someUnexpectedSparks @someunexpectedsparks@librem.one

I'm back! Here's my linux phone history so far:

2017-10-08: Backed the #Librem5 - delivery date Jan 2019

2020-8-14: I receive a #dogwood edition librem5, use it for a few weeks until it has difficulty charging

2020-11-4ish: I receive a replacement dogwood edition librem5, use it for about a week until it refuses to charge

2020-11-1ish: I receive a #pinehpone #manjaro with the convergence package

2020-12-22: I receive an #evergreen edition librem5

So I've got 2 of 'em to fool with 😎 toys😎

Yup, my replacement #librem5 #dogwood is on its way back to #purism

With this 2nd one I meticulously stuck to the provided cable and charger. Once it failed I tried others and used the purism stuff with other devices. I also tried all sorts of long-press incantations from the help pages and direct support emails. The phone seems to be the weak link.

Disappointing

Has anyone seen a list of changes between dogwood and #evergreen ? I’m curious if the charging circuitry changed.

Not so much to #purism ’s credit, my replacement #librem5 #dogwood (after a week of working well) is having trouble. Possibly the same trouble, it won’t charge.

Their published remediations haven’t helped. I’m no phone engineer, but it seems pretty dead to me. If it isn’t another hardware failure requiring another replacement, it is at least a cautionary tale about the overall stability of the thing.

I expect troubles in a beta gnu/linux phone, but charging? Come on.

Stay tuned I guess.

If you read my older toots, you'll see I was getting to know my #librem5 #dogwood, until it stopped reliably charging.

To #purism 's credit, they took it back to look at. They said my issue was something physical with the board and "warranty replacement with new device" was on the paperwork of the one I have now.

I was back to square one on SW and config, but it worked and importantly it could be charged. It also was updated with convergence mode that I was looking forward to.

…was…

OK, it's been a while. Had some personal business to attend to that kept me from digging any further into linux phones. At this point I have now have a #librem5 #dogwood and a #pinehpone #manjaro with the convergence package. I've casually fiddled with them for about a week now and was planning to spend some time today to compare them.

...was planning to...

So my #librem5 #dogwood is going into the shop.

Now that #Pine64 has a payment option that isn't the abominable, execrable Paypal, I've got a #pinehpone on order. Anyone wanna guess which one I'll get first?

Given my charging issues, I've been paying a bit more attention to the #librem5 #dogwood battery behavior. It seems that turning the device off with the battery still in it, will still drain the battery. If you want to keep a (in my case hard-won) charge you have to pull the battery out too.

At least you can? Removable battery ftw? Nah, this isn't a win. But it helps.

I just left it powered down for 2 hours - lost 9%. Will try again when it’s repaired.

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 had a thought while trying to configure #Firefox on my #librem5 #dogwood. A serious use-case for the whole #convergence thing might be application setup. Seems like there are apps where the config stuff is a pain to do on a tiny screen, but once that is settled using the app itself is easier. If I had that option for Firefox, for sure I would have been using it.

In other cases, I’ve tunneled X11 over ssh to a nice big screen, which Wayland refuses to do. Maybe I need to find an equivalent?

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!

Benchmark 3/3

Here are the charts.
Faster times are better. Multi-core gadgets do better with more threads.

Gadget observations…
- The early RaspberryPIs were sloooow. So was the PocketChip. I made a second chart without them to show the Librem5 details a bit better
- The #Librem5 #dogwood performs just a bit faster than a #RaspberryPI 3 in this situation
- The #GeminiPDA starts out a bit slower, but more cores matter
- Desktops are just plain fast

Benchmark 2/3
I’ll run it on some of the gnu/linux gadgets I have lying about…

* #RaspberryPi Mod B(R2 000E)
* #NoodlePi w/Pi Zero W(9000C1)
* #PocketChip
* #GeminiPDA
* RaspberryPi 3 Mod B(a22082)
* #Librem5 #Dogwood
* RaspberryPi 4 Mod B 1GB(a03111)
* Desktop w/i7-8700K@3.70

I’ll build the same code on each device

You’ll see in just a toot the build times differing wildly, the run-time experience is consistent across all of them. When appropriate, simple console-based apps rock!

Benchmark 1/3
OK, how about some #librem5 #dogwood bench-marking fun?

I’ve got an nCurses-based C++ program I’ve been working on
87 C++ files
88 .h files
9,000 lines
250,000 characters
built with gnu make and gnu c++ compiler

The bench-mark will be the multi-threaded compile/link time of that project using the “real” time from gnu time command. example:
time make -j 8

Is this scientific? probably not
Is this rigorous? probably not
Does it amuse me? Yes
Does it interest you? Who knows

I haven’t tooted about my #librem5 #dogwood lately. Charging issues

It just won’t charge while running. With some long-press incantations I can somewhat reliably charge it if I start with the battery removed and leave it dormant for some hours. That’s not ideal and has surely dampened my enthusiasm. I have to plan my usage and charge windows since, at the moment, they can’t overlap

After a few rounds with, and pestering of, Purism support it’s going in for repairs

A few last toots will follow

Well, my #librem5 #dogwood isn't back after all ☹️

It seems to have lost all interest in charging. I've gone back and forth with #purism support but no resolution yet.

The trickle charging thing I tooted about sometimes works, but it is fidgety to invoke and requires the phone to be off.

Disappointing.

OK, my #librem5 #dogwood is back.

It was either a random resolution, or a possible answer to having no indicator LED at all and a seemingly fully depleted battery is to turn off all the kill switches and follow the trickle charging procedure the troubleshooting page describes as a response to a blinking green indicator.

It looks like my #librem5 #dogwood is taking the day off

I just can’t get it to boot 😞

I’ve been trying different charging cables, long button press sequences, and removing the battery

Frustrating

I guess this is part of the pre-production game.

Chatty works for XMPP on the #librem5 #dogwood, I've seen it. Sort of.

I would call the XMPP setup … fidgety. It never quite seemed to me that the indicators of a connection and a successfully stored password fully matched reality. But I did get it to stay connected and send/receive messages for a few days.

Then one day it was gone and I couldn’t get it back.

I wanted to look at it today a bit more rigorously to figure out if the issue was me or the SW or the L5.

But…

Here’s a bit more about #syncthing

I have regular files I sync across machines, but they don't change much.

My "interesting" use case is an app I've been building for tasks and reminders. Each one is stored in an individual file that syncthing coordinates.

On my #librem5 #dogwood that has actually been working really well so far over mobile data and wi-fi. Changes have been flowing to and from the L5 without trouble and when expected.

They are tiny files. Less than ½KB each. ~32KB total.