Just received my phone. kind of unexpected.
Where do I find be the FAQ and other note worthy docs/ wiki?
Thanks
Congrats!
Official manual:
https://docs.puri.sm/Librem_5.html
Community wiki… some of which was written for the previous amber repo/software. (The current phones have upgraded to byzantium, which has precluded the need for some of the tips in the wiki):
You might also like this running thread:
For anything else that you can’t easily find by searching the forums, just ask. Someone might have an answer.
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Just don’t forget to update the software to be fully up to date before posting about an issue. That sometimes sorts issues out by “itself”. 
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I think I know what kind of answer you are looking for. I have my Librem 5 for three months and the transition away from my rooted Android phone took such a long time that I’m daily driving the Librem 5 for 2-3 weeks now.
What I did:
- Update everything!
- Get acquainted with Firefox and Web, set your privacy preferences. Web is good to go out of the box, but for Firefox, you probably want to install something like uBlock and also one of the extensions that change the User Agent of the browser so it presents itself as a mobile phone (mine is set to iPhone), to make web browsing better. Find out what each browser is good for.
- Connected via DAV to my nextcloud box to get my contacts and files across.
- Set up Waydroid (I need Android for my bank 2FA application). I created desktop shortcuts to start and stop the waydroid container, to make sure Android is very well dead when I don’t need it. I also created shortcuts directly to the Android applications on my desktop, so I don’t need to load the full Android “desktop” and load apps from there. I can also task switch waydroid apps from PureOS.
- I created Web App shortcuts using Web for Wikipedia and the city transit.
- I created a shortcut to call my girlfriend on the desktop. =)
- I added the Flathub repository to the store.
- Went through the settings app and adjusted everything to my liking. This should cover email, calendaring, etc…
- I installed the camera application from Purism git to get autofocus, etc (not sure you need this today)
- Install the BM818 tool to enable VoLTE. The voice quality is way better, at least for me.
- Added my city to Weather.
Apps:
- Blanket to make pleasant noises in the headphone when my girlfriend is in meetings.
- Confy is a lovely application to navigate conferences.
- I installed Drawing, just for the sake of testing it, but I don’t really need it.
- Added my RSS feeds to Feeds.
- Flatseal is nice to check the permissions of your packages.
- Fragments works well for torrenting.
- If you use reddit, you may want to have a look in Giara.
- I am a musician, so I use Metronome a lot.
- Lollypop is a good music player.
- Maps is awful. Use Pure Maps instead (less awful).
- Podcasts does what it is supposed to do. Nothing fancy, though.
- Shortwave is a great application to find radios and I’m having a ton of fun with it.
- Solanum is great to remind me to take breaks and I use it daily.
- If you like space stuff, Space Launch is fun!
Habits/issues/problems:
- Flare should have been my Signal client. However, the Librem 5 is my main phone and I still didn’t find a way to photograph the QR code and make Signal see it. =(
- The same problem I have with Telegram.
– In both cases, well, I just open Waydroid to check the message once or twice per day. - Foliate should have been my eBook reader, but it crashes on me whenever I open an ebook.
- Sometimes Feeds doesn’t open. Go to the terminal and kill it. It will be eating 100% CPU.
- BTW, if you see your home screen doesn’t scroll smoothly, probably some application is eating 100% CPU. Kill it if required, otherwise your battery will be gone fast.
- Unfortunately, the power bank I have and never used is now useful. However, if I am gone for up to 6h, I don’t take it and trust the phone. Mind though, that I am not a heavy smartphone user. I only use it for communication and to check information when required.
- I keep my screen rotation locked, otherwise unlocking the phone can be a struggle.
- Remember to reactivate your microphone when making phone calls. I almost always forget.
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Thanks for that summary Xeda. Cool to see one from a user who is using the Librem 5 as a daily driver. Just short additions to that:
The current Millipixels (camera app) from the repo has it by default now. No need to do that anymore. Also, at least for me, the current modem (Europe) came with VoLTE already enabled.
What issue do you have with Telegram? The desktop app from Flathub works really fine for me. It feels like completely optimized for mobile once it is scaled down a little bit in the Telegram app settings.
I am coming from a Cosmo Communicator. I just got so upset that, because of the SoC manufacturer, there will be no updates ever again (and Linux stuck in kernel 4.4), that, seriously, I hate changing phones. I hated when my former employer took my iphone 6 away, and then an iphone 8, seriously… how many perfectly functional phones will end up in the landfill?
So a couple of months back I found someone selling a new Purism in the Netherlands and didn’t think twice. It was a device shipped last November AFAIK.
My calls would always drop to 2G, and the voice quality was atrocious, especially when calling abroad. When I launched BM818, it would not allow me to enable it and also wouldn’t identify the modem model. So I launched it from the terminal and a quick push with sudo did the trick.
The desktop application works fine. But I don’t have another phone, so I never get to be able to configure the desktop application. When I was migrating to the Purism, my number got blocked (the code never appeared and my account is gone).
I may have expressed myself badly. I don’t manage to run Signal with Flare just because I don’t have how to photograph the QR code that is displayed by the application in Android.
Maybe it will work with Telegram (no need for QR codes), but I will only be able to tell when (if) I manage to get my account unlocked.
I am happy with the Librem 5. I don’t need a doomscroll device or a pocket video game. I need a device to communicate and access/keep some kinds of data with me. I only watch long youtube videos, so that I do at home. I hate playing with touch screens. I got rid of Instagram after it became full of shorts and crap, and I got rid of WhatsApp just before the data merger with Facebook.
And may the headphone jack be blessed forever and ever.
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Is a way to do so. My way was a dedicated TAN generator (where I put my physical bank card directly in). The positive: I can use L5 for bank transactions everywhere in the world and still have real 2FA (you shouldn’t do that if the app runs on same device as you log in to do bank stuff - I guess you know).
You’ve got a cool approach!
I only login to my bank from my Qubes OS laptop and a disposable VM there. But the stupid 2FA application is mandatory.
I upgraded it a while back and it completely stopped working - it now mandates root and it will just not run if it detects LineageOS. I restored the previous version from my backup.
AFAIK, plan B if I refuse to use the Android/iOS app is to get a physical token. But that would be pain.
anyway - I don’t want to derail the thread =)
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If you use reddit, you may want to have a look in Giara.
Have you tried Headlines? I’ve looked at both and am curious how they compare.
thank you all and especially @amarok.
I knew the wait would be worth it, but forgot to bookmark the places you recommend.
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I haven’t. I’m not a heavy user of reddit.
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