MX Linux Forum

The moment is fast approaching that Purism (an SCP from California) will finally offer the world a genuinely Linux native smartphone, after 2 years of initial crowdfunding (a tiny $2m+ btw) and incessant hacking the core since then.

Just who is waiting for (or else eagerly anticipating) this product launch just remains to be seen IMO. The price point is not cheap at all at about $650 for a fairly rudimentary-specked phone.
2 or 3 years old tech albeit with an internal and SoM facelift qua features. Smartphones are however incredibly complex animals with accelorometers, gyrometers, magnetometers (and all 3x just determine pitch and angle and attitude or orientation alone).

Then you get into the ARM cpu, the gpu the radio, baseband, cellular, peripherals. No wonder Linux has always tried to piggy-back upon an existing Android installation, within a container environment. Android itself however adds up-to 3 million lines of out-of-tree code to the Linux kernel used (mostly years out-of-date).Plus up-to 8x fabless construction partner companies then use that code to eventually configure their own stuff to work with it (and almost none of that code is publicly inspected or vetted) and the product launch is thus determined by last to the party and the proverbial weakest link in the chain.
Plus how often does any Android phone ever get updated? If you are lucky maybe once or twice. Many attempts to go with Linux-ways-better here -like postmarketos or cyanogen or Jolla, Sailfish or Ubuntu Touch ... but nothing ever really viable.

Purism might well be different here. The enormous number of commits hitting Linux kernel 5.2(/3) this week alone indicate a very eminent release date. As does daily youtube teaser videos. Entire chipset (nxp) plus the etnav gpu, plus glemasco, plus radios, baseband all hitting the Linux-next mainline kernel branches. I am just very, very excited here. Just 5 seconds to boot a full Linux on a smartphone (one penguin btw shown for each second). OK Oreo boots in 15 secs and who powers down anyways (me maybe haha), pobably also easy to dual-boot it too, to adapt any Linux like Arch/Tumbleweed (or whatever, MX too). It will use Gnome libs and tools ootb, but kde plasma mobile should also work just as good semi-ootb. MX would surely work too - if say stuff like tpm, trousers, various gnome libs, various specialist pure libs, posh etc and quite a number of other gnome native libs added were ported ...plus it could be running an almost nightly build Linux-next style mainline kernel (version 5.2 or above) all pre-loaded - this almost sounds just too crazy good to me.

Anyone else already per-ordered this phone or maybe even looking to do an MX build cq spin on this phone? It is not cheap at all, quite clunky and big, and it is not bling either and the production run is very tiny and it's only raison-d 'etre is to give you Linux on a smartphone (with no added extras at all).
The rest is work in progress stuff. Privacy is being touted of course as a reason to buy, but that comes with going with the Linux way anyways.

Quite intriguing stuff though end-of-day, to not only be able to run Linux on a smartphone - with it 99% being piggy-backed on top of Android, but to actually run full Linux in all of it's intended glory and speed and it's utter power too. The price is very steep though here and the apps available very limited and even basic functions being available are almost a miracle to have, as this ecosphere is so incredibly hard and complex to code upon. Endless chains of partner companies all delivering just a a stepping-stone element to the entire final product. This one phone though does offer an all-in-one Linux solution, mostly anyways.

About 90% core functionality, limited app functionality, real kill switches and replaceable batteries etc. If you order online most specs are just "tbd "(like yet to be determined stuff) even now, but most of those ordering will not care one jot about either price or actual specs ...just that it will boot 100% Linux natively and that it can run Linux mainline kernels ootb and with no android to be seen. I'm very excited here myself and await delivery sometime soon, full specs still fairly unknown (will have 8gb ram, though all the dev-kits shipped with only 4gb). Very rare that I would ever think to buy something, with limited actual shipping specs included and without full and circa 99% research ...but this phone is just THAT important to some people (me too). Android is sort-of maybe Linux-based, but only with some millions of added codelines and a few more millions by contracted associates (who use closed source models only). Not quite the same thing.

Anyone else feeling this type of buzz of excitement of a semi-imminent release of an actual Linux smartphone so very soon? Yes, so very expensive to acquire and not top-end of the market qua components ...but sometimes freedom is not as free as it should be.

I have been watching this for several years. Since my first post here about Purism's phone.
I do not have the financial means to buy one yet. Not sure if I ever will.
I share your excitement though. If they can achieve this it will be great news for Linux and security minded folks.

duane wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 3:15 pm I have been watching this for several years. Since my first post here about Purism's phone.
I do not have the financial means to buy one yet. Not sure if I ever will.
I share your excitement though. If they can achieve this it will be great news for Linux and security minded folks.

