zlacker

>>jstanl+(OP)
It's an interesting article (and thanks to the author for putting it out) but I wonder what their end goal is. Is it to have a 100% secure/private phone? I'm not sure if that's possible with the proprietary firmware (though the hardware kill switches are certainly a good idea). Most importantly, the questionable usability means that either the Librem team needs to work much more, or... this becomes a "smarter" alternative to a dumb brick without giving data to Big Tech. (Ignoring the fact that a sim card automatically makes you lose privacy to the government/telecos).

When comparing against something like a Pixel running GrapheneOS, it's honestly a bit more puzzling to me. Granted, I'm definitely not the audience for this, but with G_OS you can do most things that a regular phone can do, without taking several minutes to install Firefox.

As much as I love privacy (going as far as having a semi-random username), this phone is a bit puzzling. I hope someone can throw more light on this.

>>user_7+X7
Apart from the fact that it's custom hardware designed to run Linux, (you buy this for the same reason you buy System76 or Purism's other hardware, even though you could build your own machine or install Linux on hardware built for Windows) I would much rather have a phone built on Linux than a phone built on Android. Android really doesn't offer anything more on a fundamental level than Google-made ease-of-use layers and a development platform that I can really take or leave.

I run Arch Linux on all my devices with no Desktop Environment. The simpler the system the better. Running Android Framework along with a runtime, even though it's all open source, I'd rather as much of it be free software as possible. If I could run my phone like this I absolutely would but the Librem 5 is as good as it gets while still having a device that fits in my pocket that can make calls and text.