Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs • Hacker News Board

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#261

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

ThreeFx wrote: post #222

gradschool wrote: post #220

It's great to see this project coming to fruition. My main reservation about owning a smartphone has always been the idea of a device that knows everything about me under the control of God knows who. This phone partially addresses that issue, but can anyone here who's knowledgeable about encryption comment on that aspect? Without some form of encrypted storage it would seem like game-over when a well resourced adver…

That is correct, in that case you need to encrypt either the files you want to be safe, or use full-disk encryption. I have no idea whether Purism will support selective file encryption or FDE out of the box, but it'd be pretty cool if they did. That said, under the hood your phone is basically a Linux device, so doing this yourself might need some basic know-how of Linux administration, but shouldn't be too hard (re…

Yeah, FDE is hard, but encfs or ext4-native encryption it easy enough.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#262

Post by moftz » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

ecmascript wrote: post #225

moftz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://puri.sm/faq/supported-networks/ They already have a list of LTE bands that will work depending on if you buy the Europe or US variant. That list is only for the Gemalto PLS8-US and PLS8-E. There is another Broadmobi BM818 module as well. For the US, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile support the 2, 4, 5, and 17 LTE bands that work with the PLS8-US. All of Europe should be supported on the PLS8-E. The BM818 mention d…

That doesn't help me since I don't know jack shit about bands. I went to their page and to the page they link to, but I still cannot figure out if the phone will even work where I live? And if just some bands are supported, may that affect network speeds? I don't think this phone is going to very successful because at the very least they should have made some interactive guide where you simply can select where you li…

If it is that confusing for you, just go buy a Samsung or iPhone from your carrier.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#263

Post by justinclift » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 11:25 PM UTC

mises wrote: post #245

justinclift wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-related, but apparently Win10 WSL now includes the Linux kernel. Being as that's GPL, it seems strange the GPL license isn't somehow "virally" infecting windows, making other things OSS.

They have released the source for their fork: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel . Linux specifically does not use the GPLv3 for exactly this reason. rms et al. complained about "tivoization", which came from tivo shipping boxes that contained the code but were locked down. Linus didn't really care as much, or at least not enough to re-license. He didn't like the restriction, and new that such a provision…

Thanks, that's useful info. :)

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#264

Post by flukus » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 12:24 AM UTC

willtim wrote: post #260

flukus wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming it's not an iphone, the phone you bought will likely be getting few/no more security updates and is obsolete, that's why it's so cheap now and in part why it was so cheap then. As you said, the value add here is in running mainline linux and that means your phone really will be usable for several years. Some of the other big pluses over android are ease of development, no java bloatware, more FOSS and no spy…

Yes Java has many issues, but writing complex GUI apps in plain C in this day and age is the wrong thing to do. The early Gnome founders learned this the hard way which led to Mono, which at least had automatic memory management. I fear this OS is destined to become like Samsung Tizen, which is riddled with security holes. It's not as if we don't have excellent libre languages, e.g. Rust and OCaml. I applaud the open…

Couldn't disagree more, writing apps in C is a breath of fresh air compared anything in java but especially android. I can start with a simple C file and write hello world in a few lines of C (dated examples: http://zetcode.com/gui/gtk2/firstprograms/) and run it on my desktop, IME the complexity curve remains quite flat. AFAIK mono never gained much acceptance (and was highly controversial at the time) and most of the gnome ecosystem is written in C, I'd be surprised if there was more C# code than JS and python in gnome today.

> I fear this OS is destined to become like Samsung Tizen, which is riddled with security holes.

Is the gnome desktop riddled with security holes? I don't know much about tizen but they seem to have written a lot more of their own stuff, the vast majority librem is battle hardened.

> It's not as if we don't have excellent libre languages, e.g. Rust and OCaml.

Rust is not mature enough, especially in it's UI libs and is virtual unheard of outside the HN bubble. The most mature UI available appears to be the GTK bindings though so it's mostly the same stack that you think is a mistake. OCaml despite being older is even more unknown and from a quick google it's most mature UI library seems to also be an out of date GTK (https://github.com/garrigue/lablgtk). Betting on either of those would be the death of the project.

> I applaud the open nature of this phone, but using the Gnome stack looks to me like a mistake.

Gtk and Qt are the only serious options as of today without having to sink in years of dev work. If anyone really wants to avoid C then there's the GObject system that lets you write code in js/python/xml/others, but I'm hoping this turns out to be the phone ecosystem that respects users and doesn't sacrifice their time and battery for the developers convenience.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#265

Post by bubblethink » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 5:32 AM UTC

mises wrote: post #245

justinclift wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-related, but apparently Win10 WSL now includes the Linux kernel. Being as that's GPL, it seems strange the GPL license isn't somehow "virally" infecting windows, making other things OSS.