You did not make too easy for me to find your long-ago post cq thread on this matter ...but found it eventually and all the more kudos for it to begin from anno 2017
viewtopic.php?t=42925
Again the big problem is the almost huge selling price at about $650, for some otherwise run-of-mill specs.. So many folks just cannot go there in paying this money. I fully understand that angle and it was a huge decision to make for me too. To buy or not to buy. I'm not rich at all. but do want this product so much

I almost never buy anything without knowing shipment date beforehand, rma policies, full specs of the entire equipment etc ...but this company does seem to be one to maybe trust a bit more than normal.Yes, I bought last year with expected release this past January, then March, then July (maybe).
Still nothing terribly specific on the actual specs of the Phone or release date. One of the 15x dedicated employees though is Chris Lamb, who until a month ago was our own Debian project leader for the past 2~3 years (which then means that do you think this adds credence to their SPC as a whole, which it must do so ...and so you go on and encounter EU commission lawyers and politicians and quite a few 100% Linux hackers too within their mix.

That gives me some good confidence here,that this product will actually release very soon. Apparently the very latest extended delays were because of horrible battery software performance. I do not care at all how raw the system performs on release, but battery stuff is so crucial here and would be very bad to ship with horrible battery. The rest of it ...and I just don't really care at all. if the fonts or res is bad, or there is some tearing just tweak the gtk-stuff like we always do anyway.You don't care for gnome. then just go kde plasma mobile instead. want android style apps, then go with Anbox layer. Want to go without then just detox and go without.
Even if it would be only a tiny desktop on a phone, you could still dock it's power to a random PC connection anywhere in the world. It'll be quite a lot more though, I'd either fully expect or else just like to think.

The normal excitement though is mixed a little bit with some concerns, warranted or not. Bought almost a year ago, still no definite release date, still no full specs released. Time left to cancel is 6 months from now, don't want to do so though.

Mostly I want to d/l to usb about 30x Linux distros and the very night that device arrives ...just do an all-nighter. All linuxes in and out all non-stop,much dual-boot etc. i've been waiting for Linux on a phone for very long now - and no Android is no substitute whatsoever here.
Some rumours do suggest shipment on the 4th of July. Hope do! This is one purchase that I just buy sight-unseen, with not inside knowledge ...and it's a very very expensive purchase too. This is my only exception to full and total and blanket research in the past 15 years to any high-end dollar purchase.

Just so very excited about first execution of terminal commands on a fully Linux phone,the ultra-fast speeds etc. Just to own your own phone would be nice already

I've been watching Purism for some years too. I like their philosophy, a lot. Though the price of their phone is currently too much for me.

I wonder whether this thing runs pure Linux or is using Android?

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/piphon ... martphone/

I could afford this one. I guess I'll get around to getting the bits & pieces required to add to one of my 3b+'s & see...

Looks very tasty but the price in Australia..

$649 US vs $925.45 AU is a joke..

KoO wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 8:01 pm Looks very tasty but the price in Australia..

$649 US vs $925.45 AU is a joke..

Purism's goal, We believe phones should not track you nor exploit your digital life, is commendable but It may not be allowed in Australia when you have idiots like these in power:

"Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said the laws of mathematics come second to the law of the land in a row over privacy and encryption. Under new legislation proposed by the Australian Government, messaging apps like WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage would be forced to hand over the contents of encrypted messages... George Brandis, the Australian Attorney General, said the UK security agency GCHQ has assured him it was possible to unlock encrypted systems.

One encryption company states, "(this) endangers the security of everyone who uses online services, it weakens civil rights like privacy and due process, and it places an unprecedented burden on tech companies to attack the very users they set out to serve.

"There is nothing new about a government seeking to break encryption... But Australia’s new law goes much further, deputizing tech businesses as accomplices in a surveillance scheme so loosely conceived that no one really knows its limits... Once police have gained access to a suspect’s device, they could easily remove evidence from the device that could prove the person’s innocence. There would be no way to know."

LU344928 wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:13 am

KoO wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 8:01 pm Looks very tasty but the price in Australia..

$649 US vs $925.45 AU is a joke..

