That’s an added complication though. Who knows what that might have done.
You could be right even so.
I think the topic title captures the single biggest weakness - if people want to be able to use the Librem 5 as an actual phone.
The bm818-tools package is just a convenience GUI tool that runs AT commands on the modem.
You can run the same commands on any other distro as long as it ships mmcli or minicom: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/docs/community-wiki/-/wikis/Tips%20&%20Tricks#executing-an-at-command-on-the-modem.
Edit: Point is that the VoLTE status is not stored on at the OS level.
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You don’t seem to understand the issue that I wrote about, nor its vast significance it has to Purism’s business model. Ok, finding the BM818 LTE driver and reinstalling it was no big deal for me. I am an Engineer. I have used Linux at work for decades now. I am good and have no unmet technical support needs on my Librem 5. I am comfortable with a bash prompt. I know how to troubleshoot using only a bash prompt. My Librem 5 is well maintained.
But let’s look at it from the viewpoint of the vast majority of the population, those who do not use Linux because no one they know uses it either and no one has ever taught them how to use it. Sure, anyone can use Linux if they want to put enough effort in to it. But for most people, it’s too far out of their mind and their interest levels to even bother. So let me say for them, what I am sure they say to themselves when they come here for support. “How do I get to a command line? What is this sudo I see? How can I find out what this command line is even doing? How do I get to the GUI for this?”. When I was new to Linux, I remember typing in the command lines character by character from the examples, including the characters that tell the user to insert his own variables here, and not knowing how to troubleshoot the resulting errors. These basics are stupid-easy, but need to be taught/learned. Most people don’t want to learn it.
So I am starting to rapidly lose respect for some others here who want to show off how smart they are by telling everyone here, how the command line should look to get a specific result. Ok, we get it. We bow to your greatness. Now get the f..k out (if you’re a developer who chose not to build a GUI and upstream it to the OS also). Are the Librem 5 users a private club for only the users of a language that few people in the population are willing to learn? How well does this bode for Purism’s future survival and financial growth? As someone myself who fits in to this private club, I am not saying this as an outsider. Is there anyone else here who understands just how niche the Librem 5 is, because neither Purism nor Purism’s developers ever choose to routinely add the GUIs that make Linux on the Librem 5 be as mainstream and easy to use for the average person, as Windows or Android? No one has even started on that kind of development in most cases. You either learn the command line and learn it well, or the Librem 5 is not for you. The irony is that Android is an implementation of Linux. But someone there has taken that Linux operating system and made it stupid-easy for any non-Linux user to use. Why did they do that? Because the target audience was not a small niche part of the population. Their target audience is everyone.
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To me Linux is too much subestimated. Linux is nothing, If it werent for the compiler which isnt Linux either. So “Linux” plain is a very evil and unethical term.
So what ever if you are a fancy engineer there is still a possibility of being super wrong. at least for me.
You are misunderstanding this situation: VoLTE is enabled by default and that the VoLTE setting is not stored at the OS level so users don’t need to reconfigure it every time.
It does seem like you’re reading too much into this and claiming that people are here trying to show off. My responses are generally terse because I don’t care too much to share many of my opinions on things so I participate here to provide technical guidance and help because I care about fixing issues people are having.
Purism probably would like to add more GUIs for people’s convenience but it can be expensive to design and build graphical tools. It’s not that they aren’t doing that – we recently got the PureOS Upgrade tool while the manual upgrade method still exists. Designing and building these tools is a give-and-take tradeoff and I think Purism is focused on the upcoming Librem 16.
Thankfully Linux has been getting a lot of attention and things are only improving. Purism is not the only organization making things better and they should not be. I appreciate them making improvements in the areas they are able to but they cannot do it alone.
Change does not happen overnight and in the video I linked, their most recent try is a lot more successful from the incremental improvements even in the last ~4-5 years.
Edit: Obligatory GNU+Linux because some forum members will chastise anyone that does not say this 
.
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While L5 WWAN support VoLTE, it need a audio volte profile which seems it is not supported yet. PA it has a VoLTE Perfil which i not sure if L5 it using. Just because Opensource Mobian do not support PA VoLTE this shouldnt mean that we are slaves to Mobian to not enable PA VoLTE profile just because mobian or pmos.
