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Librem 5 dev kits are shipping

puri.sm

51–60 of 98 posts

Re: Librem 5 dev kits are shipping

#51
post #49

Every time Purism is mentioned on HN there are always people chiming in with negativity around how it's not open or secure or free enough, based on some unachievable metric of those things and with an side dose of utopian fantasizing. Buy one of these phones because you - Want a 'free' phone to exist in the future - Want an open source phone to exist in the future - Want a secure phone to exist in the future It may n…

I'm impressed and very much respectful of what the Purism folks are trying to achieve but I just don't think their business plan is viable as it is. As such I really don't really believe that getting a few geeks on HN to support the project will really make much of a difference. They need a much broader market share if they want to have a chance to survive in the long term and I don't see how they can get it. As it s…

I'd say it's a misguided comparison since Microsoft and Librem have very different goals.

I'm sure Microsoft would've no problem making profitable phones, but if their goal is to obtain as many users as possible, as fast as possible, by spending millions upon millions on marketing and other endeavors then it becomes a lot more difficult.

Re: Librem 5 dev kits are shipping

#52
post #49

Every time Purism is mentioned on HN there are always people chiming in with negativity around how it's not open or secure or free enough, based on some unachievable metric of those things and with an side dose of utopian fantasizing. Buy one of these phones because you - Want a 'free' phone to exist in the future - Want an open source phone to exist in the future - Want a secure phone to exist in the future It may n…

I'm impressed and very much respectful of what the Purism folks are trying to achieve but I just don't think their business plan is viable as it is. As such I really don't really believe that getting a few geeks on HN to support the project will really make much of a difference. They need a much broader market share if they want to have a chance to survive in the long term and I don't see how they can get it. As it s…

> . It's not just about building the phone (which is already very difficult), it's also about maintaining the software and app ecosystem in the long term.

I doubt the Purism folks are unaware of this, but I think this running a standard GNU/Linux stack as opposed to what Ubuntu Touch/Firefox OS were doing, gives it at least a shot.

Re: Librem 5 dev kits are shipping

#53
post #41

Every time Purism is mentioned on HN there are always people chiming in with negativity around how it's not open or secure or free enough, based on some unachievable metric of those things and with an side dose of utopian fantasizing. Buy one of these phones because you - Want a 'free' phone to exist in the future - Want an open source phone to exist in the future - Want a secure phone to exist in the future It may n…

You are right. Although I think that most are just lurking around even when positive. There is not much to be said if you just like the project. But people can always complain. I like the project with some minor reservations, but there is not much to discuss at this point. I'm not gonna cheerlead. My biggest regret is price and size. I'm waiting for more information on Necuno Mobile [0] as I believe it will be in my…

> an iMX8M laptop

8M is really weak. That would be pretty much a Pinebook with Vivante graphics.

The i.MX 8 QuadMax at least has two A72 cores, similar to Rockchip RK3399.

Re: Librem 5 dev kits are shipping

#54

Every time Purism is mentioned on HN there are always people chiming in with negativity around how it's not open or secure or free enough, based on some unachievable metric of those things and with an side dose of utopian fantasizing. Buy one of these phones because you - Want a 'free' phone to exist in the future - Want an open source phone to exist in the future - Want a secure phone to exist in the future It may n…

Indeed. The first step is commoditizing and genericizing mobile hardware, like what happened to the PC market in the 80s. Purism is taking a big leap at this, and I definitely want to encourage that.

Re: Librem 5 dev kits are shipping

#55
post #38

Would be interested in some links to SDKs and/or style guides. As a developer, how do I get started writing my app to target the Librem 5? Went through the website and many forums but haven't found any definitive.

