"Design" was in the title but I was hoping for a development tutorial. I know its just gtk, but I'm hoping someone with the project can put together a very simple python or js tutorial for making simple apps.
As soon as I get some sort of confirmation on if I will be able to get one of these running on Verizon, I would like to dive in and build some stuff. But right now I still don't even know if this phone will work for me.
The only reason I'm on android is because of f-droid -- the android experience still degrades every few months (we can process all your SMS through our website! slower animations!). So tired of carrying G's hot garbage around in my pocket.
So why not an iPhone? I'm not trolling, I try to understand why so many IT guys choose Android when it's obvious that Google sucks as much data as they can out of the platform.
i.e. Android is completely open; if Google were to try to put something nefarious in it, anyone who'd checked out the Android source would be able to see that nefarious thing and remove it; if Google kept putting it back in, nerds would be able to fork Android to take it away from Google.
This has become much less true over the years than it used to be, of course, as much of what makes Android Android has migrated out of the core OS into less open intermediate layers like apps and services. This transition helps Google push updates out to users more quickly, since cell network operators proved to be pretty slow about pushing out updates to Android proper, but from Google's perspective it also has the side benefit of making "open Android" (e.g. AOSP) pretty incomplete unless you pair it with Google's proprietary services.
Yes, that's true, that's why I said this was this original appeal of Android to privacy-oriented nerds. It hasn't been the case for a long time, but Android is still coasting on the goodwill it built up over the time when it was.
Amazon's flavors of Android require extensive work to clone Google's proprietary APIs and map them to Amazon-owned equivalents.
If you read the thread I linked, you'll see that Google doesn't really bother to ensure open source Android builds actually work at all: They post them but are only concerned with proprietary flavors being functional. Which means a lot of work has to be done to make open source Android even build in the first place.
Then, most apps are built on proprietary Google APIs, not open source Android APIs. So you either have to use something like micro-g to let you use Google services without the proprietary on-device code, or create your own replacement APIs that just claim to be Google, but aren't, which Amazon does and Microsoft experimented with when they made Android apps installable on some test builds of Windows Mobile. Or you have to substantially rewrite the apps not to use proprietary Google APIs.
So you have to do a lot to make open source Android anything actually work and do what people expect it to.
> if Google were to try to put something nefarious in it, anyone who'd checked out the Android source would be able to see that nefarious thing and remove it
Ah, the favorite "a million eyes fallacy".
The truth is: there are very few (if any) people capable to do a full audit on the Android source code to see if something nefarious is happening. The source code for Android is over 20 GB. Good luck that "anyone" who can check it out an be able to see ... well ... anything.
When significant flaws were discovered in OpenSSL, it turned out there were only a handful people in the world who could potentially do a full analysis of the code base. And the resulting audit ended up costing millions, took several years and resulted in the re-implementation/forking of the code base.
I know that OpenSSL isn’t a part of Android, but it shows the difficulty of auditing a large complex project.
Believing that anyone can checkout Android code and easily discover if Google (or anyone) has done something nefarious is a delusion of the highest order. The code base would need to be continuously audited by a team of experts in various domains.
I think price is a pretty freaking good justification. I don't need to pay a 500 dollar mark-up to move out of "mid-range" when it does EVERYTHING I need my phone to do just fine.
Nokia 7+ can be obtained for 200 euros with deals on shopping malls, half of a iPhone 7 price, and it is a 2019 device.
200 euros less than a 3 year old phone, and while still too expensive for some developing countries, it feels being less wastefull of our society resources.
Fair enough I got wrong on the date. It was just an example anyway.
It is still one year younger, and for the remaining of your statement it doesn't justify paying the extra 200 euros, not everyone swims in money you know?
When the phone finally dies or gets stolen, those saved 200 euros are more than enough to get a new one.
That is a whole different problem. People who don't have money are being left behind in yet another way: privacy.
IMO there are no good choices in this regard. Either get an expensive Apple device (And get locked into their bullshit), get an Android powered device and have your data harvested by google and the oem, or have nothing. There are no low-end offerings that even attempt to address privacy.