Purism's goal, We believe phones should not track you nor exploit your digital life, is commendable but It may not be allowed in Australia when you have idiots like these in power:

"Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said the laws of mathematics come second to the law of the land in a row over privacy and encryption. Under new legislation proposed by the Australian Government, messaging apps like WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage would be forced to hand over the contents of encrypted messages... George Brandis, the Australian Attorney General, said the UK security agency GCHQ has assured him it was possible to unlock encrypted systems.

One encryption company states, "(this) endangers the security of everyone who uses online services, it weakens civil rights like privacy and due process, and it places an unprecedented burden on tech companies to attack the very users they set out to serve.

"There is nothing new about a government seeking to break encryption... But Australia’s new law goes much further, deputizing tech businesses as accomplices in a surveillance scheme so loosely conceived that no one really knows its limits... Once police have gained access to a suspect’s device, they could easily remove evidence from the device that could prove the person’s innocence. There would be no way to know."

Hear to that if you are using your mobile phone while walking across the street anywhere even at the lights we will now be fined. I could go about this country for ages but I like not living in jail..
Australia used to be the place to be Not Any More.

Rather than spend a bundle on a new unproven framus, that might or might-not work as advertised,
buy an older iPhone4/5/6 that Opple no longer supports for say $25 bucks - root it - roll your own,
and you have a fairly decent, secure phone for very little money ... this Librem sounds like a loser

Every drug-dealer will have several, but not before the Federales crack it .. not a new idea.

It has never been good form to discuss your next diamond heist on any mechanical device, even the
mob were smarter than that - we dont even send bank docs via the 'Net - always use FedEx - KISS

Regards

Jack

The movie "Body of Lies" [2008], is worth watching. It is quite revealing re. "terrorist" methods of side stepping the U.S. & its alies surveillance techniques.

what are your thoughts about this one?

xali wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 12:32 pm what are your thoughts about this one?

It's another effort to deliver full Linux on a smartphone, the Pine 64 stuff.Also another effort in the pipeline too, the Nx stuff.. All good. Much lower-specc'd though, like the Allwinner SoC/SoM and the Mali graphics core and tiny ram stuff is the Pine64. like 2GB ram versus 32 GB.

Pine64 a bit more happy about full KDE involvement, Librem 5 went very fast from being initially quite happy with KDE plasma mobile to then just fully focused on in-house Gnome stuff and libs (most in-house kernel hackers came from Gnome stuff). Whatever works though.
I don't really care too much, as as long as the phone is fully free and fully Linux, then I can do as I want with it (except load about 10+ million playstore apps, haha). Can dock it though, with USB 3.1, can run full-scale *nix stuff on it too. Can scale it. Do almost anything with it.

I will run the Librem 5 with full Linux, but not with the pre-shipped PureOS and absolutely not with only all-Gnome libs, however integrated. Either use full KDE plasma mobile instead or else help out in it being made usable. Or else run it another way.
The KDE folks from Berlin will no doubt find a good way here. If the hardware works and is very friendly with *nix, then only small steps to really hack KDE stuff in. Boot mainline kernels 5.3+ and then who cares. Highly nice mid-range specs to then work with.

I presume that the recent media blitz on the Librem 5 means almost ready for launch, mainline kernel 5.2 (at absolute minimum) almost confirmed too. They probably did pre-order about 10k units (having sold about 2k units in the crowd-funding cycle)
and then gaining about another 3k units worth of added sales cq funding in the normal slow-sales next 18 months. Last month, has probably been mostly about stock management stuff. They maybe don't wanna hit market with tons of unsold units ie ca 50% stock.
Best to be very conservative here and to carry a very small and tight hold-back, say no more than 2k units max. 2 distrib channels here, like South SF USA and Berlin EU. Plus Tokyo city. Word-of-mouth sales then only. I do like to carry minimum stock then and to look to
leverage interest only if fully established in the very niche market. Will be loads of criticism to be expected in general media like too low-spec for the dollar price-point. The priceless angle though is to have a full mainline Linux kernel to fully boot and to boot any and every Linux ootb.
Very easy to then do an added after-market order for say another 10k units, if very positive feedback. Could however be very difficult to ship leftover stock, if bitten by terrible feedback. The pain of any start-up, like getting stock units just right. I do presume that they did gamble on a full
production run of 10k units in Guangzhou (for the thus healthy 5% discount available versus a 5k run). To just run the crowd-funded 2k production run in Guangzhou would have cost maybe 40% more per unit. Then you do have to really hard-sell these units though.
Would be a total all-in gamble to hit market, with 50% of inventory fully dependent on positive reviews. Can fully identify here. If they did hit market with 5m+ dollars in stock and then got badly burnt, bad news for everyone. Company possibly bust or else close to it.
Would far rather see a healthy company continuing to operate nicely in the more premium end of the Linux niche market-space, than one rushing to market carrying excess stock on-board. I'd guess they'd want 20% unsold stock at launch to play with
...and then rush to meet excess demand, rather than get burned in market.