I just went through their SDK docs. https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Apps/index.html Looking at their guides, the app APIs usability is a joke from Android point of view, even Tizen has better docs. https://developer.tizen.org/development/api-references/nativ... Best of luck I guess.

a.) This is all very much WIP.

b.) As long as you develop a standard GTK app for Linux, it should be easy to adopt it for Librem 5.

c.) Are you seriously comparing their WIP docs to someone who has put billions of dollars and over a decade into their platform and has a JetBrains powered IDE?

Re: Librem 5 dev kits are shipping

#56
post #16

I'm in love with the mission - but don't want to really have to switch ecosystems again (from Linux --> Apple --> PureOS). I love OSX - could I not do the same with OSX by tightening it down?

> The really tricky problem is when a package must modify an existing shared resource. Such as appending lines to an existing config for example.

A big part of Librem 5's mission is to be secure and private, but perhaps even bigger part is to be FLOSS and hackable, so one could use any host and any stack to develop pretty much anything they could on a standard GNU/Linux distro.

Locking down iOS/macOS may improve security, but doesn't give you access to the source code, does not protect you from Apple and does not free you from the limitations they've put on you as a developer, or going via their-own distribution channels for that matter and having complete control over your future if you're an iOS developer.

So it all depends on why you're exited about the Librem5, but if openness, FLOSS, hackability are any part of it, then locking down Apple hardware wouldn't do it.

Re: Librem 5 dev kits are shipping

#57
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right. Although I think that most are just lurking around even when positive. There is not much to be said if you just like the project. But people can always complain. I like the project with some minor reservations, but there is not much to discuss at this point. I'm not gonna cheerlead. My biggest regret is price and size. I'm waiting for more information on Necuno Mobile [0] as I believe it will be in my…

> an iMX8M laptop 8M is really weak. That would be pretty much a Pinebook with Vivante graphics. The i.MX 8 QuadMax at least has two A72 cores, similar to Rockchip RK3399.

Oh, I didn't know. Nevertheless a Pinebook with Vivante graphics at up to $250 would be pretty nice. If there is a better SoC with as good mainline support, all the better.

Re: Librem 5 dev kits are shipping

#58
post #41

Every time Purism is mentioned on HN there are always people chiming in with negativity around how it's not open or secure or free enough, based on some unachievable metric of those things and with an side dose of utopian fantasizing. Buy one of these phones because you - Want a 'free' phone to exist in the future - Want an open source phone to exist in the future - Want a secure phone to exist in the future It may n…

You are right. Although I think that most are just lurking around even when positive. There is not much to be said if you just like the project. But people can always complain. I like the project with some minor reservations, but there is not much to discuss at this point. I'm not gonna cheerlead. My biggest regret is price and size. I'm waiting for more information on Necuno Mobile [0] as I believe it will be in my…

Thanks for introducing Necuno, I hadn't heard about it. Apparently [0] it's been mentioned here a few times, but never got more than one comment. At the moment they don't have a lot of info, other than some of the hardware used and that it's a linux kernel. Looking forward to hearing more.

[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=necuno

Re: Librem 5 dev kits are shipping

#60
post #41

Every time Purism is mentioned on HN there are always people chiming in with negativity around how it's not open or secure or free enough, based on some unachievable metric of those things and with an side dose of utopian fantasizing. Buy one of these phones because you - Want a 'free' phone to exist in the future - Want an open source phone to exist in the future - Want a secure phone to exist in the future It may n…

You are right. Although I think that most are just lurking around even when positive. There is not much to be said if you just like the project. But people can always complain. I like the project with some minor reservations, but there is not much to discuss at this point. I'm not gonna cheerlead. My biggest regret is price and size. I'm waiting for more information on Necuno Mobile [0] as I believe it will be in my…

There are various Chromebooks that you can put standard Linux on.

I've got an Acer R11 which I put GalliumOS on (definitely use 2.1 / 2.2, 3.0 has issues). If you really want ARM, there are options there, though I'm not sure about regular Linux support on those.

The R11 is small and handy, with a decent keyboard. Battery life isn't quite as good as with ChromeOS, but still sufficient.

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