someUnexpectedSparks @someunexpectedsparks@librem.one

All that said, the #librem5 camera does "work" for very specific interpretations of that word. It came with me to the Grand Canyon.

So I guess there are people trying to figure out their #librem5 ship dates based on the campaign history. I just happened across a file where I’d been checking on the campaign website every couple weeks or so. If Purism hasn’t shipped past these dates, maybe this is helpful to that effort?

Beware of typos here. There is no warrantee on accuracy, this was just collected for my own amusement.

#librem5 Daily Driver Stories – Connectivity Drama

I’d tooted that data connectivity can come and go sporadically. Now I’ve captured that in a screen shot.

This is the top of the Geary e-mail app. I was away from home so it makes sense that the Wi-fi shows disconnected. The fact I’m seeing good mobile connectivity/bars that’s suspicious

A minute before this an incoming call came through. A few minutes after this connectivity came back on its own, but that doesn’t always happen.

Did some playing with the #Librem5 GPS. I want to build something that can record where I’ve been. I did an Android version of this but I’m excited to rebuild it w/o Google & w/free software.

Grabbed raw nmea data with
sudo cat /dev/gnss0 > output.nmea
Used gpsBabel (not on the L5) to convert to gpx
gpsbabel -i nmea -f output.nmea -o gpx -F output.gpx
I then imported that into QGis

The spaghetti-looking area was me shoveling my driveway. Then I took a stroll around the block

‘tis a start😃

I did it! I took a picture with the #librem5 camera!

oh…

wait…

I took a picture with the librem5 camera in it. Gotta say "in it." 😉 Of course, the L5 cams still don’t work. Megapixels on my manjaro #pinephone took this

This is my sarcastic way of pointing out that today, right now, well into evergreen shipping, this page https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ still says:
“Upon initial shipment of the Librem 5, it will offer the essentials: phone functionality, email, messaging, voice, camera, browsing.”

Wallabag/ReadItLater – Now works!

I’d tooted before that it would forget all the credential junk each time you start it, which is a really frustrating. It seemed keyring-related and I still don’t know much about that.

Well Geary inadvertently fixed it! Geary noticed there was no keyring configured and asked for a password to set it up. After that, ReadItLater seems happy to use it too.

I now have #wallabag working on my #Librem5 which is very cool!
OK, its slow and a bit fussy, but still cool

2/2
The #librem5 dictionary app showcase glossed over one notable con.

The voice-over says "results are scroll-able in any direction” when it should say “text doesn’t re-flow, virtually guaranteeing some text will be off the screen at all times."

They don’t point out how setting librem5-goodies “scale screen” to 1.5 makes most things fit. Perhaps because doing that for a quick look-up is a bother?

This wouldn’t cut it on iOS or Android, but seems par for the course for linux phones today,

Since I whined about a pop-up in the #librem5 built-in weather app a few toots back (https://social.librem.one/@someunexpectedsparks/105437217046002328), if you use librem5-goodies and its “scale screen” to push the screen all the way to 2x, you can reliably see the whole thing.

I was curious how their application spotlight video (https://puri.sm/posts/app-showcase-weather/) was going to address it, or if they had fixed it. They didn’t, #purism just ignored it.

Anyway, here it is:

So I recently learned about the librem5-goodies and its “scale screen” app. It shouldn’t have to exist, but it does and that’s great for where the #librem5 is today. Can’t see a control or an app is rendering stuff off the screen? Just make the screen “bigger” and it might work.

If you’ve lived your life afflicted with “toothpick-fingers” and wonder why on-screen controls are so large, this is your day :)

I gave speedtest-cli a shot on my manjarao #pinephone and #librem5. Interesting results. In my C++ compilation test, the L5 won. On these, the pinephone comes out well ahead. There was a good bit of variability in the tests, so I’m presenting it as a graph.

Both are attached to my 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network. I couldn't get the pine to "see" my 5GHz network so I didn't bother with it here to make things more comparable.

