Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

Yes, and the main difficulty will be the OS. See the time spent by Jolla developing Sailfish.

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

Lots of nice ideas. Is that a 16/10 screen? I like it too. The software compatibility is of course a great pro for this phone, with full-fledged distributions, and I particularly like the comparison table with iOS and Android. :D They seem to take inspiration from the Neo900 with the hardware kill switches.

However the delivery date is far in everyone's mind, I'm afraid this will impair the funding and reduce the number of backers (although it's understandable that they need time). Hope they will succeed as well.

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

Any info on mobile profile of PureOS ?
https://pureos.net/

https://liliputing.com/2017/08/puris...sell-599.html#

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

Of course. It is much different, though. They will use the regular Linux kernel and GNU software stack. It would be a VERY significant and important achievement if they succeeded. It would be a major breakthrough if normal Linux distributions could run on phone hardware. It could be compared to the openness of Raspberry Pie. Sailfish has come far, but not nearly enough. They are still 100% dependent on Android kernel and device drivers.

<rant>The Android kernel and software stack is a nasty fork in the free software world of Linux that hardly gives anything back. Think about it. As soon as hardware vendors create drivers (that are only compatible with Android) for new devices they forget about it and begin creating the next new device. No drivers and hardly any software is upstreamed. People are tinkering with Android devices and flashing "rooted" images and think that they achieve something with that. Nothing. No sharing, no upstreaming, no caring for the wider software community. All in vain and wasted time. It is a shame and disgrace in the light of the Linux kernel history and achievements of Linux desktop distribution software. Probably why many phone makers hardly dare to mention that they are using the Linux kernel. I guess they are ashamed.</rant>

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

untrue.

SFOS has no dependencies to Android and can run well on any HW that you can get Mer running on. Think about it a while; there are SFOS implementations running on non-android devices, for example RaspberryPI and N9(50)
Also the original Jolla sbj1 was first planned to run on NovaThor SoC requiring no android-funny-business and only had to be changed when STE pulled the plug on the chipset...

The reason most SFOS ports rely on libhybris is because that's all that is available for most phone hardware.
If some vendor made a non-android device platform it'd be no-brainer to port SFOS for it. Without a trace of android. :D

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

That crowdfunding campaign reeks of amateur marketing techniques that backfire on themselves, it doesn't give readers the confidence that Purism can deliver on their promises, and therefore I don't believe they are going to achieve their goal.

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

I agree, mostly what I meant too. Device drivers is the big problem. But the fact is that 100% of Jolla devices so far run Android kernel and libhybris. Even the tablet that is Intel x86 hardware (I have a Jolla tablet, too)! Once drivers are overcome, any FLOSS distro could run on the device. For sure GUI applications need some tweaking for phone use and touch interface. Sailfish is also partly closed source at GUI level.

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

According to their latest information :
- nope, no closed-source binary drivers.
- 100% opensource drivers.

So neither the android drivers+libhybris, nor the manufacturer's native driver (if such exist - most ARM chipset manufecturer only provider android), but vanilla upstream linux kernel and upstream Gallium3D.

That's why they are currently working with Freescale i.MX 6, and considering eventually the i.MX 8 :
apparently the i.MX 6's GPU is well supported by the etna_viv driver.

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

Yes but your post made it sound like that'd be Jolla's fault and it bloody isn't; it is totally out of their hands, you just cannot get a mobile reference platform without android because such things don't exist!


Yes but how are you going to achieve that, which mobile vendor is large enough that it has any leverage to force a SoC vendor to opensource it's drivers?? And if such a company existed, what could it gain from it, why would it do so??

It's just not going to happen, period.


The parts that are closed in SFOS don't matter as long as Jolla allows use of the relevent libraries, just like it does for community ports currently.
And if you cannot live with that there is always Nemo; when not as polished as SFOS it does the job.

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

Perhaps MER is?