I carry an iPhone only because I don't trust Google. I don't like it, but at least I understand how Apple is trying to screw me. I am very excited for the Librem 5.
For the same reason that I do not use Windows or MacOS - I like my software to listen to me, not to some remote dictator no matter how 'benevolent' he might portray himself to be. My phones run Android but do not run anything Google - no play store, no Google Services Framework, no Google apps. Seen from foundation to screen they run a - generally closed source - bootloader, the Linux kernel, some derivative of AOSP with F-Droid to feed the thing with software. Somewhere on the side they also run the closed-source, closed-everything 4G (or 3G on some older devices) modem. The bootloader and the closed radio software are thus far unavoidable but for the other parts there is no excuse not to use open, 'free' software. Just like my servers and user-facing machines run Linux or one of the BSD's.
Can I ask the make and model of the phone you're using? I assume it's on a custom ROM and rooted since you said there aren't any Google Play Services related stuff running.
I have a Galaxy Tab S5e on the way that runs Android + Samsung DeX Linux. I'm hoping to use the Linux aspect heavily, so less of my info flows to Google. But I'll need to dig into it a bit to understand how they keep the data separate (if they do).
A Xiaomi Redmi Note 5, a bunch of Motorola Defy/Defy+ devices, a RK3066 'Cherry' tablet and some other random devices. The Redmi Note 5 runs LineageOS (nougat), the Defy(+) Cyanogenmod (kitkat), the tablet also Cyanogenmod. I use the Redmi Note 5 and a Defy+ as my main devices, the Defy when I'm doing 'dangerous' stuff as it is less vulnerable and smaller than the Redmi. The tablet is hardly used at all.
I'm not GP, but I also have a custom Android-based OS on my phone (not 100% FOSS, but the only thing keeping me from it is slightly better UX).
For software support I can generally recommend the Pocophone F1 by Xiaomi. The process of unlocking the bootloader is an insult, but after killing of Xiaomi software the user experience is quite good, with pretty good hardware for quite little money.
As soon as you have a compatible OS ("ROM") running, you will generally not have to worry about hardware, but making one is a considerable amount of work, so if you're intending to install a custom OS you should better choose a phone with good developer support.
I have been thinking about starting a database of good phone choices for modding/free software, but am not sure how much interest there is.
"Jailbreaking" on Android is as easy as flipping a toggle in the security settings. It allows for easy sideloading in general, and the use of alternative app sources in particular. IOS's developer sideloading capabilities have so many restrictions and limitations that it barely counts as sideloading.
Apple HATES the GPLv3, and specifically designed their app store agreement to forbid GPLv3 software. Good luck finding anything GPLv3 that's not dual-licensed on their app store. This effectively bans any GPLv3 software that's not exclusively developed by a single company (or is a community project that mandates copyright reassignment) from the app store. (Fun fact: Apple's hatred of the GPLv3 is the same reason that they ship MacOS with a 12-year-old version of Bash, v3.2, the last version under GPLv2.) I won't support a company so hostile to the very concept of free software. Google is the embodiment of the phrase "privacy nightmare", but even they obey the spirit of the GPL and other free software/open source licenses in their projects.
No iPhone has ever had a microSD slot. I'm not going to spend a multi-hundred-dollar premium for the equivalent storage space of a $20 microSD card.
I prefer Linux at home. Historically iPhones have required iTunes for basic functionality such as copying music to the phone, and therefore required Windows or MacOS. It's not as painful nowadays to use an iPhone without iTunes day-to-day, but it's still nowhere near as simple as Android, and certain operations still require iTunes.
Mobile Firefox on Android supports regular desktop Firefox extensions. I wouldn't be able to install Ublock Origin, Decentraleyes, UMatrix, or any other extension on Firefox on IOS, because Apple mandates that all third-party browsers on IOS can only be wrappers around mobile Safari. I can easily install standard extensions on Firefox for Android, because it's really Firefox under the hood.
