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Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

puri.sm

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Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#51

Post by justforpurism »

flukus wrote: post #49
justforpurism wrote: post #26

Registered just to post this. Love Purism, want it to succeed. But... IMHO, the effort is going to fail miserably, unless folks stop wasting time trying to build a phone UI, i.e. another attempt to build Android/iOS ecosystem. There were Sailfish, MER, Openmoko, and whatnot attempts to make a pure Linux-running cell phone. Just stop it. You will burn through your money doing half-baked UI, there will be no adoption,…

> The only surviving plan for any Linux-phone: make it web-centric. You have to port ONE app: Firefox. You are aware of the failure of firefox OS right? > Purism just have shown that they wasted precious time on badly looking GNOME Clocks, Emacs, Password manager, a game, a half-baked music player, Torrent client (on a phone!), and Drawing app made with their native UI. They haven't wasted time, pretty much all of th…

> You are aware of the failure of firefox OS right?

Right. And this was a mistake by Mozilla: they tried to make an OS, and a browser and interact/negotiate with 3rd-party phone vendors. I did not care for FirefoxOS-based phones indeed because they where "same old ridden-with-firmware black boxes".

Mozilla makes a good browser, they'd rather keep doing that.

Purism is a different story. It seems they understand that some folks appreciate open hardware, privacy-focused designs. Cool, one ingredient for the success: check. But in order to be a successful product, the phone has to be useful out-of-the-box. And if the hardware company will attempt to make a whole "native" software stack, they will fail the same way as Mozilla failed at being an OS-company and HW-facing company: not enough resources.

So, how about Purism makes a great hardware (+ drivers), and integrates exactly three apps: 1. a phone app that is able to make/receive calls, 2. a short-text messaging app 3. and a blazing-fast browser to access the world. Done. Basics are there: I can make calls, I can receive/send messages, I can access email, slack, hail uber/lyft, use web-based maps/navigation, listen to online podcasts/music, use web-based calendars, etc. A phone I could use everyday.

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#52

Post by ptman »

flukus wrote: post #49
justforpurism wrote: post #26

Registered just to post this. Love Purism, want it to succeed. But... IMHO, the effort is going to fail miserably, unless folks stop wasting time trying to build a phone UI, i.e. another attempt to build Android/iOS ecosystem. There were Sailfish, MER, Openmoko, and whatnot attempts to make a pure Linux-running cell phone. Just stop it. You will burn through your money doing half-baked UI, there will be no adoption,…

> The only surviving plan for any Linux-phone: make it web-centric. You have to port ONE app: Firefox. You are aware of the failure of firefox OS right? > Purism just have shown that they wasted precious time on badly looking GNOME Clocks, Emacs, Password manager, a game, a half-baked music player, Torrent client (on a phone!), and Drawing app made with their native UI. They haven't wasted time, pretty much all of th…

Failure of firefox os and success of kaios, based on firefox os and with investment from google

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#53

Post by Apaec »

liamcardenas wrote: post #18

I’m sure people will disagree with this but I think they should focus on getting an easy way for people to target their devices with React Native, NativeScript, PWAs and every other cross-platform framework. That way they can much more easily acquire software. Seriously making an app from scratch is no small task, and often time isn’t worth it for such a small market.

Web centric didn't work for FirefoxOS.

Contrary to popular trends, programmers can know more than a couple of languages and not everything has to be javascript.

I'm sure many hackers would be more excited to make an app with go, rust, haskell, etc than to do js, that just feels like work.

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#54

Post by Apaec »

justforpurism wrote: post #26

Registered just to post this. Love Purism, want it to succeed. But... IMHO, the effort is going to fail miserably, unless folks stop wasting time trying to build a phone UI, i.e. another attempt to build Android/iOS ecosystem. There were Sailfish, MER, Openmoko, and whatnot attempts to make a pure Linux-running cell phone. Just stop it. You will burn through your money doing half-baked UI, there will be no adoption,…

Just be happy for industrial competitiveness and stfu dude.

Honestly, I've been noticing this trend of bashing the newcomers or defending the monopolists more and more here on HN.

It doesn't really feel more like a startup/hacker news.

Just trying to promote awareness here.

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#57

Post by RandomBacon »

dangus wrote: post #48
RandomBacon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the demos sort of show this for themselves. I agree; I think it will be successful. > it doesn’t look enjoyable or practical to use You can say that about any phone (an iPhone, flagship Samsung, etc) that is not in a case. I bet it will be enjoyable and practical once they put it in a case.

Huh?

You think the video shows it will fail. I think the video shows it will succeed.

You say it doesn't look enjoyable or practical to use, I'm saying 'Duh, it's a prototype not in a case, sitting flat on a table.'

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#58

Post by [deleted] »

dangus wrote: post #43
RandomBacon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the other Librems are Linux devices too, and thus have the same limitations. They've seen success selling those Linux laptops. > 95% of the privacy and freedom This phone is for the people who want the other 5%. It's not trying to compete with the iPhone. > stumble its way through Gnome like these videos are doing. Odd. I didn't see that at all in those videos.

The difference is that Librem laptops can run any OS like a standard PC. Many users perhaps don’t even use PureOS and put something else on. It’s this software or nothing, essentially. I realize it’s open and that we could theoretically make our own, but phones are still an incredible beast to tame at this point. This is going to work with basically zero carrier features and won’t even activate on important cellular…

[deleted]

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#59

Post by RandomBacon »

dangus wrote: post #43
RandomBacon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the other Librems are Linux devices too, and thus have the same limitations. They've seen success selling those Linux laptops. > 95% of the privacy and freedom This phone is for the people who want the other 5%. It's not trying to compete with the iPhone. > stumble its way through Gnome like these videos are doing. Odd. I didn't see that at all in those videos.

The difference is that Librem laptops can run any OS like a standard PC. Many users perhaps don’t even use PureOS and put something else on. It’s this software or nothing, essentially. I realize it’s open and that we could theoretically make our own, but phones are still an incredible beast to tame at this point. This is going to work with basically zero carrier features and won’t even activate on important cellular…

I believe "Perfection is the enemy of shipping" is something that is mentioned here on HN quite a bit.

Let's get the big stuff out of the way first and then continue working with Gnome to introduce a long press, etc.

I'm no expert, but this device is a full-fledged computer, not something with a locked-down bootloader. I imagine people smarter than me could install whatever OS they want to on this device.

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#60

Post by RandomBacon »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #44
RandomBacon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't look like vaporware to me. The videos and updates seem legit. > it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps. Have you even looked into the project? It's running Gnome, on Linux, all the regular apps are there. Check out the videos in this link, it's not half-baked: https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-3...

I have been following this for a while and am likely to buy it if/when it is released. Even though that will require me to change to a much more expensive cell carrier. The software seems good. After all, it is just GNU/Linux/GNOME - all you need to do is get a C compiler and hardware drivers and then it just works. An older video did show major stutter during scrolling but that can probably be mitigated. What's conc…

I highly recommend looking into an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator).

There are inexpensive pre-paid plans that use the major cell network towers, and you get the same speeds. I recommend Straight Talk; their plans are very cheap for the data you get, but there might be other cheaper services.

I agree it's taking them a while, but I've never built a phone before, so I am cutting them slack.

I find it easy to believe that it is not vaporware. They have videos of working devices, something that can be replicated in mass, not renders etc. They've shipped dev boards.

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