Sriram Ramkrishna – Purism

Fragments App for the Librem 5

Sriram Ramkrishna — Wed, 27 Feb 2019 16:56:02 +0000

Fragments app, the BitTorrent client

In continuing our series of applications that are ready to work with the Librem 5, we would like to announce that Fragments is now fully working! With Fragments, you get to have the ability to use BitTorrent to download large files. At Purism, we like using torrent to efficiently download PureOS or Debian operating systems, because what’s more fun than torrenting on the go?

Got an app you’re interested in porting? Find out more at our developer page. Hang out at our Librem 5 community channel and tell us what you’re working on.

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Librem 5 Hardware Update

Sriram Ramkrishna — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 13:33:45 +0000

Greetings everyone! This is a progress report on the Librem 5 development for the past two weeks. Here is all that happened.

Conferences and Communities
Quite a few members of the Purism team attended FOSDEM this year. Kyle Rankin gave a keynote, The Cloud is Just Another Sun that dealt with vendor lock-in in the cloud; the video is also available on the FOSDEM site. Meanwhile, some of the Librem 5 team organized a community Q&A session under the heading of Free Software on Mobile Devices. Owners of the Librem 5 Developer Kit got their LCD displays flashed with the commands needed to work around some issues they had been experiencing.

Plasma Mobile sprint
Not everyone in the Librem 5 team went to FOSDEM: two team members attended the Plasma Mobile sprint in Berlin. Once there, they helped set up Librem 5 developer kits, talked about user interface design in Plasma Mobile and discussed development issues and progress. The Plasma Mobile team got something up and running real quickly on the developer kit, despite some initial glitches concerning touch input. This has led to a productive discussion on ways to support different form factors, one that will hopefully lead to some nice cross-platform ways to support device convergence.

Application Development
Recent discussions, both in the Matrix chat rooms and on the forums, have led to two initiatives concerning the subject of phone applications: the first resulted in the compilation of the Mobile GNU/Linux apps list, a community-maintained list of applications that are meant to work on mobile devices running GNU/Linux – either because they target small screens, or because they feature adaptive user interfaces. If you can think of any app that should be on the list but ins’t, please follow the contribution guide at the end of the app list page.

Dev Kits

Probably the most significant event in last week’s news is that the LCD screens on development boards will now work, if you update the software running on them. We knew that the screens worked just fine on the development kits we sent our backers, but we’re still all very happy to know that any remaining display problems could be fixed in software, not requiring the panels to be replaced. This update took longer to develop than initially hoped, as our kernel hackers had to work around a couple of tricky bugs in the hardware preventing the panel from being set up properly. Our community has already been exploring other features of the development board, so we’re now looking forward to seeing what they can do with working displays!

The second initiative led to the creation of a new Matrix room (community/librem-5-apps) for app development discussions, and it’s now listed in the online documentation. It’s early days, there’s not that much being discussed at the moment but, with two other channels dedicated to different kinds of Librem 5-related conversations, it’s good to have a place for app-specific discussions.

Hardware
Much has been written about battery charging on the development board. Although the board’s controller circuit has built-in protection circuitry, we do recommend using batteries that also provide some level of overcurrent protection so that there is redundant protection in place. Batteries used with the development board must meet the specifications we’ve outlined – see the developer documentation and the printed text on the board’s battery holder. Following these guidelines is the safest; if you are unsure about whether the battery you are using meets the specifications, remove the battery when the board is not in use.

Still on the subject of batteries, charging now works with our 5.0 branch of the kernel; but the current status of the battery isn’t always correctly reported by the operating system. Despite this, the charging circuitry is always working, in order to make sure charging occurs properly. While the 5.0 branch brings this improvement, the 4.1x kernel has support for more of the Librem’s peripherals; so 5.0 is not quite ready for everyday use just yet.

Software
Developers with no access to boards can still get an experience of the current phone environment by using an emulator, thanks to Pan, one of the contributors to the developer documentation. While this gives a flavor of the phone experience, it may be lacking when it comes to prototyping with the types of peripherals that the phone will have. Fortunately, use of peripherals can be simulated to some extent, and a recent contribution to the documentation shows just how to do that.

Low-Level
Ongoing work on the U-Boot bootloader, the flash-kernel and the tools used to create images for the development board aims to make it easier to resize the storage space available on the board. This will help with the board’s software development, especially when testing with large Flatpak runtimes. In the kernel itself, we have tied the panel to the backlight so that the two turn on and off together, and we switched to the mainline touchscreen driver now that a compatible driver has been identified. The graphics stack has also been receiving some attention, in order to make it more stable – with work ongoing in a branch, and changes being upstreamed at least as far as PureOS.

