Finding software opportunities and common ground

[levi]

I think time would be better spent making a paper getting started guide, although that could pass over to a prepared pdf in the wallpaper of the pyra, as was done with the pandora. I found that to be a fine solution, although personally by then I'd already been using linux for a few years so I was relatively comfortable.

 

[comradekingu]

@Djoga'Ro A bit of a different thread for now. What are your suggestions and categories to include?

 

[Djoga'Ro]

By categories I mean like word processor and whatever the supernymes of the other office suite apps are, type setting, raster image editing pro and basic, vector image editing/creation, email client, web browsers, web browser for anonymity, audio player with ans without media library functionality (I hate the latter, what are directories for), video player, video editing, screen capture, 3d model creator and a renderer, ...
And for each one would give THE or two or three very popular choices and say very few word about what's good or bad about them.

I'm the wrong guy to ask for suggestions. I'd read them.

 

[levi]

I've not seen a new decent typesetting/dtp package since the late 80s, since then word processors have got much better at laying out their own stuff, and I guess they've mostly subsumed the functionality that dtp packages use to contain. Regarding vector images I'm a big user of gimp myself, but I still don't consider it the kind of thing that everyone needs to have. Video editing is a surprisingly big subject; I personally don't do it at all over transcoding a few videos for resolution and frame rate, but there's also physically modifying frame, and sequencing the video streams into a longer form, I think that covers most of it. Screen capture is usually a function of your raster image editor these days.

So for typesetting and word processing there's libreoffice or openoffice, and libreoffice is the only one to consider these days I'd posit. Also gives you spreadsheets, databases and presentations.
Vector image handling we've discussed in this thread already, and I've given my opinions on.
Email client is varied and different. Those I know of myself include thunderbird, sylpheed and claws-mail, and I'm a user of the latter myself. It's basic, but supports everything I need.
Web browsers I only know of firefox and derivatives and chromium.
Audio players I like deadbeef personally for it's playlist management, Audacious is similar but keeps threatening to port to QT, although these days I mainly use mplayer for playback of individual files and precomputed playlists. I don't use any that manage their own media library, so I couldn't advise on those.
For playing back video I prefer mplayer, although I've recently been forced to use cvlc due to a regression in performance of mplayer on my old machines. I don't express a preference between them.
Video editing and 3d model stuff I've never really investigated. I use ffmpeg for my transcoding needs on the command line, but that's about it. Someone else will need to document those categories.

 

[docbroke]

Tor? No. Please don't consider another layer of complexity.

Just so you know, I had read an article about a guy (in Germany?) who was accused (arrested I believe) of "someone else's" internet usage through a Tor share that he was participating in.

Although I agree that tor is not good default for a browser, I cannot support your reason.
That happens to only those who allow their computer to be used as an exit point for tor. So it doesn't happen with common tor users they are actually somewhat hidden from the picture.

By categories I mean like word processor and whatever the supernymes of the other office suite apps are, type setting, raster image editing pro and basic, vector image editing/creation, email client, web browsers, web browser for anonymity, audio player with ans without media library functionality (I hate the latter, what are directories for), video player, video editing, screen capture, 3d model creator and a renderer, ...
And for each one would give THE or two or three very popular choices and say very few word about what's good or bad about them.

I'm the wrong guy to ask for suggestions. I'd read them.

Here is a good starting point for new linux users who wants to familiarize with linux applications
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/List_of_applications,
The above linked arch-wiki is an excellent guide for any Linux user, ( just avoid arch specific stuff, commands using pacman as it is arch package manager)


Now to the above poster who acts like an critique of experts and calls himself non-expert. I humbly ask him to tell us to whom he is replying and to which imaginary points, as I couldn't find about which points he is talking about. It would be great if he reply point-wise so others can understand what he is raving about .

 

[comradekingu]

To be clear, Tor is not the Tor Browser. The Tor Browser uses Tor, but running a regular browser through Tor defeats the point to be made, as they send out all sorts of things themselves.