They have released the source for their fork: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel . Linux specifically does not use the GPLv3 for exactly this reason. rms et al. complained about "tivoization", which came from tivo shipping boxes that contained the code but were locked down. Linus didn't really care as much, or at least not enough to re-license. He didn't like the restriction, and new that such a provision…

That's orthogonal though. WSL would be fine even with GPLv3. It runs on a hypervisor. WSL poses no restrictions on modifying the source of the kernel. You can fork, rebuild and run. You can't on a tivo device.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#266

Post by bubblethink » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 5:37 AM UTC

zyren wrote: post #164

eptcyka wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could buy a Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it. https://grapheneos.org/#device-support

Their website does a pretty horrible job of selling the OS. I was interested until i saw 0 screenshots of what the OS actually looked like. None on their website or github.

It looks like AOSP. There is no extra eye candy or frills, and that's not even remotely their focus.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#267

Post by butterNaN » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 8:43 AM UTC

sgeisler wrote: post #57

As someone who backed them in 2017 I'm so happy to finally see the specs. It's amazing to follow their progress, I love what they are doing with Gnome/Phosh, that gives me hope that there will be many native apps for the most important tasks and not just some web-app mess. For the people complaining about the price/specs ratio: this phone is no standard off-the-shelve system, it had to be designed with user privacy a…

> I'd love a librem phone with a good old blackberry keyboard

If the form factor is anything like Blackberry Priv, I'd order is instantly

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#268

Post by Endy » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 9:47 AM UTC

moftz wrote: post #262

ecmascript wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't help me since I don't know jack shit about bands. I went to their page and to the page they link to, but I still cannot figure out if the phone will even work where I live? And if just some bands are supported, may that affect network speeds? I don't think this phone is going to very successful because at the very least they should have made some interactive guide where you simply can select where you li…

If it is that confusing for you, just go buy a Samsung or iPhone from your carrier.

Unfortunately, as long as the standard response is dismissive like yours, that's what the majority will do. When someone expresses confusion, the goal shouldn't be to send them to the mainstream product, it should be to go back and explain your product more clearly. Stop being an elitist and start recognizing that helping people is a basic requirement of supporting a product or service.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#269

Post by WhooisWhoo » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 12:15 PM UTC

Not everyone agrees with the privacy marketing of the Librem 5

> The Librem 5 is a phone that is falsely marketed as a secure and private device. This is not true.

> The Librem 5 does nothing for privacy. Installing a Linux distro is no more private than just using an ungooglified ROM. The mic kill switch is useless as they don't block access to the sensors so audio can still be gotten. The camera kill switch is also useless as you could just cover the camera with tape.

> They also weaken security. They use old hardware which doesn't have many hardware security features such as a hardware backed keystore.

> They aren't shipping firmware updates. Now your firmware will be outdated and insecure.

> Instead of using Android, they use PureOS which is a massive security decrease as you won't have kernel hardening, SELinux, seccomp filters, verified boot etc. like Android already has. PureOS doesn't even have a proper app sandbox.

> https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/cje7vg/dont_use_pu...

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#270

Post by ernst_klim » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 1:44 PM UTC

flukus wrote: post #264

willtim wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes Java has many issues, but writing complex GUI apps in plain C in this day and age is the wrong thing to do. The early Gnome founders learned this the hard way which led to Mono, which at least had automatic memory management. I fear this OS is destined to become like Samsung Tizen, which is riddled with security holes. It's not as if we don't have excellent libre languages, e.g. Rust and OCaml. I applaud the open…

Couldn't disagree more, writing apps in C is a breath of fresh air compared anything in java but especially android. I can start with a simple C file and write hello world in a few lines of C (dated examples: http://zetcode.com/gui/gtk2/firstprograms/ ) and run it on my desktop, IME the complexity curve remains quite flat. AFAIK mono never gained much acceptance (and was highly controversial at the time) and most of…

> it's most mature UI library seems to also be an out of date GTK

What makes you think it's out of date? There is a gtk3 branch, gtk2 was used mostly because it was stable and cross platform. It's used by Coq, Unison, Frama-C, zeroinstall and others, and it's rock solid.

> Betting on either of those would be the death of the project.

Lolwat? What makes you think so? Rust Gtk bindings are official, and suggested to be used by Gnome team. OCaml is rock solid and used by the industry, for GUI apps as well.