[caffed]

Anybody remember Openmoko? Ubuntu Edge?

It's a great and noble idea, but really hard to pull off.

Also, there's no final specs for the Librem 5 yet they have a 4/2019 ship date. Sure... Hats off to them if that actually happens.

Does anyone have a Librem dev kit? Thoughts?

I like the Linux distro + e2e encryption support and would consider this in the future when they ship.

[hawski]

Am I the only one more excited about Librem 5 than about previous efforts at the time? When Openmoko shipped, I haven't even yet considered buying any smartphone. Then when Ubuntu Edge was a subject I had a phone, but thought about the project as a me-too kind. At the time there was a plethora of alternative platforms. Now I feel that things settled with mobile OSes, so it seems that there is a place for moderate hype. I had higher hopes for FirefoxOS, but devices were weak and nothing better came up. FirefoxOS set too high expectations.

With Librem I feel it's a bit more straightforward. There will maybe be also Necuno Mobile with similar software stack, but cheaper hardware. So it's just maybe more realistic this time?

[bryanlarsen]

The biggest difference is expectations. Ubuntu edge had a $32m target, and failed with $6m in commitments. Prism has stated they'd be happy with $1.5m in sales.

[louib]

I received mine 2 weeks ago but still didn't test it. From the dev channels, I think they're still having some software issues with the screen on the dev kit.

It's already possible to port software to the smaller screen using a QEMU image they provide https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Development_Environment/Bo... That's part of the reason why I still didn't test the dev board.