26 Sep 2025 ------------ Confession: Purism Librem 5 I bought a Purism Librem 5, because it looks interesting. Before settling with the Cat B35, I always wanted to have a pocket device that could allow me to SSH into, hmm, at work, so that I could "secretly" do what I normally do with a device I am in control of. That was also the time I learned about this phone. Later another company, Pine64, released a Linux phone too, but doesn't feel as solid as the Librem 5. There were a few phones I liked - the very first one that I wanted but never owned was the Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220; Then the Microsoft Kin ONE/TWO which I lately bought an engineering build, long after they pulled the plug on the Kin Studio; I did own the Nokia N9, but not N950; I didn't own the Jolla Phone which I was so close to buying; I had Blackberry Z10 but then the world began to converge into Android and iOS. I actually only looked again after I stopped using the B35. The phone is quite expensive, but I guess a recent batch started to deliver not too long ago so sometimes it is possible to find cheaper ones on eBay like mine. Being cheaper doesn't make it not a e-waste. I hope it wouldn't become a e-waste. But the main reason I wanted to have it, I think, is that I got fed up with bringing my personal laptop to business trips or family vacations. In my imagination, I would bring this as my "personal PC" when doing business travels. If I travel with family, I would have option to bring together a NexPad, which is a tablet-like dock for the phone to make the screen bigger. It took a while for the phone to arrive. It works and it works exactly like a desktop PC. The NexPad has not yet been delivered, so I used a 5-in-1 USB-C hub to connect it to the TV and keyboard + trackpad. It is very amazing that a single USB-C hub can do this much. I started by updating the applications through APT, then set up my usual - SSH, the shell scripts, the .profile equivalent, etc. Because I haven't put a SIM card into it yet, it lacks the calling function for now. Made it look even more like a mini PC. It is actually just a bit smaller than my Kangaroo mini PC, but thicker. I tried looking for the firewall application but my guess is that it simply relies on iptables, so I have installed nftables. I have also updated the related files to hide some .desktop from the app drawer. May not be a good feeling but I think it runs a bit faster than my Kangaroo mini PC... It is quite a "dream" device. I would say it is a pocket PC with voice calling and cellular functions which also can give nerds an excuse to bring a computer outside explaining that it is a phone. It would be quite funny, like when people are busy using AirDrop to share photos, I would setup an SFTP user and ask the person to upload photos into it. Or when someone asks me to edit a text file, I would open up VIM and do it. Or even setup a web service within the phone for others. When people talk about social network, I would SSH into sdf.org or just "lynx gopher://" from the terminal app. It is not good to say this, but it is far from being a smartphone that normal people will or can use. Perfect for people like me though. If I somehow can put Zephyr Project or TinyGo into it, this phone will become my newest dev machine. Money well spent?