Shell and Apps
We have guaranteed Phosh is now more stable on the development boards, as a result of removing unused components from the session. In the user interface department, the volume control now does indeed control the volume. Chatty, on the other hand, has been updated and improved over the last few weeks to include support for Matrix chats, using libpurple to provide this integration. The user interface now also features adaptive elements and dialogs, and includes a brand-new welcome screen.

Design
The new online account icons got merged https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-online-accounts/merge_requests/17

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Wi-Fi was working on the developer kits, but many of the users found it to be unreliable; after a long investigation into this issue, a workaround was found and sent to the Librem 5 Development mailing list. As noted in the message, it will improve some aspects of wireless networking – although there are a few remaining issues to be aware of.

And that’s our report! Questions? Come by our matrix channels, we’ll be happy to see you.

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Librem 5 Hardware Update

Sriram Ramkrishna — Fri, 25 Jan 2019 01:17:09 +0000

The Librem 5 Developer Kit started arriving in the hands of developers, and focus was shifted towards supporting the growing number of developer requests – we want to make sure that shared advancements are truly shared across the developer community, it exciting to see the rapid progress being made. Much of the work being done aims at making the kit work as well as possible for all kinds of developers. And even those working on non-critical issues at the moment are busy enjoying the discovery of all the capabilities of the dev kits.

We are keeping track of issues by tagging them with the devkit tag in GitLab – a summary of which can be found at this overview.

The release of the dev kit has increased the (already profound) interest in the Librem 5 phone, giving rise to many new questions in the forums – many of which have been answered elsewhere. If you have a question about the dev kit or the phone, the FAQ is always a good place to start looking for answers; the recently-added What are the phone specs? should hopefully clear up the current state of specs and understand what we are going to ship later in the year.

Cortex_M4:

Fix makefile and ldscript

chatty:

flatpak: Use ‘disabled’ instead of ‘false’

developer.puri.sm:

haegtesse:

README.md: Update instructions on running to not refer to -p

image-builder:

libhandy:

librem5-devkit-tools:

Readme: Fix file name for uuu flash script.

linux-emcraft:

phosh:

uboot-imx:

- Use partition with bootable flag as mmcpart
- imx8m_som.h : make the kernel verbose rather than quiet

ModemManager:

- base-call: Fix in-call URC regex to match handler logic
- base-call: Increase incoming call timeout to ten seconds

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Purism Supports Software Freedom Conservancy

Sriram Ramkrishna — Tue, 15 Jan 2019 16:42:31 +0000

We live in a dangerous world where privacy and security are more important than ever. In order for software to be trusted, the source code must be available to verify — a simple trust and verify model. Purism is proud to release all of our source code under Free Software licenses that not only empower users but are vital to protect their privacy and security. We favor licenses with strong copyleft like the GNU General Public License version 3, and will release software under the GPLv3 or an FSF-approved license we inherit. Our code can be studied, verified, and shared, whether you use our Librem line of products or not.

Software Freedom Conservancy is a vital and important part of the Free Software ecosystem that we at Purism and billions of people worldwide rely upon. Without organizations that protect and enforce the terms expressed in software licenses, our digital rights are at risk. Conservancy continues to play a central role in legal battles to safeguard these freedoms.

License enforcement is only part of the story, and Conservancy assists its member projects by handling all matters other than software development and documentation, so the developers can focus on what they do best: improving the software for the public good. Many of these member projects play a critical role in the advancement of privacy and security, such as the Reproducible Builds project and coreboot, one of the standout security features of Purism’s Librem laptops and upcoming smartphone.

Purism is delighted to contribute $1,000 USD to support Software Freedom Conservancy. Their funding drive ends today and we urge everyone who utilizes Free Software as part of their daily workflow or toolchain to donate to Conservancy and help them reach their fundraising goals.

Donate Today!

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End of Year Librem 5 Update

Sriram Ramkrishna — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 08:00:12 +0000

End of the Year Report – Librem 5 – Things are awesome

Hello everyone! We have accomplished so much in the last 3 months and need to share, so prepare yourself for a dense update on the Librem 5 phone, PureOS, and software applications.

As you know, we have a number of important components in the Librem 5 that we will try outline.