I greatly hope for the success of the Librem 5. I would drop Android in a heartbeat for a genuinely Google-free phone with all the traditional openness (sideloading, adding cheap storage, easy wired file transfers without Windows/OSX, etc) of Android. GApps-less LineageOS is better than standard Google-laden Android but it's still not ideal. All I'm waiting for before ordering a Librem 5 is final confirmation that the supported frequencies match my carrier.
Interesting. From my perspective it's the GPLv3 that's the issue. When I'm looking to build something and I see a GPLv3 widget I think "Oh man, so my options with this will be very limited. I won't be able to do normal things with it."
I find Apple's stance slightly odd since I don't think the GPLv3 apps would infect Apple, but then I also haven't taken the trouble to thoroughly understand GPLv3. I started to research it some years ago and my quick conclusion was "avoid".
I don't really have too much complaint about GPLv2. It does impose some limits but I feel like I understand them and can work with them.
Definitely with you on the $20 microSD card. The markup for storage is absurd.
Update: want to add this question. Anyone know why Apple would bar a GPLv3 app from the app store (bash is unfortunate but I think I understand that one)?
>Update: want to add this question. Anyone know why Apple would bar a GPLv3 app from the app store (bash is unfortunate but I think I understand that one)?
I think it's simply a company-wide policy made at the recommendation of overly-cautious legal counsel.
On the matter of GPLv3, I think this is going to be an "agree to disagree" type of thing. I actually quite like the changes over v2. But then I'm not a professional developer. I'm just a bookkeeper who dabbles in coding for fun and for a bit of ad-hoc automation on the job. My perspective is certainly quite different from someone who makes a living programming.
Glad this didn't turn into a flame war. I like the idea of sharing everything in theory but I don't yet see how to make a living without putting a price tag on something.
Working as a contractor writing closed source software and allowing my clients to mostly own what I create allows me to work around 30 hours a week and spend time doing volunteer work. If there was a path to do that with Free Software I might go for it.
The nice thing about Android phones is that they're flexible. You have a lot of choice WRT default apps, launchers, behaviours, etc...
Do iPhones even collect less data? You'll still probably use Google, Facebook, and other data-collecting services on their platform. Not to mention the tracking carriers themselves do.
Even most Linux users aren't that concerned with privacy, at the end of the day most still use Chrome and Google services. It's more about choice, freedom and control over your device.
I remain very confused about the focus on mobile banking apps. I watched as Windows Mobile sites extensively covered each and every bank that left the platform like it was an incredible tragedy.
Banking is the most obvious case for doing over the web. It is silly to limit yourself to platforms which your specific bank happens to support, given the incredible multitude of banks, and the likelihood that most banks' apps probably suck anyhow.
The problem that a banking app solves is that it makes authentication simple; you can log in usually just by typing a PIN code on screen, and then you can do things like check transactions or balances, and even transfer small amounts of money without a hassle.
This may not sound like a huge advantage, but remember that bank website authentication usually requires the use of a security token device. And this device is something you probably don't want to carry around all the time.
I can do that with the website of my bank. Why do you want an app ? For security purposes ? ( true question as I don't understand the need for an app )
Ok, I didn't think about it but it might depend on countries. AFAIK only businesses needs token devices to do a wire transfer in Europe - at least in France (for individuals you usually need to register your phone number with your bank and add beneficiaries to a white list via text message confirmation for wire transfers in the SEPA zone) everything else is freely accessible via the website.
In the UK at least HSBC and Barclays need a hardware token device to set up new payees and perform certain transactions.
HSBC recently allowed (and encourage) moving that token to the mobile app but they do NOT support using your phone number.
Santander uses your phone number to send OTP by text for such purposes, and Monzo, the "modern bank" doesn't have a website, everything is done by app.
Out of those Banks, Monzo is the only one that will allow you to run their app on a rooted phone.
Convenience with cashing checks too. Most banks (even tiny local ones) have a way for you to take a picture of both sides of the check.
