I have a librem 5.<p>At first I tried setting it up with a keyboard, mouse & monitor, but it was a little fiddly to get everything usable.<p>I had a USB-C hub from a macbook with PD + ethernet + hdmi, but I couldn't get the hdmi display to sync.<p>So I got another usb-c hub with ethernet + dp (+other ports) and that worked.<p>amazing: my phone desktop showing up on my 4k monitor!<p>So, that was pretty cool, but I still had a lot of fiddling to do - like which display the app comes up on, and how to switch things around. Also sometimes the display wasn't recognized when I wanted it do - I think I had to reboot with the display plugged in, because hotplug sometimes didn't work.<p>(There have been software updates since I tried this - it may be better now).<p>However, at the same time I ordered the second hub, I also got a $15 USB-C + PD + ethernet dongle.<p>Turns out that was <i>really</i> what I wanted. Let the phone be a phone, sit there charging and ssh/scp into it from my regular system. I can access the entire filesystem.<p>All of this really drives things home about Apple.<p>When the iPhone came out, apple was breaking new ground, so people even accepted web apps, because before they had nothing. And with quality/security, the app store made sense.<p>But after over a decade you realize that the apple ecosystem is more about control.<p>Why can't I write my own apps (without asking permission/eula). Why can't I <i>run</i> my own apps without either signing up as a developer and paying, or renew some certificate every 7 days? Why can't I plug all the things into USB and use them?<p>Apple has mindfully denied a lot of utility for their users. I thought maybe the mac usability would trickle over to iOS, but it seems the iOS lockdown has trickled over to the mac instead.<p>EDIT: wait. Let me say "Thank You" to the purism folks for doing this. It took a few years, but this phone makes me really really happy. I figure in a year or two it will let normal folks happily run their lives ios/android-free.
For a second, I thought, "Man is it really that slow to compile a hello-world Python GTK app?" I completely forgot he was doing this all on a phone.<p>I'm super impressed with the state of "convergence" here. Dragging a window over from a full desktop monitor to the phone was exciting to watch.<p>I doubt I would want to do development directly on the phone, but only because the phone is going to be underpowered compared to a desktop. But since it's just a standard linux distro on the phone, it probably wouldn't be too hard to set up the Librem to automatically pull the latest build from the desktop/laptop for testing purposes.
This is also true of the pinephone. My entire dev set up for for the pinephone is on my pinephone. All I do is hook up a USB cable and SSH into it (which makes testing a lot easier since mmsd needs to talk to the modem).<p>What is really neat though is any apps that I develop on my pinephone work on the librem 5 too! Some of the bugs found and fixed on mmsd are from Librem 5 users, and I have been collaborating with the chatty dev (I assume he has a Librem 5, I'm 90% sure he is a Purism employee) with the work I do on the pinephone.
The key takeaway to me is that developing mobile apps for the Librem 5 on the Librem 5 is a first class development workflow.<p>This is great. Not having to worry about setting up toolchains on a separate platform, cross-compiling, and then signing/transferring apps and running remote debugging sessions makes it easy to just build and test apps.
I'm reading a lot of the comments here and it seems the salient argument is that this will never replace Android or iOS because this or that.<p>99% sure those comments are correct.<p>But still, what gets me so hot and bothered is that it looks like purism and pine are making devices that cost almost the same as my other subsidized phone (android) AND might be a viable business EVEN IF there isn't a critical mass.<p>Linux gets better and better every year even though it will never replace Windows or OSX.<p>The big deal here is that we might finally have an amazing phone that gives us a complete and awesome developer experience AND respects privacy and the right to tinker fully with our phones.<p>We've had that on the desktop but NEVER on our phones. This is a sea change that seems worth getting excited about. And it doesn't matter if that doesn't destroy or beat out the alternatives.<p>This device will never be the marketplace where app developers try to sell my kids shitty apps. Who cares. It doesn't need to be the biggest to be interesting and incredible.
Honestly, I have no idea why I'm so surprised. This is what happens when you put desktop dev tools on an (albeit modified) desktop desktop environment on an (albeit modified) desktop operating system on a phone. Can't wait for these devices to mature!
This is quite impressive. I've always found the iOS development experience very smooth, but after seeing this I'm not sure about that anymore.
And of course the same goes for the PinePhone (albeit slower).
I especially like that you can choose different languages for development although this is not a Librem/PinePhone feature of course.
My dad is very suspicious of Google and concerned about privacy on his Android phone. Is there a Linux phone that's polished enough for the non-savvy user?<p>Also, I have a couple of simple containerized apps that I run on my home network. Would I have any trouble running these on a Pinephone? Would love to hear from anyone with experience.
Imagine my excitement when I realized I could quickly develop apps for my PinePhone, <i>on</i> my PinePhone.<p>1) ssh -X in to PinePhone over usb<p>2) start Emacs on my desktop's X desktop<p>3) code it up in Tcl/Tk<p>4) for testing, set DISPLAY=:0 and run the script<p>5) Profit from rapid, iterative development right on the device!
What about web app support on Librem 5? Is it possible to add web apps to homescreen? App development using web technologies might be more accessible for developers.
Had I put 600$ in the S&P500 when I ordered my Librem 5, I would have 1068$ in S&P500 shares. Now, I have occasional spam in my inbox about Librem 5 related blog posts. I expected to at least get a shipping date 2 years later. I understand the times have been tough, but nobody's told me if my order is cancelled or if it's still being worked on. I've seen some people receive their Evergreen phones. I'm OK with waiting, but being left out in the cold is starting to get to me.