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> Purism I haven't heard much bad about Purism. I was always more on the Pine side. A quick search online didn't find anything. Can you give me a quick breakd

by fooqux 1mo ago

> Purism I haven't heard much bad about Purism. I was always more on the Pine side. A quick search online didn't find anything. Can you give me a quick breakdown or link?

handedness 1mo ago
> I haven't heard much bad about Purism. That's surprising. They burned through a ton of goodwill by holding many people's money for many years, while being non-responsive to depositors, refusing refunds if they did respond, and so on. A lot of ink and footage has been spilled over it. Their laptop effort seems to have evolved into something almost reasonably non-scummy, but the Librem 5 put a lot of people off. Current complaints, from what is (by all appearances) a tiny user base, about the state of the device and its lack of usefulness are also common enough, e.g.: https://old.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/1foblyu/daily_driving_the_librem_5_for_over_a_year_review/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/1foblyu/daily_drivi...? https://forums.puri.sm/t/im-giving-up-on-the-librem-5/18399/129 https://forums.puri.sm/t/im-giving-up-on-the-librem-5/18399/... The more-viable alternatives are not without their own tradeoffs, but they are at least actually viable for normal people. I can't see putting family members on a Librem 5 or a PinePhone (much less a PinePhone Pro) without it being an absolute train wreck of a time for anyone but the most extremely basic and patient user. Even their most prolific and downright stubborn true believer of a booster on HN admits he has to disable JS to load a number of web pages, given how anemic the SoC is. As others have pointed out it would have been a midrange Android chipset well over a decade ago. How exactly that works when one needs to use a site requiring JS to function has me feeling like I'm daily driving Nokia N-series tablets in the late 2000s again, except Nokia tablets were somehow a more polished experience two decades ago than one gets today out of either the Librem 5 of PinePhone due to the lack of real manufacturer and community support. We need a viable Linux slab with a radio, and I want one to exist. It'd be nice if it was fully free of proprietary device blobs and was reasonably power efficient, but that's currently a fantasy completely out of touch with the state of available radios. I would carry my Linux ThinkPad with a built-in cellular radio or an external hotspot everywhere before it would make sense for me to try to pretend the PinePhone or Librem 5 meet even a basline level of utility value. For someone who wants to check simple IMAP email, send and receive SMS messages and load basic websites, and are satisfied with poor camera performance, size, weight, battery life, and durability, while feeling good about the hardware they run (even if its hardware and software security is poor), then they may be quite happy with it.
- jolmg 1mo ago
  > We need a viable Linux slab with a radio. It'd be nice if it was fully free of proprietary device blobs but that's currently a fantasy totally out of touch with the state of available radios. I would genuinely carry my Linux ThinkPad with a cellular radio everywhere before it would make sense for me to try to pretend the PinePhone or Librem 5 meet even a baseline of utility value. The PinePhone (Pro) is there. They work as a laptop replacement. Their problem is more on working as a phone. There's even a repo out there to turn the touchscreen into a touchpad. With a bluetooth keyboard, it's basically a laptop. > Even their most prolific and downright stubborn true believer of a booster on HN admits he has to disable JS to load a number of web pages YouTube works on the PPP. If YouTube works, likely any JS works. Google Maps on Firefox also works.
  - handedness 1mo ago
    Me: We need a phone. You: We're there. It's a bad phone. This thing works as a laptop replacement. You'll even be able to use it as a trackpad some day! This reads like satire. You guys are so out of touch with consumer expectations that you can't even string together a coherent argument in favor of these devices you so love. Even if it was a viable phone, are we really calling mid-tier 2016 performance, from a device which was discontinued due to being under-supported by its manufacturer and dev community, as being "there"? We are most certainly not "there". On the JS, a strident supporter is saying he has to disable JS. Convince him his experience isn't real, not me.
    - jolmg 1mo ago
      > Me: We need a phone. You: >> I would genuinely carry my Linux ThinkPad with a cellular radio everywhere before [..] PinePhone or Librem 5 If you're thinking of M.2 modems, they generally can't do calls AFAIK. A ThinkPad isn't really going to serve you as a phone...
      - handedness 1mo ago
        I actually have one that does. But you're making my point for me: that's how bad they are as phones. A laptop with an iffy phone situation would at least be a highly useful laptop, if nothing else. A PinePhone or Librem 5 is just kind of meh-to-bad at almost everything.

