hotspot that stops when I download videos. Updates are, in my eyes, really a source of very, very great progress these days.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

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I tried to look up the model to see how different it is from the one I have but could not find its specifications. Sony WH-1000XM3 works fine. If I had the issues that you describe, I would try pairing it anew with bluetoothctl. I have just tested and can confirm that a guide for pairing a keyboard worked for my headset too. I just skipped the passkey step.

$ uname -r
6.6.0-1-librem5
$ dpkg -s linux-image-6.6.0-1-librem5 | grep Version
Version: 6.6.34pureos1~byz1
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8

Sorry, that was a weird lapse on my side. I actually have the same headphone you have, and the same kernel installed.

I’ve gone through the steps of removing and pairing the headphones multiple times:

$ bluetoothctl
remove AB:CD:EF:01:23:45
scan on
pair AB:CD:EF:01:23:45
connect AB:CD:EF:01:23:45

The output and the headphone confirm they are paired and connected. But I cannot play any audio and the sound settings are greyed out.

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When I tap the paired headset in the Bluetooth panel in the settings, there are two buttons in the pop-up. The first one redirects to the sound settings panel. I assume that the presence of the button means that the headset is recognised as a sound device because a keyboard and a mouse have a similar button in their pop-ups leading to respective other panels of the settings.

In the sound settings panel, I would expect at least something to be clickable instead of everything being greyed out. There should be a drop-down menu where you should be able to select a sound output device. Even when no external devices are connected, I see three output devices in that drop-down. When the headset is connected, I can select it there as the output device. Otherwise, the sound goes elsewhere.

Is your user in audio group?

$ LC_ALL=C id purism
uid=1000(purism) gid=1000(purism) groups=27(sudo),29(audio),44(video),101(systemd-journal),106(render),108(netdev),110(feedbackd),124(lpadmin),1000(purism)

Can you select the connected headset as the “Sound Card” in alsamixer?

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You know what, strangest thing, but when I just connected my headphones for the umpteenth time to respond to you, it worked. I have no idea why, but you got to love this device :sweat_smile:

For posterity: the only thing I did differently this time was I ran the alsamixer command on the CLI, could not find my headphones listed there, and then ran bluetoothctl connect AB:CD:EF:01:23:45. That’s it.

And thank you, your willingness to troubleshoot this with me is much appreciated :smiley:

After disconnecting and connecting again…

The problem reappears. I am now looking at the errors in the btmon utility.

Also, probably good to know, I’m still using the old Redpine bluetooth card.

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Mine is the newer SparkLAN card. I observe that WH-1000XM3 name changes to LE_WH-1000XM3 after pairing. May it mean that the connection uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)? Purism published the following claim about BLE on Redpine.

Redpine documentation claims it works but empirical testing indicates otherwise.

I would expect the headset being capable of connecting to devices without BLE support, but I am unsure whether it would attempt to if Redpine module advertises BLE support.

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12

Thanks for your reply. Indeed, the Redpine does not support Bluetooth LE.

I’ve dived into the output of btmon. The error is:

= bluetoothd[3164]: profiles/audio/media.c:endpoint_reply() Endpoint replied with an error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply         3079.793638
= bluetoothd[3164]: profiles/audio/a2dp.c:select_cb() Unable to select a valid configuration                                           3079.793869

Apparently, this means the A2DP sink profile is unavailable. A search led me to the Arch Linux wiki on Bluetooth headsets. They have a lot of tips, but 2 stood out to me:

  • You can (sometimes) trigger the availability of this profile by using the Play/Pause control on your headphones.
  • You can edit /etc/bluetooth/main.conf and under [General], set MultiProfile=multiple.

    […] This may help with headsets that support A2DP as well as Headset audio.

What seems to work now:

  1. I start my headphones.
  2. I get the error.
  3. I bluetoothctl disconnect <device>.
  4. I tap the Play/Pause button on the headphones.
  5. Success.

It’s tedious, but at least it works :person_shrugging:

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