On 31/10/2018 15.00, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 09:44:48AM +0100, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
>> Hendrik Boom - 31.10.18, 01:49:
>>> Now they're working on a Purism phone. They do seem to intend it to
>>> work with a variety of GNU/Linux systems. They're currently hoping
>>> to get some developers to adapt their free software to Purism's
>>> mobile hardware.
>>
>> AFAIR Purism also contact both the KDE and GNOME communities about
>> adapting their desktops. Maybe some developers got test machines.
>
> I know they were selling development boards. But a development board
> doesn't have the same ergomonic affordances as an actual mobile device.

I've ordered both back when their crowdfounding campaign was running.
The devkits aren't for sale anymore, but the phone is still available
for pre-order.

The devkits haven't been delivered yet. Initially, they made one with
i.MX6 processor, and posted images of it working. But then they decided
to switch to the newer i.MX8, and that in addition to some other things
delayed things a bit. The last estimate I know of was around the middle
of October, but given the mails their devs accidentally sent to the
public development mailing list around that time, (they renamed the
mailinglist domain afterwards to make sure that doesn't happen again),
they just got the Bord to boot to the console with the new core around
that time, and they can't make changes to the hardware anymore. So I
assume the boards may already exist, but I expect until they finish the
software side and finally ship them, it'll probably take at least
another month. The phone has already been delayed too.

All the software is publicly available on their gitlab:
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5

They have some documentation for new devs (some stuff needs an update
though):
https://developer.puri.sm/

There are instructions to setup a qemu vm, but I haven't done anything
yet, because a VM just isn't the same thing.

The mailing lists for the librem-5 are pretty quiet. They used to read
them though. Most communication is probably on matrix, but I haven't
looked at it yet. There is a someone at a mastodon instance somewhere
who gives interesting updates, I forgot where exactly. Their twitter
account mostly posts links to the usual boring public stuff, and they
don't seam to read development questions sent to their twitter account.
The mailing lists and matrix stuff can be found in the documentation too:
https://developer.puri.sm/Contact.html

There have been 21 progress reports as of now:
https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-1/
https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-2/
... (just replace the number in the url)
https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-21/

I hope they ship the devkit soon, I want to install devuan on it too.
Getting a Desktop Environment and Apps to work so it is usable could
then become a bit tricky though.

Regards,
Daniel Abrecht