by fooqux 1mo ago

> Purism I haven't heard much bad about Purism. I was always more on the Pine side. A quick search online didn't find anything. Can you give me a quick breakdown or link?

handedness 1mo ago

> I haven't heard much bad about Purism. That's surprising. They burned through a ton of goodwill by holding many people's money for many years, while being non-responsive to depositors, refusing refunds if they did respond, and so on. A lot of ink and footage has been spilled over it. Their laptop effort seems to have evolved into something almost reasonably non-scummy, but the Librem 5 put a lot of people off. Current complaints, from what is (by all appearances) a tiny user base, about the state of the device and its lack of usefulness are also common enough, e.g.: https://old.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/1foblyu/daily_driving_the_librem_5_for_over_a_year_review/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/1foblyu/daily_drivi...? https://forums.puri.sm/t/im-giving-up-on-the-librem-5/18399/129 https://forums.puri.sm/t/im-giving-up-on-the-librem-5/18399/... The more-viable alternatives are not without their own tradeoffs, but they are at least actually viable for normal people. I can't see putting family members on a Librem 5 or a PinePhone (much less a PinePhone Pro) without it being an absolute train wreck of a time for anyone but the most extremely basic and patient user. Even their most prolific and downright stubborn true believer of a booster on HN admits he has to disable JS to load a number of web pages, given how anemic the SoC is. As others have pointed out it would have been a midrange Android chipset well over a decade ago. How exactly that works when one needs to use a site requiring JS to function has me feeling like I'm daily driving Nokia N-series tablets in the late 2000s again, except Nokia tablets were somehow a more polished experience two decades ago than one gets today out of either the Librem 5 of PinePhone due to the lack of real manufacturer and community support. We need a viable Linux slab with a radio, and I want one to exist. It'd be nice if it was fully free of proprietary device blobs and was reasonably power efficient, but that's currently a fantasy completely out of touch with the state of available radios. I would carry my Linux ThinkPad with a built-in cellular radio or an external hotspot everywhere before it would make sense for me to try to pretend the PinePhone or Librem 5 meet even a basline level of utility value. For someone who wants to check simple IMAP email, send and receive SMS messages and load basic websites, and are satisfied with poor camera performance, size, weight, battery life, and durability, while feeling good about the hardware they run (even if its hardware and software security is poor), then they may be quite happy with it.

jolmg 1mo ago
> We need a viable Linux slab with a radio. It'd be nice if it was fully free of proprietary device blobs but that's currently a fantasy totally out of touch with the state of available radios. I would genuinely carry my Linux ThinkPad with a cellular radio everywhere before it would make sense for me to try to pretend the PinePhone or Librem 5 meet even a baseline of utility value. The PinePhone (Pro) is there. They work as a laptop replacement. Their problem is more on working as a phone. There's even a repo out there to turn the touchscreen into a touchpad. With a bluetooth keyboard, it's basically a laptop. > Even their most prolific and downright stubborn true believer of a booster on HN admits he has to disable JS to load a number of web pages YouTube works on the PPP. If YouTube works, likely any JS works. Google Maps on Firefox also works.
- handedness 1mo ago
  Me: We need a phone. You: We're there. It's a bad phone. This thing works as a laptop replacement. You'll even be able to use it as a trackpad some day! This reads like satire. You guys are so out of touch with consumer expectations that you can't even string together a coherent argument in favor of these devices you so love. Even if it was a viable phone, are we really calling mid-tier 2016 performance, from a device which was discontinued due to being under-supported by its manufacturer and dev community, as being "there"? We are most certainly not "there". On the JS, a strident supporter is saying he has to disable JS. Convince him his experience isn't real, not me.
  - jolmg 1mo ago
    > Me: We need a phone. You: >> I would genuinely carry my Linux ThinkPad with a cellular radio everywhere before [..] PinePhone or Librem 5 If you're thinking of M.2 modems, they generally can't do calls AFAIK. A ThinkPad isn't really going to serve you as a phone...
    - handedness 1mo ago
      I actually have one that does. But you're making my point for me: that's how bad they are as phones. A laptop with an iffy phone situation would at least be a highly useful laptop, if nothing else. A PinePhone or Librem 5 is just kind of meh-to-bad at almost everything.