[Tinkerphones] Librem 5

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

> Am 13.02.2021 um 11:52 schrieb Jonas Smedegaard <jonas at jones.dk>:
> 
> Quoting michael spreng (2021-02-13 10:45:18)
>> In December I received my librem5 phone and now had some time to try 
>> it out. It seems to work reasonably well, can make phone calls and 
>> messages. Though there is no support yet for the camera.
> 
> Seems camera support saw progress for the low-level driver part as 
> recent as yesterday: 
> https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/linux-next/-/merge_requests/309
> 
> User-level access to camera seems tracked here: 
> https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/Apps_Issues/-/issues/6
> 
> Using the camera from sripts seems possible since 2 months (but possibly 
> specific to certain revision of the phone, or maybe the devkit): 
> https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/linux-next/-/merge_requests/255
> 
> The phone ships with the more stable "amber" release of PureOS.  Geeks 
> might wanna explore the in-progress "byzantium" release instead, to get 
> and play with bleeding edge changes: 
> https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Development_Environment/Phone/Troubleshooting/Reflashing_the_Phone.html
> 
> 
>> Though programs not adapted for the phone screen are rather weird, 
>> like vlc.
> 
> A geeky way to locate _some_ adaptive apps is to look for packages 
> depending on libhandy-1-0 (or libhandy-0.0-0).  That only covers GTK 
> apps, though - I am unaware if any such package-level indicators exist 
> for Qt-based apps like VLC.
> 
> The user-friendly way is to use the appstore, which shows only adaptive 
> apps - and yes, there are only very few so far...

I am sure this will change. Our GTA04 history shows that the basics
must work and then come apps. Unfortunately it is a sisyphos work
to make the basics work and keep them running... So manpower to
keep pace with upstream kernel releases is key.

The main reason why we were (are) stuck with QtMoko and Replicant 
is that the kernel is still not in a perfect shape like people need
so that they can focus on improving their apps. And in the meantime
nobody knows any more how to rebuild QtMoko and Replicant from scratch
on a recent build system.