I'm not aware of any bank websites allowing you to do this? Sure it's easy to add but A) They're banks B) It's more akward, and less convient then the device that's in my pocket 24/7
Your comment implies the security of a pin code on your phone screen is equivalent to an air-gapped hardware token, which is obviously false.
I think at this point we have enough examples of mobile phone numbers being insecure and mobile app stores being full of malware to categorically state your smartphone is not a secure enough device for accessing substantial sums of money.
It certainly would be less secure, but it's limited to smaller amounts of money. It depends on the banking app. For example, I'd rather have a 4 digit pin code to check my current balance then my 24char password. Also I have touchID so the security pin thing is a non-issue on my mobile device.
I tried to use my bank's mobile site once and got my account locked because of "suspicious activity" (probably because my IP address was unusual/kept changing, because, you know, cell towers). When I talked to support, they recommended I use the native app.
Dunno what the state of banking apps in the US is, but in Canada you can use them to instantly cash cheques, transfer money to others, pay vendors through NFC (without using Google or Apple as intermediaries), trade stocks, pay bills, etc... It's pretty damn convenient compared to websites, or banking apps of 5 years ago.
Depending on what device you have, and how much work you're willing to do, you might be interested in postmarketOS.
We're working on getting Alpine Linux running on devices, particularly older Android phones. The best-supported devices right now are the Nexus 5 and the N900, but others are catching up.
We've also got people working with the Librem 5 devkits, so the Librem 5 will be fully-supported once it comes out.
It says on the front page of the website that PostmarketOS cannot receive calls. The commenter that you're replying to is obviously using his phone as his daily driver. Being unable to receive calls relegates PostmarketOS to toy status for a secondary device suitable for tinkering. I have a Nexus 5 in my pocket right now and if PostmarketOS could receive calls I would be currently installing it. Instead, well I don't know what to do. LineageOS stopped pushing updates for the Nexus 5 recently. I bought this phone to try out Plasma Mobile, but it was unusably slow. I don't want a new Android phone. I don't want an iPhone. I was waiting on the Librem 5 but I think it might be vaporware.
I have been seriously considering just getting a Nokia 3310 and a Garmin and calling it a day and being done with all this smartphone nonsense.
Well technically calling works on the Nexus 5 with postmarketOS, the issue is that the whole audio system doesn't work yet due to missing some dsp stuff.
Also the PinePhone is an interesting project to watch.
I'm cheap so I buy really cheap phones and these projects never support the really cheap devices. I understand. They can only support popular devices with decent specs. It's just depressing that my phone is stuck with the ancient version of Android (5.0.2) it shipped with.
I am looking forward to the Librem 5. I am concerned about the philosophy of "avoiding preferences" since deep control and customization of phone and application behavior is one of the draws of something like the Librem 5.
I would be comfortable with that philosophy as long as it's coupled with something along the lines of the Windows Registry, where it is common to find many preferences and configuration options that were simply not exposed in an application's user interface. But reducing the ability of users to adapt software to their needs without some countermeasure is chilling my interest a bit.
I do feel like there's a certain risk to pushing that point, given that most of the people who want to jump on something like a Linux phone are probably nerds who want to dive deep into pools of settings. But I also think they've got to be careful to avoid having apps that literally require you go in and manage a conf file on a phone.
I am generally pretty fond of having a lot of settings, but I think you have to sort out why you have them. Is it for personal preference (dark mode/light mode) or is it something you should be able to detect and automate and not ask for?
This is a bad opinion. :) We do not want people using iPhones if better options become available.
For open to succeed, open has to still be appealing to the masses. The more people who embrace a true Linux platform, the more options you will have to buy phones running true Linux platforms. Aka, it is in your best interest to recognize you are an extremely uncommon user and that you benefit if more common users can use the product.
Even as a fairly technical user who likes to have a lot of settings and options, I do not ever want to have to pop open a text editor on my phone to fix an app. I'm fine with it being possible to do so, but I had better never have to do it.
Arguably, since the hardware should support you running whatever flavor of hackery you want, you should support the phone having apps designed with the average user in mind, knowing full well you are capable of customizing it to your liking anyways.
