Does anyone know if Gentoo will be supporting this phone?

John R. Graham · Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2018 12:51 pm Post subject:

KDE is also supported. Or do you think that's bad, too?

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Thanks. It's at least not Gnome

It'll depend on usability.
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

John R. Graham · Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2019 2:13 pm Post subject:

It's been a long time coming, but there's some promising news: the first version of the Librem 5 Linux-based phone is shipping!

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

John R. Graham · Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2019 1:40 am Post subject:

Sad to read this about Librem. In addition, Ars Technica has disturbing news.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Unfortunate, but not surprising. I was waiting for evaluations of the first real version. But my next phone is unlikely to be a "smart" phone.

Strangely, I think more honesty about what was happening wouldn't have been that poorly received. Other than time, I'm not aware of them having any direct competitors, so I don't think that was a risk of revealing "too much." But it sounds like they hid too much for too long and the pile became too big to admit.

As for the SPC part, I don't really see a notable problem. Their social purpose appears to be FOSS based devices, which seems easy to demonstrate by their laptops and OS (I have no idea the degree to which they meet that purpose).
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

Hate to say I told you so...

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

John R. Graham · Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2019 6:01 pm Post subject:

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

I wonder how viable the business is in general. It seems like starting with a "standard" closed device and working bakwards toward open would be a better approach. Make it a device the average person would buy (if it were readily available) and that helps solve a big part of the problem. Then whittle away at the closed bits.
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Thanks. I didn't find much other than what seems like some initial discussion back in June including a reference to the removal of reporting code being reverted. As an aside, I think "moderation" needs to mostly be done by individual users in the form of effective blocking tools, probably to include an option to "block what <qualifying factors> other users block."
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

https://squeet.me/display/962c3e10822953869f3fe9727ed5fbd2db366a76?addr=https://squeet.me/profile/danie10&owt=357432652f95d2ebc40755bec560b307

John R. Graham · Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2019 7:56 pm Post subject:

Apparently some backers have now received their phones.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Seems like a good first step for an early alpha.
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

There is only one question:
does it use mainline linux or not. If not than is just like every other android phone out there ...
_________________
Ok boomer
True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
Ab esse ad posse valet, a posse ad esse non valet consequentia

My fediverse account: @erm67@erm67.dynu.net

John R. Graham · Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2019 11:05 pm Post subject:

My understanding is that it does. All the various radios' code is off on separate circuit boards so there's no impediment to a standard kernel.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

I'd prefer to handle it, but it didn't look bad. Descriptions of its functionality were surprisingly better than I'd thought. Granted, that's according to someone who paid to get an early device, but still. I cringed a bit anticipating much worse description of functionality. Phone call audio will be kind of important though (another comment claimed the Pinewhateveritwas phone was having similar issues).
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

John R. Graham · Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 12:52 am Post subject:

Yeah. Making a call is kind of a minimum bar for functionality. Otherwise, one might as well play with a Raspberry Pi. I was pleasantly surprised by the fit & finish of these Birtch batch prototypes as well.

- John

Edit: Corrected batch name.
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

I wasn't that AllWinner CPU has such a bad reputation .... overheat problems, bad mainline support, and having to use a dip switch every time you board a plane is also not ideal ;-)

Maybe I will stick to LineageOS for a while ....
_________________
Ok boomer
True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
Ab esse ad posse valet, a posse ad esse non valet consequentia

My fediverse account: @erm67@erm67.dynu.net

alexander-n8hgeg5e · n00b Joined: 02 Nov 2019 Posts: 58

In my opinion it's sometimes worth to risk that such a phone
might not as promissed.
This creates a market for FOSS phones, in any case.
If it's more free, it's worth the money.
Wrong promisses are not good for sure, but
you do not know it prior
to shipping,.. so if you can afford the risk,
give them a chance to build something with your money.'

Bye the way , i wrote this with message with gentoo
prefix on my phone in w3m and vim.
I could use firefox , but it would eat the ram it
needs for compiling stuff.

monkeygirl · n00b Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 69

This is a very old post, but it should be noted that we're about to go into 2021 and I never got a phone. I'm now trying to figure out whether they're in the "process of shipping" and will send me my phone in the next quarter, or if I have to take legal action. Because every quarter since 2019, my phone was on its way....

This was a hard and expensive lesson learnt for wanting a linux phone that they can run Gentoo on. :cry: