Live data from Hacker News

Librem 5 July Update

puri.sm

11–20 of 22 posts

Re: Librem 5 July Update

#11

the latest shipping update is still Q3 2019 (so 2-5 months away) and yet the marketing page still has a lot of hardware that is TBD: memory, cameras, and battery. who wants to bet it will be pushed back to 2020?

Which is my I'm not pre-ordering, I'm waiting till the final specs are released. Also I need to be able to view PDF documents, so probably gonna be a while.

Most web browsers can handle PDFs out of the box. Is this really a roadblock that isn't likely to already be workable on the Librem kit?

Re: Librem 5 July Update

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is my I'm not pre-ordering, I'm waiting till the final specs are released. Also I need to be able to view PDF documents, so probably gonna be a while.

Most web browsers can handle PDFs out of the box. Is this really a roadblock that isn't likely to already be workable on the Librem kit?

Also I'd be surprised if https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince wasn't easy to install if it's not included out of the box.

Re: Librem 5 July Update

#13

the latest shipping update is still Q3 2019 (so 2-5 months away) and yet the marketing page still has a lot of hardware that is TBD: memory, cameras, and battery. who wants to bet it will be pushed back to 2020?

Which is my I'm not pre-ordering, I'm waiting till the final specs are released. Also I need to be able to view PDF documents, so probably gonna be a while.

For PDF viewing, Evince seems to be working already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8YMc06RMrc

Re: Librem 5 July Update

#14
post #3

Interesting, they are building their own mobile compositor based on wlroots: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phoc This is the right way to do an open source phone by adopting existing modern desktop Linux tech. Instead of going your own Androidy path like Sailfish/Jolla is doing.

Maemo was originally based on desktop XOrg/Gtk/GNOME tech but with no real phones providing drivers for that stack I guess Sailfish felt like they had no choice but to adopt Android drivers.

Re: Librem 5 July Update

#16
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is my I'm not pre-ordering, I'm waiting till the final specs are released. Also I need to be able to view PDF documents, so probably gonna be a while.

For PDF viewing, Evince seems to be working already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8YMc06RMrc

I remember Evince working on GNU/Linux phones already 10 years ago, so yeah, I wouldn't worry about PDFs :)

Re: Librem 5 July Update

#17
Does anyone who follows this more closely know what mapping support there will be? I worry that it will be hard to match the quality of Google/Apple Maps with free software. I've tried using OsmAnd, but it's just a terrible experience compared to commercial map apps. This is a big deal for me and I imagine many others, because losing the traffic data and turn-by-turn navigation of commercial map apps is a dealbreaker, but allowing me to get rid of these most invasive apps would be a huge selling point, and would probably get me to buy the device all on its own.

Re: Librem 5 July Update

#18
post #17

Does anyone who follows this more closely know what mapping support there will be? I worry that it will be hard to match the quality of Google/Apple Maps with free software. I've tried using OsmAnd, but it's just a terrible experience compared to commercial map apps. This is a big deal for me and I imagine many others, because losing the traffic data and turn-by-turn navigation of commercial map apps is a dealbreaker…

Good real-time traffic data is an emergent property of being an invasive platform. Maybe there’s a possibility of opting into position information uploading that goes to some open mothership(?) or decentralized mesh, but this is not going to ever be as good as google passively leveraging and aggregating its millions of phones in cars on the road.

OsmAnd definitely has some rough edges but it has rudimentary turn by turn navigation.

Re: Librem 5 July Update

#19

the latest shipping update is still Q3 2019 (so 2-5 months away) and yet the marketing page still has a lot of hardware that is TBD: memory, cameras, and battery. who wants to bet it will be pushed back to 2020?

I've preordered and have no doubts in my mind that it'll be pushed back to Q4 or Q1/Q2 2020. I'm not really concerned about it releasing I think if they don't release it will be detrimental to the Purism image. Also I'm fine with the money I put down if it helps develop adaptive UI for Gnome and some better Linux driver support and nothing else. Hopefully we get a small Linux computer with a touch screen at the very least!

Re: Librem 5 July Update

#20
post #9

Have they said anything about PWA support? If PWA is supported and on par with Chrome on Android this would allow a lot of PWA-compliant web apps (like Twitter, Gmail, and many more) to be ready to go right away. While not "native" the app ecosystem would at least have a chance to be there at the time of release.

They're working on a browser, so yes... I believe PWA will be possible since they're just rebranded HTML+JS apps.
Post reply on HN