Calls

Let’s start off with the Calls application. The calls application is what allows us to place phone calls and what makes the phone a
phone. In these past few months, we’ve been making this application work wonderfully. Below is a demo of the calls application receiving a phone call. So the basic support for the calls application is complete and we’re working making a great design. We’ve successfully implemented important basic features like ring tones.

https://puri.sm/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/calls_ring.mp4

If you’re interested in following the work, we’ve included the merge
requests for calls below and important issues that were created:

Merge Requests

Issue Requests

https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/calls/issues/18 – memory leak in find_call_holder
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/calls/issues/19 – memory leak in set_focus
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/calls/issues/20 – memory leak in calls_call_window_add_call
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/calls/issues/36 – transferred TODO list to gitlab issues
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/calls/issues/7#note_11069 – investigation into evolution data server/sqlite
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/calls/issues/22 – DTMF fails with error Rejected send message

Hægtesse

Hægtesse is a daemon to transfer audio data between a modem and PulseAudio. It currently only supports the SIMCom SIM7100 modem but may be useful for other modems. The purpose of Hægtesse is to monitor the modem and when a call is initial to configure PulseAudio automatically for a phone call. This is a necessary component for phone calls.

Issues

https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/haegtesse/issues/1 – fills log when /dev/tty4 is not present

Merge Requests

https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/haegtesse/merge_requests/3 – Hægtesse listen to udev for the appearance of the audio TTY
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/haegtesse/merge_requests/4 – Add full GPLv3 text
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/haegtesse/merge_requests/5 – Build with gitlab-ci
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/haegtesse/merge_requests/7 – fix build on PureOS

Libhandy

Libhandy is a library that extends GTK+ to be used on mobile profiles. With libhandy, you can port any GTK3 or higher app that you have into a mobile profile. If you have an application written in GTK3, reach out and we’d be happy to help you port it to libhandy. To find out more about libhandy go here:
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/libhandy/wikis/home for our roadmap.

Here is an example of GNOME Web (epiphany) ported libhandy

https://puri.sm/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/libhandy-and-gnome-web.webm

Documentation and example code.

Libhandy has had made significant advancements these months with several releases made.

Libhandy is currently being used to port many core GNOME apps to the librem5

Merge requests:

Issues:
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/libhandy/issues/57 – HdyTitleBar broken with .devel window in org.gnome.Sdk//master
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/libhandy/issues/52 – issues compiling on OSX

Librem5-devkit-tools

Librem5 devkit tools are the set of tools to enable the devkit that was recently shipped out to crowdfunding supporters.

– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/librem5-devkit-tools

Virtboard

Virtboard is our virtual keyboard used on the Librem 5. Work has been on-going in enabling the virtual keyboard mostly focusing on making this input working under wayland. The UX experience is still on-going. Feedback is of course encouraged.

Merge requests
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/virtboard/merge_requests/20 Unbreak virtboard crashing when using GCCs stack protector
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/virtboard/merge_requests/21 Update input-method protocol
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/virtboard/merge_requests/22 make virtboard fully hidden
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/virtboard/merge_requests/23 virtboard translations
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/virtboard/merge_requests/24 convert to glib mainloop
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/virtboard/merge_requests/25 added multiple layouts

Chatty

Chatty is our combination SMS and encrypted communication app. Chatty currently works with SMS and with the help of libpurple we can also have E2E encrypted communication as promised before.

We currently can successfully send SMS between phones. Below is a demo of the chatty doing some emoticons. You might recall last post we showed chatty doing real SMS. The UX experience is still on-going and continues to evolve. Follow along in this issue –

https://puri.sm/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/chatty-emoji.webm

Chatty’s proposed Icon

https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty/issues/52 for how the UX is coming along.

Merge requests

Design

Most of our design is being done in GNOME upstream except of course for the UX experience in the Librem 5 specific component. Purism believes deeply in working in the upstream and we work closely with GNOME’s designers. Below are a number of design mockups that were conceived for various GNOME apps to work with libhandy.

Adaptive View Switcher Design mockups

GNOME TODO mobile mockup

GNOME Notes Mockup

– https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/app-mockups/blob/master/todo/todo.png Adaptive Mockups for GNOME TODO
– https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/app-mockups/blob/master/notes/notes.png – Adaptive Mockups for GNOME Notes
– https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/os-mockups/blob/master/view-switcher/adaptive-view-switcher-modes.png – proposal for adaptive view switching modes (commited to implement by Adrien)
– https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/Initiatives/issues/2 – new app icons for GNOME

In addition, a lot of work has gone in to designing parts of GNOME like the control center to work in a mobile context.

