Comment by bo1024
6 years ago
Sidenote: I got my Librem 5 in the mail yesterday! Below is a video of unboxing.
https://peertube.co.uk/videos/watch/55eece8c-2d6c-4da3-8c8c-...
This prototype version is definitely not ready for mass market due to (1) known overheating issue (so far I've observed it get quite warm sometimes, but not uncomfortably hot), (2) a bunch little software things to work on. But it's really exciting to be able to `ls` and `cd` and `ssh` on a phone, and know that the software updates are coming.
Purism's accomplishment already is pretty incredible on both a hardware and software level. For me, well worth the price. Congrats to them even if there is a ways to go yet.
PeerTube.co.uk admin here. Your video alerted me to the fact that my view stats aren't working properly - I've had over 1000 visits today, usual is less than 100. Most of those have your video as the entry point, but those numbers aren't reflected on your view count. Thanks for being the first video that's been popular enough to highlight this!
Yeah, but it stopped playing for me half way through the video, right when the number of peers dropped to 1.
That's interesting, thanks for the heads up. I'll do a bit of experimenting to see if I can replicate with some less popular videos which aren't likely to have a redundant copy anywhere.
At 4 peers, the video played smoothly for me. Does peertube allow a way for people to "pin" a video they like so that they can permanently seed it to others?
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> But it's really exciting to be able to `ls` and `cd` and `ssh` on a phone, and know that the software updates are coming.
It's strange that SailfishOS has not caught more marketshare on the hacker/tech enthusiast community, because it's (almost) everything people wants about Purism : you lose a bit in the free software and open hardware side, but you win in terms of price (used phone + 50$ license), availability and usability (Right now, it's the only alternative to Android and iOS I can safely recommend).
If only Jolla devs had kept their promises of open-sourcing more of their code.
> If only Jolla devs had kept their promises of open-sourcing more of their code.
I think that's a big part of the answer to why it hasn't caught among techies. When I tried using it (shortly after release), there were numerous issues in their default apps that nobody could fix because they are proprietary and Jolla didn't seem to have the resources to handle all the bugs.
I'd wager that if it had been open source, the early adopters would have put some time in to fix a lot of the bugs.
In retrospect I'm pretty pissed at them for not being honest and upholding their promises. In my book they're basically con artists that just tried to get the Linux community's money by saying "open source" without actually meaning it.
This, along with Jolla's bankruptcy, is why I stopped using Sailfish as a former user. I didn't feel that I could depend on the platform sticking around.
I later switched to Ubuntu Touch because, despite Canonical picking up the project, the community had continued maintaining it. They could do that because it was freely licensed; nobody could do that for Sailfish.
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I use a Sailfish phone, and Meego before that. I suppose a lot of geeks are exactly the sort of people that actually want to use all possible functionality of and software for their phone, "power users", and are most handicapped by an ideological device. Most of the Jolla and Nokia N9 users I know are not technical geeks but rather want to support a cause.
is it strange? when I read their website it seems like they're targeted at corporations. It takes a lot of scrolling to find 'Sailfish OS X' that I can install on one of 3 phones from a company that I never considered a solid phone manufacturer.
It was different five years ago, read GP in that light.
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You seem to be forgetting LineageOS
> But it's really exciting to be able to `ls` and `cd` and `ssh` on a phone
Can't you do that on any other Android phone with terminal software installed?
Android has a tiny BusyBox clone (ToyBox IIRC) in the default installation that can be accessed over USB with the right commands. It isn't particularly useful for anything besides poking around, and definitely doesn't support SSH, but it does do ls and cd.
not properly. android is about as full-blown a linux environment as that plastic router on which your ISP left the telnet open.
Barely, although termux makes it a lot more reasonable. It's more a package management issue.
I can share to Termux from the YouTube app on my Pixel and download an entire playlist to my music folder - Ffmpeg handles any audio.
It's quicker than any of the YouTube downloader apps I've tried!
How it works: in ~/bin there's a termux-url-opener script that handles what you share:
"#!/bin/bash
case "$1" in
(dl_yt just calls youtube-dl -x)
I love it and am still finding new uses for Termux. I've got neovim and all my dotfiles loaded, so in a pinch I can ssh into my phone to do some work.
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I installed Debian in a chroot on my HTC Desire Z in 2011, and proceeded to apt-get install exim on it to tinker.
You can run a full GNU/Linux distro, and apt-get install most stuff: https://f-droid.org/packages/tech.ula/
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Theres also https://github.com/t184256/nix-on-droid-bootstrap on fdroid for a good package manager
Not without the risk that the phone vendor, Google (or some Android hacker) is looking over your shoulder.
I mean, I like Purism, but that risks still exists with this phone. With any phone. The promise not to snoop is central to their business model and I have no reason to believe they would snoop, but certainly the capability is there.
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Exciting to see it's real. I was getting very worried about the controversy, but it's beginning to fade away.
I'm so fed up with software that tries to anticipate what I want. Computers running Linux do what you ask in spite of what you want, but phones running modern phone operating systems do what they think you want in spite of what you need. And that is deeply frustrating to power users.
I guess now I just need to decide when to jump into this.
I too am glad I didn't cancel my order. I'm sure my batch won't be out until probably late next year, but I do feel good about supporting a project like this.
Good to see that backers are starting to receive theirs. I know there was some previous controversy over them only shipping to Purism employees.
just to be pedantic, she didn't say she's not a purism employee
"But it's really exciting to be able to `ls` and `cd` and `ssh` on a phone..."
Can you boot to a shell without starting GNOME?
I wouldn't rule it out but I don't know how to. I guess you would need a keyboard connected via USB to be able to input in that scenario
Wouldn't you just disable the display server like any other Linux OS? I'm sure they're using systems, so it just just be:
> sudo systemctl disable phosh.service
Or something like that. I'm sure it would be pretty easy with a bit of fiddling. However, you're right that you'd probably need a keyboard plugged in because the default TTY probably doesn't have a soft keyboard.
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I’m pretty sure one of the community members got an onscreen keyboard working for this use case