I'd like KDE to boot on both and it will 100% too ...and if it somehow does not ootb, then we will make it work anyways, so long the hardware is friendly to *nix. Pine64 also quite nice too and very purse friendly at about 150 dollars, so will also try it too with various KDE boots plus PostmarketOS.
PS the main Czech kernel hacker has also been pushing (and acking in) tons of kernel commits from Librem 5 and from KDE too. Should be hitting market fairly soon. Enormous #'s commits hitting Gnome too and the kind of hidden and non-public KDE mobile branch as well. Have good hopes here.
Paid my dollars already and over 18 months ago, should fairly soon become fact. Linux on a phone and no Android cripple-ware would be very nice to have. Same issue as always with Linux and maybe not usable enough ootb, compared to the mega-bucks outfits. I really don't care though.

KoO wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 6:31 am
Hear to that if you are using your mobile phone while walking across the street anywhere even at the lights we will now be fined. I could go about this country for ages but I like not living in jail..
Australia used to be the place to be Not Any More.

I'm watching this closely and am scratching my head wondering how they can, say, demand overseas companies turn over customer's communications when, if E2E is used, a given, those companies wouldn't be able to read it in the first place. So presumably the law would then kick in and attempt to force them to alter their software to allow access. But offshore companies, particularly the privacy focused ones in the EU, are not under Australian jurisdiction so are not subject to Australian law. What could the govt do about it? Ban these companies? Impose draconian fines or even imprisonment on Australians who continue to use these services? Shades of Russia banning Tor Browser. The mind boggles.

These govt agencies say it's primarily about 'national security' and 'protecting' the citizenry from the 'terrorist' boogieman but as Glenn Greenwald, the journalist at The Guardian who published the Snowden revelations, points out, it's really about identifying dissenters and gathering as much info on them and their associates as possible. This is what the KGB and the East German Stasi used to do.

Still, I like to think it's not all doom and gloom. Some are fighting back:

https://www.efa.org.au/
https://internetfreedomhack.org/
https://hackforprivacy.org/
https://robindoherty.com/

xali wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 12:32 pm what are your thoughts about this one?

I have high hope. They made a while back pinebook that was underpowered and more for kids. But they have a product. Then right now it is coming out new, pretty decent pinebook pro. For the price it is a good deal. So they are producing and moving forward.

I can hardly wait to see what will happen later this year with pinephone and pinetablet, both priced very cheap!

Too little, too late ... as Linux is free, the big-bucks price tag must presumably be for hardware?

Only Apple gets those high prices for their premium h/w - those times might be history for now.
Everybody is building some sort of 'free' O/S these days, so I dont see a bright future for them.

Even FB is looking into other ventures, to justify its unicorn stock market valuations, and future
earnings - its smarter, cheaper to fly to a mutual meeting place, sign the deal without any leaks.

Besides what data is so important, y'all need to hide it, plus one starts running into cross-border
issues that are a whole new legal nightmare ... plus, the Federales always get their man.

Besides, all one needs is wifi, voip and a $3 buck mic to talk to anybody anywhere - no handset
even required ..... simply an IC in one of those 3rd world dumps .... these cats missed the boat

Regards

Jack

Davo wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:27 pm

xali wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 12:32 pm what are your thoughts about this one?

It's another effort to deliver full Linux on a smartphone, the Pine 64 stuff.Also another effort in the pipeline too, the Nx stuff.. All good. Much lower-specc'd though, like the Allwinner SoC/SoM and the Mali graphics core and tiny ram stuff is the Pine64. like 2GB ram versus 32 GB................. see a healthy company continuing to operate nicely in the more premium end of the Linux niche market-space, than one rushing to market cathough.

jackdanielsesq wrote:Besides what data is so important

i think many people, including me, would say... my data

jackdanielsesq wrote:plus one starts running into cross-border
issues that are a whole new legal nightmare ... plus, the Federales always get their man.

what cross border issues? what federales? what legal nightmare?
i think you are talking about something i have no idea about, in a specific country, right?

This thread is now closed pending moderator discussion.