WLroots

WLroot is the Wayland implementation for the Librem5 and which phosh our UX shell runs on. Mostly working on getting libinput working. We did some investigations on using rust bindings, but turned out that it was more work with very little advantage.

Merge requests:
– https://packages.debian.org/source/experimental/wlroots – update debian packaging
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/wlroots/merge_requests/35 – input-method and text-input support to the Librem5
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/wlroots/merge_requests/40 – wlroots update

Issues:

– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/wlroots/issues/6 – rootston freezes on ssh log out
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/wlroots/issues/18 – rootston often freezes

Phosh

Phosh is the actual visual look and feel of the Librem 5. The most significant work here is being able to detect idle and dim the screen automatically when not on battery power. Some work on the lock shield was also done and various UX fixes and features.
For more information see the merge requests before.

Merge requests

– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phosh/merge_requests/143 Update translations from zanata
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phosh/merge_requests/153 – Drop hard coded weston-terminal from favorites
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phosh/merge_requests/154 – Add a poweroff button to the settings menu
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phosh/merge_requests/158 – use actual values for transform instead of looking at rotation property
– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phosh/merge_requests/159 – make sure setting buttons stay circular

Issues

– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/phosh/issues/52 – look into full screen blank support on lock

Upstream Work

Purism knows it stands on the shoulders of giants. We would not be be successful without our upstream partners. We make sure that our technical debt is as small as possible, preferring to work in upstream as much as a matter of course. Below is a list of the work we have done in the various upstreams that we depend on. This is not an exhaustive list of projects since we do other upstream work for our laptops as well.

We are very proud of our upstream work and being part of these upstream projects.

– https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=910640 – Debian’s libgtk-4-dev Needs to depend on libvulkan-dev
– https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/merge_requests/200 – Kept pushing making the WiFi panel adaptive
– https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/merge_requests/243 – Moving the app menu
– https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-contacts/merge_requests/41 – contact deselection on creation fix
– https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-contacts/merge_requests/42 – using HdyHeaderGroup
– https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-contacts/merge_requests/43 – using HdyTitleBar
– https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/1399 – Suggested to not show dashed border in keyboard-navigable selected elements when no keyboard is available
– https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/Initiatives/wikis/GNOME-apps-mobile – Helped Javier set up the initiative
– https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/pull/1316 – don’t let the wlr_output handle the fullscreen view in case

Documentation

This effort can never survive without documentation. In that regard, welcome David Boddie to the Librem 5 team working on documentation for the Librem 5. The whole team, while focusing on their development, are equally aware of the role of documentation and have worked diligently in making sure that people create applications for the Librem 5. With two members working exclusively on documentation and developer experience, we hope to make writing applications for the Librem 5 as easy as it can be. Feedback in improving our documentation would be most welcome!

A lot of focus was made on creating documentation on how to create Librem 5 applications with sample code.

Issues

– https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/developer.puri.sm/issues/28 – Upate GNOME Builder section

Merge requests

Phone hardware/Dev Kit

The recent shipping of the Librem 5 dev kit represents countless hours of work with an aggressive schedule. Nicole, Eric, and Petra, along with dedicated operations staff, worked continuously for a week to package all the dev kits to be shipped out to our dev kit backers.

When it comes to software and hardware freedom, we not only do the talk, we do the walk. Everything in the dev kit, is licensed under the GNU GPL v3+. We have released the schematics for the dev kit and all source files. We encourage you to participate and bring your talents and join us!

By now everyone who ordered a dev kit would have received it and are working on the hardware to get it fully enabled from the LCD panel to user-controlled LEDs. We will be sharing more photos and videos of the dev kits in action as more and more community members advance the software around them.

In the meanwhile, our matrix channel has become a hot bed of activity as people prod and poke their dev kits, asking questions and following along with the devleopment of the phone.

As for the phone, we have confirmed the BOM (Bill of Materials) and the sourcing of parts, we are only finalizing the I.MX 8M or 8M Mini by benchmark testing. Once we have approved the design (also planned in January) we can create the necessary molds and stamps.

January is going to be really busy for Purism as we split time between the dev kit advancements and then pivoting to the Librem 5 phone hardware, but we welcome the excitement around what we’re doing. We will have a retrospective post on the dev kit tomorow (2019-01-09), so stay tuned for that!