You just plain can't hope to use a Pyra to run an exit-node. Use a desktop instead.

The argument of beeping an accomplice could be raised against running Freenet or similar, but it would never and has never help up in any court, anywhere that Pyra customers live.

 

[pimaster]

We are also not in 2007, for better and for worse. We not being any of those options.

What has changed since then that should make us reconsider the focus of this project? I only quoted the year because it pin points the product. Much to my frustration, Asus have come out with many "eee" products (Although 701 might be the unique part).

Are users more technically competent that they are able to handle the sophistication and complication of the Onion Network? Why haven't they picked up the skills to acquire software for a Linux Desktop?
Are you trying to point out the people who review things in shallow ways who may give the Pyra a low grade? If it only comes with a Browser and terminal how can it possibly compete with the other gadgets on the market?

Firefox is losing marketshare, Tor-browser is gaining marketshare. That alone should be a powerful reminder what sort of current year it is.
We can run relays, and we can keep the idea of privacy to the tune of also offering not losing your personal data at every turn of what is a very web-centered world. Fairphone shipped 30k+ devices, arguably under false pretenses, and against better judgement, and with not a whole lot more ethical ways. But they _focused_ on something that differentiates their project. And they got the PR right. We aren't good at PR, but we _are_ good at doing hard work. So offloading the PR to others is as good as it will get.

Firefox usage (from https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity )

Tor usage (from https://metrics.torproject.org/user...6-10-13&end=2020-01-11&country=all&events=off )

Around the start of 2018 Tor almost had 10% 1% of Firefox usage and has since dropped off. Yup, Firefox has a lot of users than can leave and Tor is a small project that has heaps of room to grow, so that will happen. I don't see that as a reason why we should force that upon users.

I know the Raspberry Pi comes with Mathematica, some IDE's, Wolfram, LibreOffice, Email client and some games. It took a very educational path at some point. I guess the Pyra could do something down that line as well.

But I was sold on a device that runs Linux. It is the interesting mix of hardware that I am paying for. It created an interesting software problem in the sense that it has 2 removable SD cards. I think Android has been the only one that have tried to move Apps to a removable storage medium and I haven't actually tested how it handles the media being removed and re-inserted.

The bigger the default image is, the more hosting cost the project has to bear, the longer it takes to flash, the more effort that should be spent testing each item to make sure it works out of the box.
I think the important items to hit are:
* This has a keyboard, is it nice to type on in X
* This has gaming controls, how well do they play in X
* How does the audio sound when playing X or watching a movie in X
* Let me jump on the forums and post my joy of this device with X
I could be tempted to add an IRC client to this list but those are generally a preference thing. Everyone likes a different program.
It also has a stylus, is web browsing enough to test that or do we want to be drawing with it?
AND it has a modem! It would be cool if we could call someone with it after booting it up but the software is so far away from that at the moment (not nit picking the project, trying to put into perspective what stage we are at with the Pyra) that it almost slipped my mind.


In terms of discussion, I didn't see you address the "Tor Browser is a Firefox Browser" point. Is it not important? Did you not know? Do you not care?

-edit-
Fixed Math

 

[Grench]

It's going to be impossible to get an exact match for everyone as we all have different ideas, levels of experience with computers and hardware. I believe we need to stick to stuff that's mainstream, works Cross-platform, not a project that's dead or unmaintained and for developers, something we can contribute back to if we find a bug.


Minimal, non-default install - Absolutely bare minimal to get the thing working for those who actually can install

Default install - Should be enough to demo the power of the unit (Think if you're EvilDragon and you want to show off what the Pyra can do (Of course ED will need other things like emulators but let's not distribute the unit with emulators)

Email client - Thunderbird
Internet Browser - Firefox, Chromium or Vivaldi Browser (Tor should not be included as most corporate portals are watching for the Tor Browser).
Productivity Suite - LibreOffice
Image Manipulation Suite - Gimp
Video thing - VLC
Utilities - Gparted

I don't feel we need any other meta-packages at this point. We don't really know what people want to run and certainly don't want to run into any roadblocks with software that have no or minimal support.