Also there are tons fixes and features passing on L5 which is obscure because no someone saying.. just because mobian it is obscure to user shouldnt mean we may same.
I don’t get it. @StevenR @gondolyr
Whether Purism just makes VoLTE happen automatically when VoLTE needs to, or provides a GUI that is installed out of the box and is user friendly, or makes you type shell commands and AT commands via minicom … makes no difference at all if the Librem 5 is blocked from the mobile network operator’s network.
My expectation is that we will soonish reach a point where all relevant countries have switched off 2G and have switched off 3G and hence VoLTE will be mandatory. So, at that point, it might as well be enabled by default, not requiring any user action or interaction or interface or package to install. But, again, that will achieve nothing if the Librem 5 is blocked from the network.
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T-Mobile announced the end of 4G on their network starting October of 2025. The re-farming of LTE spectrum space to 5G has started in some areas already. 4G will no longer exist on T-Mobile’s network by the beginning of 2028. I assume that goes for all of the T-Mobile MVNO companies also.
So on 4G, we’ve missed that boat anyway now when it comes to super easy modem configurations. After I installed PostmarketOS and then restored PureOS, adding the modem patch was required to get rid of the modem error icon. And the patch did work to get rid of that error.
The next question comes on how Purism will handle their 5G conversion. I am guessing that a new modem will be required. So when you install your new modem, will you need to run a bunch of command line instructions to make your new 5G modem work? Or will you just run a GUI to install the new modem drivers or better yet, build 5G drivers in to the OS on an upgrade of the OS? I am betting that there will be a complex set of command line instructions required.
With the end of T-Mobile 4G in the US, that’ll pretty much sink the Librem 5’s ability to be used as a phone in the US. Verizon already locks out Librem 5 users from their network. A lot of Awsim users are already unhappy with AT&T. What else is out there in the US? Maybe its time for Purism to get SIP services working well in the Gnome dialer on at least one digital network. Make something unique, that only works on Purism and other opensource phones.
Other than the fact that I made a deal with the devil when I got Google Voice on my Android phone, I am pretty happy with how a data-only connection is working out for me. Although my Android phones do have LTE and minutes associated with my account. I use literally zero minutes per month, despite making several phone calls every day. I never even come close to using up my 5GB of monthly data either. Apparently, data phone calls use very little data. And it is super convenient to control where my phone number calls to on the fly, without ever having to port my phone number to a different device. All of my phones ring when someone calls me. Whichever phone I answer is all the same.
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So maybe it’s time to begin to build a parallel free network (eg. Lora/lorawan/Wi-Fi HaLow (802.11ah))?
I’m sure the future of this mobile network will go more and more into a jail and bigmobs will force everyone to use only android and apple!
We should begin to consider it!
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The key would be to find a way to license a new communications service and to build out, the accompanying communications infrastructure. Right now, big business owns that whole game. There needs to be a way to keep them (big business) out and let something grow organically, like homes and businesses all deploying their own shared communications infrastructure on their own homes and businesses. If something like that were to displace some of the big incumbents, then the rules could be changed. Such a network could literally ban spying and advertising anywhere on their private network. But the LoRa networks would be too under powered. You need three to five watts of power to bridge areas where the signals would otherwise drop out.
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Thank you for your considerations, StevenR 
But personally I don’t believe in some law that force capitalists to work for us populations! Never happened in human history! Instead always works self solution and I would trust in our home made network instead of black box X(3,4,5,..)G commercial networks.
I contacted (months ago) the closest community from where I live to develop it but no answer till today! But I’ll continue to try… I don’t trust in no one commercial service (except Purism)!