> 100% of the appeal for this phone is that you'll be able to run GNU/X11 on it.
That's 100% of the appeal to you, and there aren't enough of you to make Librem sustainable. I say this as someone who was a big fan of what the Nokia N900 and Moko Phone were trying to achieve.
Me, I'm looking for a phone that lets me live outside the Google/Apple ecosystem without reducing my choices to 720p screens and 1GB RAM. I installed Ubuntu on my laptop a few years ago out of curiosity and it was absurd how much configuration everything needed. Needing to open up a package manager to get something as simple as an MP3 Player app is not the UX you want your customers to have.
Definitely agree that configuration should be optional, not practically required. That's not just an annoyance to most people, it's a reason to avoid using something altogether.
> Needing to open up a package manager to get something as simple as an MP3 Player app is not the UX you want your customers to have.
This doesn't sound like a config issue though, that's more that the choices of preloaded packages could be better. A package manager isn't much different from an app store (assuming you meant one of the GUIs.)
Just curious because it's been a while, what were some things you had to configure? And were you configuring to get it feeling more like OS X/Windows, or to have software that's usable at all?
> 100% of the appeal for this phone is that you'll be able to run GNU/X11 on it.
I just got rid of X11 from all my desktop PCs, no way in hell I'm using that pile of shit on a phone.
Also, it appeals to be because it's a phone that will support mainline Linux, NXP has been willing to support their products for longer terms than Qualcomm, puts the user firmly in the drivers' seat, and is being designed for eventual mainstream appeal.
I’d get rid of X11 if there were something better. But the only alternative that I know of means gigabytes of crap from projects like gnome or kde and provides less functionality.
When I get one I'm putting alpine and X11 with xvkbd and fvwm on it just like my laptop (sans xvkbd.)
I don't want or care about some special phone OS (especially if the UI is built with the same philosophy that built gnome.) I care that the hardware has drivers but that's it.
I have to imagine that a lot of the apps would have a dotfile or some plaintext configs somewhere seen as how it's all just Linux. At least I would hope so.
Ubuntu has been getting this right for a while now. You can install it by basically booting the install media and clicking "next" a bunch of times, then it gives you an interface with icons for Firefox and LibreOffice that someone who has never used it before could easily figure out.
You could use it for ten years without having to know that the terminal is even there, but it is, along with /etc and OpenSSH and everything else Unix-like systems have had for decades.
Because you don't need brutish uniformity. Some people like to download things with Firefox and some people like to download things with curl and there is no reason they can't both exist on the same system.
I really love the idea of a Linux phone but my big concern is that of stability. I spent many years running Android/F-Droid trying to find a balance between usability/stability and privacy and ultimately just ended up on iOS. I depend on my phone for critical things: GPS, photo taking/backup, etc. so the margin for experimentation (and error) is pretty thin.
I really want Librem to succeed. I am willing to pay quite a bit more, for a less capable device, if it respects me as a user. So much performance that we have these days is just fluff, anyway.
I really hope that they bake enough into the price to be sustainable on low volume. I don't see this phone being anything more than niche in the near and intermediate future, and if priced right, maybe it can survive on that.
I will contribute to NixOS on the Librem 5 once it is out. Highly recommend it as the interface bandwidth of phones vs laptops means dealing with shitty state would be even more annoying.
There does not seem to be anything here specific to the Librem 5 (or any other number) or even to phones. It mentions Gnome in passing, but that mainly runs on other things that bring much larger pools of potential users.
Maybe it should suggest developing for the desktop and tablet first, and then adapting the successful project to the phone afterward. Or, just adapting an existing project.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadThe only reason I'm on android is because of f-droid -- the android experience still degrades every few months (we can process all your SMS through our website! slower animations!). So tired of carrying G's hot garbage around in my pocket.
[0]: https://lineageos.org/.
But I am with op for being able to taste my desire :)
i.e. Android is completely open; if Google were to try to put something nefarious in it, anyone who'd checked out the Android source would be able to see that nefarious thing and remove it; if Google kept putting it back in, nerds would be able to fork Android to take it away from Google.
