Purism Shows Off The Librem 5 Linux Smartphone In Action

[Wijis]

It does not run Gnome Shell. It does run Phosh/phoc based on wlroots(used in swaywm) with a mobile Gnome Design

True, it is not running GS, however, much of the stack powering the phone and its apps is based on GNOME. It's a huge reason why the product has been delayed. Instead of using something proven (UBPorts or Plasma Mobile), they decided to reinvent the wheel. As you would expect, it's been a very laborious process.

Ubuntu normally has a bad case of NIH but they did the right thing to go with Qt for their mobile experiment. Purism should have done that at the very least instead of farting around with the hot mess that is Gtk.

[sverris]

Well, why not remove all those words completely then, since true freedom doesn't exist?

This is a very good answer. Taking words literally often just gets absurd.

[Toggleton]

If a quad core i7 or a quad core Ryzen 5 can't run Gnome Shell at 60fps why do you expect the i.MX8 to be able to do that? I would say this is most likely not a problem in the Librem 5 stack, but rather a problem in Gnome Shell itself.

It does not run Gnome Shell. It does run Phosh/phoc based on wlroots(used in swaywm) with a mobile Gnome Design

[sarmad]

OK, so I watched the video... and I have one big complaint.

Where is my 60FPS scrolling?
Are widgets being drawn on the CPU, or is the GPU this weak?
It doesn't look smooth as a 2019 smartphone. It looks like an early smartphone from the 2000's.

If a quad core i7 or a quad core Ryzen 5 can't run Gnome Shell at 60fps why do you expect the i.MX8 to be able to do that? I would say this is most likely not a problem in the Librem 5 stack, but rather a problem in Gnome Shell itself.

[tildearrow]

OK, so I watched the video... and I have one big complaint.

Where is my 60FPS scrolling?
Are widgets being drawn on the CPU, or is the GPU this weak?
It doesn't look smooth as a 2019 smartphone. It looks like an early smartphone from the 2000's.

[L_A_G]

Neither is the Librem 5.

Maybe not, but using components that are still VHDL/Verilog files on a bunch of hardware engineers' computers or ideas sketched out on a whiteboard instead of silicon you can actually go out and buy today isn't exactly going to help.

Yes, I know there are physical chips that already exist, but they're not really usable in this use case. So we'll have to wait until someone starts selling a chip usable for this use case before RISC-V becomes a real alternative. Moaning about not using RISC-V in something that's supposed to start shipping out now/soon-ish is like moaning about a chip still being made of silicon rather than graphene or gallium arsenide.

Sure, it'll eventually be an option, but it's not one right now.

[Vistaus]

Sure, RISC-V chips do exist, but in this use case they're not really ready for mass marker use yet

Neither is the Librem 5.

[L_A_G]

Thats admirable but they should have called it "AlmostLibrem" or "Compromisem". Libre is not a brand name or a technology. They are misusing it to try to get money from us idiots and that is a little bit unethical.

Trying to be libre is honestly great. I would also buy since it is the most libre I can buy currently. However it isn't libre (yet) and should not be named as such (yet).

Its like naming an eco-Level 2 rated boiler "EcoLevel5Boiler". It is just false advertising.

As I said, you're just being idiotically pedantic here. Yes, it's not 100% "libre", but I'd describe it as being 95% while nobody else can even break 80%. Even that proprietary 5%, i.e the modems, are walled off on their own daughter board that can be switched off at will.

If I had to use an analogy, what you're doing is like complaining that a car is being sold as an "eco" car when it's not completely emissions free even thou it's considerably better in terms of emissions than any other car on the market. Try to understand that we're not talking about a specific level here, we're talking about a general concept to which most of this device adheres to perfectly. The few bits that aren't fully compliant to said principle have had their non-compliance mitigated.

[jo-erlend]

So it seems that we should not use the word "Libre" in a product until we actually do have a free computer.

Well, why not remove all those words completely then, since true freedom doesn't exist?

[tildearrow]

You could have used a non-YouTube source...