After a wait of nearly a year I have received the librem5. It has brought me immense joy to hold the phone in my hand. I funded the venture only to fund the effort. I was never looking forward to the phone. Placed the order through a friend's friend's .... friend in the States. The camaraderie to help out a friend without even knowing what is it I am buying goes a long way to explain the concept of friendship. It is amazing. Though the phone was received a year ago, it had to wait for the friends to come to our country. This requirement was very clear. It will come only when the friend is free and wants to visit his country.
It was pure ecstasy when I held the phone in my hand. It was like some sort of magic. I was holding the phone which was a culmination of efforts of so many like minded people with the singular effort and aim to make a "Free as in Freedom" phone. Having started using GNU/Linux since 2002, since my first PIII PC, I have run GNU/Linux on all my desktops and Laptops including Macbook Airs and Macbook pros. Let me not forget the countless hours spent on learning to use the "Freedom" way on the computers. It was difficult. I have persevered. I love the freedom I gain for the effort put in to customize the OS. I love the fact that every single word, every single screen, every single action is tailor made for me.
For a person who knows the value of Freedom, GNU/Linux is my wet dream. Let us not forget the hours spent on modding Android phones to run CyanongenMod and Lineage OS on many Android devices over the years. Again, I loved the freedom these mods presented me when using a phone. While all other phones bound the user and made them to learn it their way. I had my phone tailor made to work my way. Yes, GNU/Linux is a rabbit hole. Yes, GNU/Linux is free if you do not consider time as money.
Coming back to the L5, holding a phone which has GNU/Linux out of the box, was sheer excitement. For the first time, after buying a computer, I need not spend hours to bring the device and its characters to my liking. For the first time, I just started using it in "as is" condition. A great win for all the developers/users/visionaries who believed in the project. For me, it is still unbelievable. Yes, I know, it took a lot of time. It angered many of the investors. As for me, I was confident on the team to produce a working phone. My main confidence lay in the software stack, ie, GNU/Linux. It was always available for the purism team.
I have forgotten when I ordered by L5. It does not matter now, nor it mattered when I ordered. When I received the phone, I explained the intention of me ordering the phone and the philosophy behind it to my friends. It went above their heads. Paying "that" money and waiting for "that" many years was not entering their heads. They know my passion, but still could not put their head together to understand this amount of madness. However, they were happy for me receiving the phone for which I had "Paid" with plenty of difficulties.
I opened the phone and connected it to the charger. The lights were running in disco pattern and nothing was happening except that the vibration motor was running crazy and matching the disco lights on the device. A quick search took me to the purism how-to's and in seconds had my phone charging. Booted into the device and was immediately at home with the UI. It was just a small sized GNOME shell.
Everything was familiar. Everything looked in its place. Everything was inviting me to hack on the device. Immediately install i3 and the like and have a dark background with nothing on it with a launcher on demand. This has to wait. I want to experience the vanilla L5. I want to savor all the efforts put in by the entire team of purism and all the independent devs and users across the world by using it and providing valuable feedback.
Please acknowledge my heartfelt gratitude for embarking on a journey with no support from any big corporation, in the present modern times wherein, no government is questioning the strategy of throwing out phone/laptops since the batteries of the phone are made non-removable. Criminal.
Of course, I am just getting started!!