Personally I’m just suffering because I miss GPU works but when It’ll be available I’ll begin to use my Librem 5 as daily driver!! (Please 
@carlosgonz and Others, do it ASAP, please!! I would be super happy to help you in reversing engineering GPU drivers but I’m not expert at all in it 
)
PS: Lora is slow but there’s Lora “upgraded” that’s much more faster 
Please see lorawan, Wi-Fi HaLow (802.11ah),…
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I am not sure how or why anyone would want or need to force anyone else to do any work for any population. The idea if you don’t approve of something is to refuse to participate in it. But the current Google/Apple/Microsoft ecosystems have all commercialized all of our communications mediums and implemented oppressive terms of service in to them before we knew what they were doing, or could effectively prevent them from doing it. The answer to reverse this is not to force anything. What we want to do is to create our own ecosystems that operate under rules that a majority of the people can agree upon. Then prevent those same business interests from entering or using our ecosystem, unless they can agree to our terms of service. The kind of spying that Google and Apple and Microsoft do routinely would be criminal if we had not agreed to their respective terms of service wherein we have given them permission to spy on us and to sell our information. These activities would be criminal if we had not agreed to allow them to do it. So, to prevent them from continuing to do these things, we create our own ecosystems from the bottom up (no Google nor Apple phones even). Then we state up-front that no one who enters our ecosystem is allowed to spy on anyone else, nor to sell their private information. At that point, if anyone including Google or Apple or Microsoft enters our ecosystem and proceeds to gather and sell any private information found there, then they have committed serious crimes. Without explicit permission it is illegal by existing statutes to gather and sell people’s private information. So through ostracism, we can demonitize Google and Apple and Microsoft, at least in the places where we spend all of our time and money. When done right, others will leave Google and Apple and Microsoft and spend all of their time and money in an environment where Google and Apple and Microsoft are also allowed to go, but where the law prevents them from doing anything invasive or that we don’t want them to do. In our environment, they are visitors, not kings. They can participate in, but not own the environment. No one is forced to do anything except to obey the same rules that apply equally to everyone else. Rule breakers are then kicked out and/or prosecuted if they violate the law.
When we erase Windows from a PC and install Linux, we are taking ownership of our personal information back (away from Microsoft). The idea needs to be to do the same thing to the whole internet, at least to the internet that we choose to use. If Microsoft chooses to crack in to your Linux PC because they want to spy on you, then they are in big trouble. We need to ostracise them from our information found anywhere on the internet. Do the same to Google and Apple. If we don’t give our permission, then they are forced by law to respect our privacy. The Librem 5 and the Liberty phone make it possible to have a mobile phone without giving away your right to privacy. But the rest of the internet has yet to learn to respect us also.
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You’re right, StevenR, 
I agree with you! But what can we do if not devices but network is under their control? Like we did buying Librem 5 avoiding Android and Apple, we’d do the same with a new, free network, don’t you?
What having Librem 5 but using their network with all our data under their total control? 
If someone with some money (maybe Purism) were to start a separate network, that would be a good start. The internet itself is open and free. If there were to be a network that we could log in to that has its own free terms and conditions while preventing the abuses, that would be the next step. A Librem 5 in such an environment could not be tracked anyway. An Android or Apple phone would have to be vigorously blocked on the server level in this environment, to disable tracking and spying from it. The phone owner is the victem, not the offender. But if Android and Apple phones can not be controlled at the server level, then they would have to be prohibited in this area. Renting cloud or server space for this service would cost some money. Within that space, people would rent space and sell services, have web pages, etc.. At the server level, all tracking and cookies anywhere in the network could be disabled. Tracking cookies and spying would be against the terms and conditions of the user space. Websites that use agressive java scripts to spy on people would be notified that their agressive use of scripting violates the area’s terms of service and they have to turn those features off or be they will be blocked from their membership in the area. Eventually, there would be a safe area where the big players like Google and Apple can’t operate. They get no information out and they can’t advertise there. Members need to keep in mind that although internet world is small, its all theirs. Avoid the main internet and try to do business only in their private internet world. That world will grow over time and might even eventually overtake Google and Apple. You can’t change the world by telling others what they should be doing. Each of us would have to make the necessary commitments and sacrifices ourselves.
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With a replaceable modem module, not necessarily.
As you say though, with all the dodgy mobile network operators blocking a phone, it could come down to becoming a data-only mobile device and then using VoIP. There are any number of devices that need remote data access (e.g. telemetry, video security monitoring, security and personal alarms) and in my experience mobile network operators aren’t quite so antsy about those devices.
For the early adopters, you will almost certainly be correct.
But let’s say that due to changes in the US mobile networks, there is only one modem available that will work in the Librem 5, there is no reason for that modem not to work out-of-the-box, at least for new phones.
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