This has become much less true over the years than it used to be, of course, as much of what makes Android Android has migrated out of the core OS into less open intermediate layers like apps and services. This transition helps Google push updates out to users more quickly, since cell network operators proved to be pretty slow about pushing out updates to Android proper, but from Google's perspective it also has the side benefit of making "open Android" (e.g. AOSP) pretty incomplete unless you pair it with Google's proprietary services.
Relevant thread: https://twitter.com/CopperheadOS/status/772592323112869888
If you read the thread I linked, you'll see that Google doesn't really bother to ensure open source Android builds actually work at all: They post them but are only concerned with proprietary flavors being functional. Which means a lot of work has to be done to make open source Android even build in the first place.
Then, most apps are built on proprietary Google APIs, not open source Android APIs. So you either have to use something like micro-g to let you use Google services without the proprietary on-device code, or create your own replacement APIs that just claim to be Google, but aren't, which Amazon does and Microsoft experimented with when they made Android apps installable on some test builds of Windows Mobile. Or you have to substantially rewrite the apps not to use proprietary Google APIs.
So you have to do a lot to make open source Android anything actually work and do what people expect it to.
Ah, the favorite "a million eyes fallacy".
The truth is: there are very few (if any) people capable to do a full audit on the Android source code to see if something nefarious is happening. The source code for Android is over 20 GB. Good luck that "anyone" who can check it out an be able to see ... well ... anything.
When significant flaws were discovered in OpenSSL, it turned out there were only a handful people in the world who could potentially do a full analysis of the code base. And the resulting audit ended up costing millions, took several years and resulted in the re-implementation/forking of the code base.
I know that OpenSSL isn’t a part of Android, but it shows the difficulty of auditing a large complex project.
Believing that anyone can checkout Android code and easily discover if Google (or anyone) has done something nefarious is a delusion of the highest order. The code base would need to be continuously audited by a team of experts in various domains.
I think price is a pretty freaking good justification. I don't need to pay a 500 dollar mark-up to move out of "mid-range" when it does EVERYTHING I need my phone to do just fine.
200 euros less than a 3 year old phone, and while still too expensive for some developing countries, it feels being less wastefull of our society resources.
It is still one year younger, and for the remaining of your statement it doesn't justify paying the extra 200 euros, not everyone swims in money you know?
When the phone finally dies or gets stolen, those saved 200 euros are more than enough to get a new one.
IMO there are no good choices in this regard. Either get an expensive Apple device (And get locked into their bullshit), get an Android powered device and have your data harvested by google and the oem, or have nothing. There are no low-end offerings that even attempt to address privacy.
An iPhone would not be a step up but a jump down.
Cellular modems with open firmware are prohibited in 140 countries, including US and Europe.
For US: https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/kdb/forms/FTSSearchResultPage.cfm...
I have a Galaxy Tab S5e on the way that runs Android + Samsung DeX Linux. I'm hoping to use the Linux aspect heavily, so less of my info flows to Google. But I'll need to dig into it a bit to understand how they keep the data separate (if they do).
For software support I can generally recommend the Pocophone F1 by Xiaomi. The process of unlocking the bootloader is an insult, but after killing of Xiaomi software the user experience is quite good, with pretty good hardware for quite little money.
As soon as you have a compatible OS ("ROM") running, you will generally not have to worry about hardware, but making one is a considerable amount of work, so if you're intending to install a custom OS you should better choose a phone with good developer support.
I have been thinking about starting a database of good phone choices for modding/free software, but am not sure how much interest there is.
"Jailbreaking" on Android is as easy as flipping a toggle in the security settings. It allows for easy sideloading in general, and the use of alternative app sources in particular. IOS's developer sideloading capabilities have so many restrictions and limitations that it barely counts as sideloading.
