Comment by seba_dos1 18 hours ago
It's an Android device with an old unsupported kernel that runs a hacked up Debian-ish userspace on top of Android layer. While that may be good enough for some, it's not what some of us want.
I'll stay with my Librem 5, which is also totally usable, runs actual Debian, runs Waydroid too, and does not bring me Halium pain.
Good for you, though I prefer my device to be reasonably capable for real world tasks and hassle-free while providing me the ability to run the latest software and to hack on it however I want. Otherwise I would stay on N900, as I still miss its keyboard.
Most of what I have read has indicated that the Librem 5 is NOT a great daily driver (which was a huge letdown for me). How do you like it?
Looking at what's missing from their roadmap here: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
No videos? Fine, I rarely take videos.
No bluetooth? Mildly annoying, but especially with the 3.5mm jack, I could live without it.
No GPS? This one would be a deal-breaker for me.
But depending on the person I can see it being usable.
That's great to know; but Purism really ought update that, I'm sure they are losing sales from that being so out of date.
Ouch. It seems to be even more incomplete than I thought. The lack of Bluetooth and GPS is kind of surprising, since those things have worked on Linux laptops for at least a couple of decades or so.
>No bluetooth? Mildly annoying, but especially with the 3.5mm jack, I could live without it.
For most people, it can be difficult to predict future scenarios for Bluetooth that's unrelated to wireless earphones. I always use wired earphones and didn't think I ever needed Bluetooth and always had it disabled. However, I was later forced to use it to configure new devices. E.g.:
- internet router (Eero) from ISP has no buttons or a status display so required Bluetooth on smartphone to configure it
- battery backup power station (Delta Ecoflow) require Bluetooth to configure them
The common theme is for device manufacturers to avoid adding elaborate LCD displays or touchscreen interfaces to the actual device and instead -- offload the configuration UI to the customers' smartphones... which necessitates pairing via Bluetooth.
At least we can hope - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetoo...
Last week for the first time I've used WebUSB to configure flight controller for my drone/wing. Felt like magic.
It works fine for me, I'm typing this on one right now. I'm still waiting for something that could replace it as it gets older, but I don't see anything viable out there yet.
The question is whether you're able to live without Android & iOS, perhaps with some limited help from Waydroid. If the answer is yes, as it is for me, then it's a great daily driver.
I'm just a single data point, but FWIW after the first week the only time I ever (literally) dust off my librem 5 is to show people what a joke of a phone I waited 4 years for. Purism had the right goals (mainline linux kernel, no run-time loadable closed sourced blobs, user-serviceable, hardware kill-switches) but the implementation is only worthy of a participation trophy. The phone would randomly drop calls (though I've heard this is finally fixed), the UI was terrible (UI elements rendered partially off-screen, a useless maps application that complained about a missing location service), the battery life is so terrible that carrying around a 2nd battery is common advice, and the hardware was anemic back when the phone was announced which made the difference even more noticeable when the phone finally came out half a decade later.
I'm glad I own the phone for the same reason that I regret not holding on to my G1 (the first android phone): Its a neat piece of history. But alas, it will never see use as an actual phone.
The lengths people go to for a horrible Ui/UX and app experience is bewildering. I guess they justify it by not caving into Google or Apple. Of course, all of their privacy concerns and safeguards go away when the credit cards, utilities and services they use all circumvent their precious Linux phone. But hey, at least you’re running Linux on your phone, right?
I don't use GNU/Linux on my phone for "privacy". It's an added benefit, but not the point.
I use it because it's familiar, hackable and respectful to my attention. It works the way I want it to work and it's capable enough to fulfill all my needs. Switching to Android would be a downgrade on all these aspects. I'm aware that it would be an upgrade in some other aspects that I care about less.
I have been using an Altair 8800 as my daily driver for about 50 years now. It's really not a big deal to enter instructions through the switch panel, especially with good gloves, and it does basically everything I want it to.