You just nailed it for the default packages. Nicely done! I'm fine with Firefox or Chromium, never used Vivaldi - have barely even heard of it.

Something that has occurred to me: There is a misunderstanding of what 'software bloat' is. The term came about as consumer Windows computers started shipping with piles of factory installed 'limited license' scare ware for which the hardware manufacturer got paid to pre-install and in many cases to make near impossible to remove. This was an era when downloading a driver for a Soundblaster audio card would be 25MB of which 1MB were the actual sound drivers and 24MB was forced installed trial ware and snoopers. Bloatware does not mean 'anything not the OS'. It means adware, trialware, paid placements, snoopers, sniffers, scareware (buy this to prevent your computer from catching the pox!), etc. A set of core, fully functional, useful, applications without duplication? That isn't bloatware. That is proof the hardware works as delivered.

 

[comradekingu]

You don't need to understand Onion-routing, or the specifics of how Tor does anything to actually use the Tor Browser.
This from experience having installed it for regular users new and old. If you think about it, most users, myself included, don't understand all the intricacies of HTTPS. Yet somehow users have understood it to be a good idea. The same arguments can and should be made for the Tor Browser.

Similarly, you don't need to know about e-mail headers and PGP keys to use Delta Chat.
I suggested macchanger, and you don't need to understand it to have utility of being able to stay on most time-limited networks longer easily.

In terms of the skills to acquire software for the linux desktop, I find it arbitrary to the question. Insofar as software center, synaptic, etc. goes, these are all more-so different than what they are running on. ChromeOS laptops have gained foothold, with whatever that uses. Android is now the biggest OS, but it is not the "desktop"-desktop, though it is the primary one for a great deal of people.

I am not really sure you are arguing against my case here, as "minimal" is a choice over the "default" set of preinstalled stuff.
If you actually want nothing, that easily competes with the likes of Samsung, where you get a lot of unneeded something, that is also uninstallable without skills the regular person just doesn't have. It is a fortunate position to be in to consider what to ship, and to have so many people working in all those projects.

Having worked in tech journalism myself, I know writers are trying to find an angle, and look to find objects or concepts where a story presents itself or can be told.

You actually did it yourself, underhanded or not, not the best journalism on your part.
I think we will do better in seeing beyond the basic tech-review.
The Pyra is the Pyra anyway, so this effort only concerns adding users from publicity elsewhere.
Considering the choices of bundled software presents a fine opportunity of controlling the narrative, and delivering as much of what the Pyra is in hardware, to more people in unconventional places.

Alas, the trend of FF dropping marketshare didn't just start 10 months ago. I will also add to that you got your FF numbers from Mozilla… The bigger picture is one of continual downward trajectory. Mozilla will run out of the types of money it has very soon too.

Similarly, the daily usergraphs of the Tor Browser are inflated with bots. Those giant spikes wrt. the total are known to not be accurate, and presents a problem since the network does not scale with the amount of users. This is one reason why the Tor Browser is in some sense unreliable, and could be argued to now be at the whim of someone wanting to re-instrument said "growth".

Putting the Tor Browser in the "full" Pyra package deals with the issue of bandwidth and space. If nothing is too little for some, then not enough is very true for others at the other end. The Pyra needs more buyers in advanced circles. The Tor community is extremely similar, and conflates with the Dragonbox one.

Being Firefox and falling victim to "attacks" from owning network infrastructure is the great weakness of the Tor Browser IMO. Then again in an ideal world I don't think FF would have any problems, and not be licensed MPL2. It is however a great thing to be able to ship, don't get me wrong.
I have used Thunderbird for years, and FF since (and before) Opera stopped being Opera.

I like the idea of Tor Browser by default. I like the idea of having a "regular" browser alongside it. I don't even think FF is that browser. Falkon is my pick there, because it got just about everything right.

