Purism's Librem 5 Developer Kits Finally Shipping, Linux Phone Price Going Up To $699

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Purism's Librem 5 Developer Kits Finally Shipping, Linux Phone Price Going Up To $699

After originally hoping to ship this past summer, Purism is announcing tonight that the Librem 5 Developer Kits are beginning to ship for those who pre-ordered these i.MX8 developer boards designed for bringing up their inaugural GNU/Linux smartphone...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Librem-5-Dev-Kits-Shipping

[tildearrow]

More information should be appearing on the Purism blog.

Make sure to properly link to it when it does.

https://puri.sm/posts/2018-devkits-are-shipping/

I hope it is still possible to buy developer kits after the ship date...

[ElectricPrism]

In for 2-5 phones if the product can do the basics right

[uid313]

Does it have a 4G modem?
Can it make phone calls?
Can it run an unpatched mainline Linux kernel? (Pixel 3 can)

Expensive and weak.

[Danniello]

Does it have a 4G modem?
Can it make phone calls?
Can it run an unpatched mainline Linux kernel? (Pixel 3 can)

Expensive and weak.

Are you sure? You could use 4G modem, phone calls using Linux without proprietary blobs on Pixel 3?

Even if - there is no Pixel 3 "Open-Source Edition" or at least "Still Android But Without Google Spying Software Edition" freely available on the market. At least not in Poland.

Librem 5 will be first truly with open source software phone available for "average user". True - no real "average user" will buy it, but theoretically it will be possible It is for us - Linux enthusiasts, and I intend to buy it. But first it need to be on the market. Then I will buy it. Even if it will cost 100 USD more.

[ramnasko]

I hope it is still possible to buy developer kits after the ship date...

Dev kit oders are closed since summer. I thinks the argument was on the lines of not wanting to spend more resources on production and shipping for devkits. They rather spend it on debugging and developing with the dev kit and putting out the real phone.


@uid313
Does it have a 4G modem? yes
Can it make phone calls? yes
Can it run an unpatched mainline Linux kernel? (Pixel 3 can) 4.21 is targeted i think. Final parts were submitted by NXP for the SOC the elast week or so. Was here on phoronix

Expensive and weak. : The trade for freedom. Its like calling the Pixel or iPhone expensive and jailing. Both true. But like so often you have to chose, depending on your priorities.

[uid313]

Are you sure? You could use 4G modem, phone calls using Linux without proprietary blobs on Pixel 3?

Even if - there is no Pixel 3 "Open-Source Edition" or at least "Still Android But Without Google Spying Software Edition" freely available on the market. At least not in Poland.

Librem 5 will be first truly with open source software phone available for "average user". True - no real "average user" will buy it, but theoretically it will be possible It is for us - Linux enthusiasts, and I intend to buy it. But first it need to be on the market. Then I will buy it. Even if it will cost 100 USD more.

Pixel 3 does not run without binary blobs. But it does run with the mainline Linux kernel.
Other phones need a custom patched out-of-tree kernel.

https://lwn.net/Articles/775110/

https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2018/12/17/a-dream-come-true-android-finally-using-drm/kms/

The dream finally came true in 2018 with the release of the Google Pixel 3, the first Android phone running with the mainline graphics stack. A feat that was deemed impossible 10 years ago is now a reality thanks to a lot of hard work from the entire community.

[Michael_S]

Pixel 3 does not run without binary blobs. But it does run with the mainline Linux kernel.
Other phones need a custom patched out-of-tree kernel.

https://lwn.net/Articles/775110/

https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2018/12/17/a-dream-come-true-android-finally-using-drm/kms/

That's fantastic, seriously it is. But mainline Android is completely tied to the proprietary parts of Google's ecosystem, so even if the kernel is mainline this is still inescapably a proprietary device. This may still be the most important article Ars Technica ever published: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018...ans-necessary/

I've been contemplating a move to Replicant but so many Replicant device features are unusable as to render the device worthless. I don't really expect the Librem 5 to start some kind of truly open smartphone revolution, but at this point I'll back anything I can afford that doesn't feed more power to Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon.

[dos1]

https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2018/12/17/a-dream-come-true-android-finally-using-drm/kms/

BTW, just a small curio: Openmoko Neo Freerunner was the first DRM/KMS phone ever, and if I'm not mistaken, even the very first non-x86 device to have that. Good to see Android finally catching up from being 9 years behind

[ZeroPointEnergy]

Pixel 3 does not run without binary blobs. But it does run with the mainline Linux kernel.
Other phones need a custom patched out-of-tree kernel.

https://lwn.net/Articles/775110/

https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2018/12/17/a-dream-come-true-android-finally-using-drm/kms/

The article you linked just says they are using the mainlined graphics stack and not that the Pixel 3 runs on a mainline kernel. Most of the device drivers Android phones use are in userspace so they don't have to be under the GPL (and are therefore mostly closed source) so even if you could boot a mainline kernel on that phone, you would not be able to use it.

Also an android kernel has a lot of other custom modules that are not mainlined, so most likely the Pixel 3 still runs on a fork.

The Librem 5 however will support ALL hardware directly from the kernel and everything will be mainlined.