Purism Finally Announces The Firmed Up Specifications For The Librem 5 Smartphone

[the_scx]

You can't run this software on a 486

Why not? I mean, support for 486-class processors was dropped, somewhat accidentally, in Debian 6.0 (Squeeze), so Debian 5.0 (Lenny), which was released 10 years ago, still supported it.
Of course, the performance would be just terrible even on Pentium Pro (the first 686), and barely usable on Pentium III, but I think it should be possible to run this software on 486.

[starshipeleven]

Why not?.

We are not talking of the architecture, but of the actual historical hardware called 486. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486

It's not going to run anything remotely modern.

[starshipeleven]

Not bad?! It is even worse than Freedreno! It is mainly about OpenGL 2.

I'm not sure about what you mean.

[starshipeleven]

There were alternatives like BorlandC, TurboC, DJgpp which were as good as the mentioned software.

Browsers were without Javascript. You could download videos and play them offline. LibreOffice = Word 4.0 .

Yes I'm aware that back then there was software that ran on it, I'm saying that the software mentioned by him will NOT run with any semblance of usefullness, if at all.

[starshipeleven]

I have a slightly different approach and I don't mind to use proprietary software. For example, I have no problem with using NVIDIA drivers.
Anyway, I have noticed that people talk a lot about open source, but in the end they use proprietary software anyway. Of course, there are exceptions.

The line in the sand that many use is that they want the OS itself to be opensource, because that allows them to have more control (and is more convenient).

Applications you run over it can be proprietary, because an application is not going to have permission or control over the rest of the system (yes this is not true without decent sandboxing and Wayland but let's ignore that for a moment).

And it's just a coincidence that the interface looks like a mobile version of GNOME?

They are using GTK, yo. Of course it looks like GNOME

[starshipeleven]

The CPU, I have to trust, there is no other choice. The more open the design of CPU, the better. So, ARM is better than x86. Risc V beats ARM.

I wouldn't say ARM is more "open" than x86, but yeah I prefer ARM too as it at least does at least give the OEM full control over the board firmware features (i.e. the OEM can decide what to do with the Trusted Execution features, the "security" thing that is ARM counterpart of Intel ME and AMD PSP) instead of not trusting anyone and always integrating a goddamn backdoor in every system like Intel (and AMD to a lesser extent) does.

Also on ARM the boot process may be shitty but at least it's not UEFI.

Let's skip the bootloader issue. After that, the kernel or microkernel needs to be open source, so that I and others can inspect it. A microkernel is preferable, since then I don't have to trust anything else. On a microkernel, a driver can be proprietary.

Another man of culture, I see. Yes I agree with this.

Due to bad application isolation on Linux, I have to trust applications, too, so apps need to be open source also.

Yeah also true.

[edwaleni]

[cynical]

Lol, almost in that order here, but had a Jolla between N900 and Ununtu Touch. Openmoko was never really usable for me but fun nonetheless. N900 was an absolutely amazing device and lasted really long, was really ahead in many things. Jolla was super strange to use and finally the Ubuntu touch was actually the cleanest and best experience I ever had with any smartphone. Currently I use a Lineage on a samsung s7, but that just sucks and gets no more updates.

I preordered the Librem 5, but seeing this stats, if I could go back I would maybe wait and take a closer look at the pine phone

I wish Canonical had stuck with it. Unity 8 was soo nice, and they were very much in the early days. Imagine where they would be now if it were still around. The UI was beautiful, fast, and looked good on the desktop + mobile. I like Gnome, but performance wise there was no comparison. Think I will go load up Unity 8 for nostalgia reasons... *sigh*

[cynical]

They never offered anything different from Android, down to short support and outdated kernels. It just looked different and had a whole different (non-existent) ecosystem. But different isn't enough.

You get that this was just the initial plan right? They were trying to start out being compatible so manufacturers might give them a second glance since they wouldn't have to change much besides flashing a device that they already designed for Android. It is the common sense thing to do if you actually want support from manufacturers for your OS, and you don't really like the idea of becoming a hardware company. It wasn't their goal to stick to that forever, but you need to start somewhere.

They didn't succeed because honestly the Linux community largely wanted them to fail. We'll see what happens with Purism, but I'm not optimistic.

[cynical]

All I need is my friend's opinion and reviews.
- Bad UI design, rather for tablets than smartphones
- Slow performance (UI and apps)
- Fairly buggy software
- Lack of decent apps

https://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/meizu-pro-5-ubuntu-edition-1315194/review

Did you even read it? He said it had a good UI design lol. And we know that's a fact now because Android/Apple both copied the gestures idea for their interfaces.