Apple HATES the GPLv3, and specifically designed their app store agreement to forbid GPLv3 software. Good luck finding anything GPLv3 that's not dual-licensed on their app store. This effectively bans any GPLv3 software that's not exclusively developed by a single company (or is a community project that mandates copyright reassignment) from the app store. (Fun fact: Apple's hatred of the GPLv3 is the same reason that they ship MacOS with a 12-year-old version of Bash, v3.2, the last version under GPLv2.) I won't support a company so hostile to the very concept of free software. Google is the embodiment of the phrase "privacy nightmare", but even they obey the spirit of the GPL and other free software/open source licenses in their projects.
No iPhone has ever had a microSD slot. I'm not going to spend a multi-hundred-dollar premium for the equivalent storage space of a $20 microSD card.
I prefer Linux at home. Historically iPhones have required iTunes for basic functionality such as copying music to the phone, and therefore required Windows or MacOS. It's not as painful nowadays to use an iPhone without iTunes day-to-day, but it's still nowhere near as simple as Android, and certain operations still require iTunes.
Mobile Firefox on Android supports regular desktop Firefox extensions. I wouldn't be able to install Ublock Origin, Decentraleyes, UMatrix, or any other extension on Firefox on IOS, because Apple mandates that all third-party browsers on IOS can only be wrappers around mobile Safari. I can easily install standard extensions on Firefox for Android, because it's really Firefox under the hood.
I greatly hope for the success of the Librem 5. I would drop Android in a heartbeat for a genuinely Google-free phone with all the traditional openness (sideloading, adding cheap storage, easy wired file transfers without Windows/OSX, etc) of Android. GApps-less LineageOS is better than standard Google-laden Android but it's still not ideal. All I'm waiting for before ordering a Librem 5 is final confirmation that the supported frequencies match my carrier.
I find Apple's stance slightly odd since I don't think the GPLv3 apps would infect Apple, but then I also haven't taken the trouble to thoroughly understand GPLv3. I started to research it some years ago and my quick conclusion was "avoid".
I don't really have too much complaint about GPLv2. It does impose some limits but I feel like I understand them and can work with them.
Definitely with you on the $20 microSD card. The markup for storage is absurd.
Update: want to add this question. Anyone know why Apple would bar a GPLv3 app from the app store (bash is unfortunate but I think I understand that one)?
I think it's simply a company-wide policy made at the recommendation of overly-cautious legal counsel.
On the matter of GPLv3, I think this is going to be an "agree to disagree" type of thing. I actually quite like the changes over v2. But then I'm not a professional developer. I'm just a bookkeeper who dabbles in coding for fun and for a bit of ad-hoc automation on the job. My perspective is certainly quite different from someone who makes a living programming.
Working as a contractor writing closed source software and allowing my clients to mostly own what I create allows me to work around 30 hours a week and spend time doing volunteer work. If there was a path to do that with Free Software I might go for it.
It's ironic because apple is actually violating gplv2 with bash (it should distribute rootless.h)
Do iPhones even collect less data? You'll still probably use Google, Facebook, and other data-collecting services on their platform. Not to mention the tracking carriers themselves do.
Even most Linux users aren't that concerned with privacy, at the end of the day most still use Chrome and Google services. It's more about choice, freedom and control over your device.
Banking is the most obvious case for doing over the web. It is silly to limit yourself to platforms which your specific bank happens to support, given the incredible multitude of banks, and the likelihood that most banks' apps probably suck anyhow.
This may not sound like a huge advantage, but remember that bank website authentication usually requires the use of a security token device. And this device is something you probably don't want to carry around all the time.
HSBC recently allowed (and encourage) moving that token to the mobile app but they do NOT support using your phone number.
Santander uses your phone number to send OTP by text for such purposes, and Monzo, the "modern bank" doesn't have a website, everything is done by app.
Out of those Banks, Monzo is the only one that will allow you to run their app on a rooted phone.
I'm not aware of any bank websites allowing you to do this? Sure it's easy to add but A) They're banks B) It's more akward, and less convient then the device that's in my pocket 24/7
I think at this point we have enough examples of mobile phone numbers being insecure and mobile app stores being full of malware to categorically state your smartphone is not a secure enough device for accessing substantial sums of money.
