2020-12-05, Saturday

Hello Gophers!

Yesterday I finally received my Purism Librem 5 phone, after a wait of more
than three years and two months. I was one of the original backers in Septem-
ber 2017. For a long time it seemed that Purism was struggling to make the
phone, and people thought that the thing was going to be a classic case of
vaporware. But Purism delivered! I have now a Linux phone that is not under
surveillance of Google, Apple, Microsoft or any other company. 
The phone itself is big and weighs more than 250grams, but in my opinion that
is a good thing. I have big hands, and the feeling of the phone in my hands
is actually quite good. Feels sturdy. The basic applications all work: The
webbrowser (Gnome Web), the email (Geary), the phone application, the editor.
They just work. Also the Gnome environment actually feels good for phone use.
Of course this phone is not 'done': there are still frequent (2x per day)
crashes/reboots and especially initialisation/persistence of setting is a bit
inconsistent. Also the camera's do not work yet. This is actually slated for
Q1 2021. It's also good to have a proper terminal!
But I'm happy overall. I now finally have a phone that is really private. The
rest will come in the future. As the phone is using the mainline Linux kernel
and Purism has been so wise as to base everything on Debian, a lot of software
(for example the canonical gopher reader) just works and is one 'sudo apt 
install' away. I'm playing around with it and am still in discovery phase.
Anyway, have a nice day!

Cheers,

Fripster