I’m no kind of network engineer or testing lab. These are my experiences, ymmv

A reprise of my #librem5 benchmark to add the #pinephone

My October toots about it for context:
1) https://social.librem.one/@someunexpectedsparks/104989138328111860
2) https://social.librem.one/@someunexpectedsparks/104989155078072644
3) https://social.librem.one/@someunexpectedsparks/104989174678396616

tl;dr – this is based on the build times of a C++ project I’m puttering around with

No real news. The L5 is about twice as fast as the pinephone in this case. Neither is actually fast. My desktop’s best time is 2.3 seconds compared to the L5’s 36

I’ve had minimal success with the #pinephone dock on the #librem5. Sometimes the keyboard & mouse work. Less often the settings app recognizes the display, getting info about the monitor (resolutions, refresh rates, etc). I’ve never seen anything appear on the actual display.

Might be a clue? I used grim to grab settings app pics. On one, you can see the phone thinks it’s showing something, somewhere. Wasn’t expecting that. Maybe I can make this work?

Will experiment/research more later.

The modem just disappeared!

After playing with SMS and mmcli on the #librem5, it stayed plugged in to power and was left idle overnight. Untouched. Even the ssh session was still open.

In the morning, the modem had gone. It just disappeared. I've no clue why. The indicator at the top of the phone screen was gone. Flipping the kill toggle did no good. Incoming calls and texts didn't come through. It only came back after a reboot.

This thing is not a ready to be a daily driver

My swing at @eliasr ‘s https://social.librem.one/@eliasr/105437794237782817

I only have one SIM card, so I did…
#Librem5 in one room
ssh into L5 from a desktop in another room
send the text to an Android phone in a third room
see the SMS on my #Pebble watch

“stupid” in the best possible way :)

I had some trouble reproducing this. The key (for me) was to include delivery-report-request='yes'. Most tutorials didn’t have that, so I attached mine if you want to play the home game :)

#librem5 Weather 2/5
After a while, type-ahead started working an I selected Waterbury, CT from the type-ahead list. I think that means it should be a valid location with data available, but here’s what I got.

After a few dozen minutes I happened back to look at Waterbury and there was a forecast. Not sure what that means or why.

#librem5 Weather 3/5
I was eventually able to select NYC from the type-ahead and get data right away. So that’s good. But, I’m doing this mid-day on 12/24.I guess the weather starts tomorrow?

Also, you can select the vertical … thing to get some more detail in a pop-up. Sort-of. You can see the right-hand side of that detail but it isn’t clear to me what it means. I saw the left-hand side of that yesterday when certain days were selected, but I can’t reproduce that today to get a screenshot.

#librem5 Weather 4/5
Maybe the pop-up display thing works better in landscape? Nope. Here’s what you get there. You can barely see anything and you can’t move things to see anything else.

I thought I could see the whole thing on an external display, but I haven’t gotten that to work yet. I’ll toot about that later.

On the one hand, having a #terminal natively built into the #librem5 #dogwood is just totally cool. Seriously. I might be a geek.

On the other hand, with the keyboard on it’s 39 chars wide, by 21 rows high.

Try this experiment:
1. Take your blood pressure
2. Open up a terminal, set it to 39x21
3. Do …anything… in that terminal
4. Take your blood pressure again
5. Compare the results from steps 1 & 4

It took me waaaaay too long to notice the zoom control ☹️
At 40% it’s 89x48
At 200% it’s 19x11

I installed #Firefox ESR on my #librem5 #dogwood. It worked. It isn’t fast. It isn’t optimized for the screen size. But it works.

I installed some plugins: uBlockOrigin, Privacy Badger, Ghostery, Decentraleyes. 😃 👍

Just to include a pic, here’s my #TinyTinyRss at full-screen and not. At first blush, it seems usable. I’m optimistic here. TT-RSS is one of the things I want to take with me when I switch to a linux phone full-time.

It occurs to me that I've not done a pic of my #librem5 #dogwood yet. So here’s a group pic with some of the benchmark gadgets

Left:Librem5 (standing up on its own, it’s really thick)
Center top:vt320 (circa 1989, seriously😎)
Center mid:#GemniPDA
Center bottom: #NoodlePi
Right: #PocketChip

Not a great pic, but each is has the to-do part of the benchmark app with my list of what to include. It’s a bit like a #PalmPilot, but connected. Works nicely on all of these. Low hardware expectations ftw!