Short Summary of the work:
– Moved to Kernel 4.18.11
– Reworked device tree for dev kit
– add texture support on GC7000 https://source.puri.sm/guido.gunther/mesa/tree/gc7000-bo-relocs, https://source.puri.sm/guido.gunther/mesa/tree/gc7000-bo-relocs
– PureOS now building on our build server using Laniakea build system
– a mechanical issue was discovered with the M.2 module not sitting flush against the board so a taller M.2 connector was used on the final dev kit design
– RedPine fixing the W_DISABLE# issue, they will use a bodge wire for our 340 dev kit units so that the HKS works as anticipated
– Fixed various issues in the nwl-dsl (mipi) driver
– picture of working HDMI – https://talk.puri.sm/_matrix/media/v1/download/talk.puri.sm/SSvCOnFIIdtgeXqmrMrjZkje
– Fixup several bugs in the imx8ms mipi dsi layer
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/linux-emcraft/commit/2a10a1eaee8860f0f79b513497039ca21a5ded76
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/linux-emcraft/commit/34bfd44c92bd32b4cd8c88a7943ced00c699a398
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/linux-emcraft/commit/937cb53b89c26ba3011ea05f6ae14b1134036a6c

– Initial (WIP) LCD panel driver
https://source.puri.sm/guido.gunther/linux-imx8/commit/919a834a865824eeeeb9b98bc4932ae46a614fba
+ Look at haptic sensor. Driven by the kernel’s joystick force feedback
interface (and therefore exposed to userspace as an input
device). We’ll need write a tiny driver for that.

Purism in the Public

Purism employees are not hermits and you can find them at various conferences. Here are some of the things our employees have done.

– Dorota: Gave a talk based on Rust+Wayland research, dutifully credited Purism (video incoming… at some point): http://rust.cologne/2018/10/10/at-cisco.html

– Adrien and Francois were at Capitole du Libre, running the GNOME booth there.

FOSDEM – A number of us will be at FOSDEM doing talks and hanging out. More information on what our plans are for FOSDEM in another post.

Closing

That’s all for now! Stay tuned on these pages for new applications, the retrospective on the dev kit, and other features! Things are rolling fast! Thank you to our fans for making 2018 a wonderful year and looking forward to 2019! It’s going to be awesome! Thank you for a great year!

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Librem 5 dev kits are shipping!

Sriram Ramkrishna — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 22:09:19 +0000

The Librem 5 dev kit’s hardware is done and shipping! We are beyond excited for our backers to receive their dev kits before year-end. Our entire PureOS Librem 5 development team will getting the same dev kits, upgrading the generic i.MX 6 boards (which most of the demos you have seen have been based on) to the Purism i.MX 8M based dev kit.

We aim from this point forward to have a community assisted development environment. There is still a lot of work required to make the dev kit truly functional for Librem 5 development, so we need your assistance. The frenetic pace of development continues and it’s astonishing how much we’ve accomplished in the two months since we’ve put the hardware together. But the path is still long and arduous.

Our backers who are receiving the dev kits will also have access to a Matrix channel for dev kit owners. This channel will be staffed by our engineering team who will be on hand to answer questions, work with the community on merge requests, and be available for those who are using the dev kits. But by no means is this an exclusive channel and all of you are welcome to join in as well! Please join our forum that was set up for questions and answers on the dev kit.

With about four months to go until we ship the phones, we are going to need the community to help in the final sprint to the finish line. So we look forward to your help with testing, feature requests, and of course code!

2019 is going to be an amazing year with the introduction of the first privacy and security focused mobile phone and we can’t wait to get it in your hands.

As always, we are incredibly grateful for all of the support you’ve shown us and we’re working hard to do right by your belief in us. We hope to see some of you in our Matrix channels going forward. Till then onward and upward!

Update: here’s a link to our bug tracker with the main issues we’re trying to resolve with the devkit right now” at the end of the blog post

P.s.: You will note that there is a promotion this holiday season. For those of you who are in the market for a phone and a laptop, check out our “Have A Secure Life” Laptop and Phone bundle read further about having a secure life.

Furthermore, the phone’s early-bird preorder pricing at $599 will end soon; after January 7th the preorder price will rise to $699 to cover our expenses for the phone. The money coming from this will be used to fund further engineering of the phone and to help people from the community to work on upstream projects.

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