No, some banks allow only small payments after accessing the app without hardware token.
It certainly would be less secure, but it's limited to smaller amounts of money. It depends on the banking app. For example, I'd rather have a 4 digit pin code to check my current balance then my 24char password. Also I have touchID so the security pin thing is a non-issue on my mobile device.
We're working on getting Alpine Linux running on devices, particularly older Android phones. The best-supported devices right now are the Nexus 5 and the N900, but others are catching up.
We've also got people working with the Librem 5 devkits, so the Librem 5 will be fully-supported once it comes out.
I have been seriously considering just getting a Nokia 3310 and a Garmin and calling it a day and being done with all this smartphone nonsense.
Also the PinePhone is an interesting project to watch.
I used mine through repeat broken screens until they stopped updating marshmallow
32-bit android M on old hardware performed so much better than what I have now
I would be comfortable with that philosophy as long as it's coupled with something along the lines of the Windows Registry, where it is common to find many preferences and configuration options that were simply not exposed in an application's user interface. But reducing the ability of users to adapt software to their needs without some countermeasure is chilling my interest a bit.
I am generally pretty fond of having a lot of settings, but I think you have to sort out why you have them. Is it for personal preference (dark mode/light mode) or is it something you should be able to detect and automate and not ask for?
Then they should go get an iphone!
100% of the appeal for this phone is that you'll be able to run GNU/X11 on it. (there's privacy stuff too but that's a result of the openness)
I already have conf files for most of the apps and use them on handhelds too.
For open to succeed, open has to still be appealing to the masses. The more people who embrace a true Linux platform, the more options you will have to buy phones running true Linux platforms. Aka, it is in your best interest to recognize you are an extremely uncommon user and that you benefit if more common users can use the product.
Even as a fairly technical user who likes to have a lot of settings and options, I do not ever want to have to pop open a text editor on my phone to fix an app. I'm fine with it being possible to do so, but I had better never have to do it.
Arguably, since the hardware should support you running whatever flavor of hackery you want, you should support the phone having apps designed with the average user in mind, knowing full well you are capable of customizing it to your liking anyways.
That's 100% of the appeal to you, and there aren't enough of you to make Librem sustainable. I say this as someone who was a big fan of what the Nokia N900 and Moko Phone were trying to achieve.
Me, I'm looking for a phone that lets me live outside the Google/Apple ecosystem without reducing my choices to 720p screens and 1GB RAM. I installed Ubuntu on my laptop a few years ago out of curiosity and it was absurd how much configuration everything needed. Needing to open up a package manager to get something as simple as an MP3 Player app is not the UX you want your customers to have.
> Needing to open up a package manager to get something as simple as an MP3 Player app is not the UX you want your customers to have.
This doesn't sound like a config issue though, that's more that the choices of preloaded packages could be better. A package manager isn't much different from an app store (assuming you meant one of the GUIs.)
Just curious because it's been a while, what were some things you had to configure? And were you configuring to get it feeling more like OS X/Windows, or to have software that's usable at all?
I just got rid of X11 from all my desktop PCs, no way in hell I'm using that pile of shit on a phone.
Also, it appeals to be because it's a phone that will support mainline Linux, NXP has been willing to support their products for longer terms than Qualcomm, puts the user firmly in the drivers' seat, and is being designed for eventual mainstream appeal.
I don't want or care about some special phone OS (especially if the UI is built with the same philosophy that built gnome.) I care that the hardware has drivers but that's it.
You could use it for ten years without having to know that the terminal is even there, but it is, along with /etc and OpenSSH and everything else Unix-like systems have had for decades.
Because you don't need brutish uniformity. Some people like to download things with Firefox and some people like to download things with curl and there is no reason they can't both exist on the same system.
I really hope that they bake enough into the price to be sustainable on low volume. I don't see this phone being anything more than niche in the near and intermediate future, and if priced right, maybe it can survive on that.
Maybe it should suggest developing for the desktop and tablet first, and then adapting the successful project to the phone afterward. Or, just adapting an existing project.