The 701 was Asus biting Microsoft in the ass on licensing. MS had to drop licensing costs for under 10", and Xandros got squashed. It was never good, and only half-way what was possible. I had a 1000, and it had its community too back in the day. Community is important, and it certainly wasn't Asus doing anything for or in that community.

I think adding the Pyra forum as a bookmark in the browser, or adding an IRC client would be good too, that is an excellent point.

The Pyra has a modem, meaning the Pyra could be a phone, when the Pandora became a laptop. What sort of GUI telephony and SMS software could be employed?

The Raspberry Pi being "educational" is a fantastic point you brought up. It could for case of argument also not be, but it ties in with being a cheap device, so it is.

The Pandora was open, and open was more than good enough for its day. Linux was wow, someone is doing Linux. Staying with that wow-factor, it has to be more open, and not just standard fare Linux IMO.

The Pyra is medium costly, give or take depending on how you see it. The current customers are almost exclusively male from what I can tell, and I would think averaging 20+ years old. We were generally pretty young discovering the Atari, C64, Amiga, Nintendo and Sega machines, and a considerable amount of people use IRC and forums. I think it would maybe catch on with the younger-than-that crowd to have a mumble room. What say you?
I know Ventrilo/Mumble was and still is the hang around and communicate thing.

A lot of people can additionally discover the pyra, but narrowing in on the current crowd, smart, ethical, thinking, skilled, utility, fun, games, one does it all-machine folks. Where do you find such people if not in other areas of the Linux world?

If countering the trend of every single development in the handheld world anyway, why not also drive the point home on privacy?

 

[Djoga'Ro]

I've not seen a new decent typesetting/dtp package since the late 80s

I thought of LaTex. But maybe it's called something other than type setting?

Regarding vector images I'm a big user of gimp myself

You mean Inkscape?

That is proof the hardware works as delivered.

Wouldn't fluxbox with a crazy configuration suffice? Should be smaller.

reserved

The suspension is palpable.

 

[Grench]

Wouldn't fluxbox with a crazy configuration suffice? Should be smaller.

Obscure desktop environment for systems without enough resources to run a standard DE? Why? We have a dual core CPU and 4GB of RAM. The DE isn't what is slowing my prototype down. It is the lack of drivers for offloading things like H.264 video, etc.

Sitting at the 'fat' default prototype desktop with MATE System Monitor running, memory usage is 266.9 MiB of 3.9GiB. Not too bad.

 

[Swordfish II]

I fully support the idea of a minimal and a default setup for the Pyra, Debian has the inetinst and the full installs. Hell even the Pi foundation gave in and currently support 3 images, minimal, a minimal with DE and a full.

That said I still don't see how loading an image up with random software is anything close to helpful for anyone?

For example. Lets say someone today, with little knowledge got a brand new Pandora. That is the assumption here that is driving all of this right? That is why the Pandora image is packed with stuff, to be "helpful"

"Hey I know, I will transfer a video from my phone and watch it!" So he hooks up his phone via usb....(Oh wait that doesn't work because mass storage isn't supported even with the janky app on the repo, and ignoring the usb issues). So he thinks "Ok I'll transfer it via bluetooth (Oh wait that doesn't work either, because he doesn't know that bt send/receive pnd is required, he also doesn't know btdun is needed for networking over bluetooth....all standard bluetooth functions on 99% of devices...not the Pandora though)

Finally he gets the video on his device, navigates to it and double clicks....and nothing happens, because file associations aren't there for most file types. So he goes down the rabbit hole of using mplayer in CLI because that is how it runs. @Grench (Oh look "too elite" with stock software.) The guy figures out the correct syntax and the video still doesn't play....because the codec pack comes separately and has to be installed by the user.

Getting a bit fed up he thinks "hey maybe I will just try out these gaming controls," except no emulators are installed, despite being perfectly legal and probably one of the few useful things that could be included..

"Well maybe I will change the theme to make it look cool" except gtk-murrine isn't installed and needs to be installed by CLI.

"Lets try and update via CLI, maybe that will help..." Oh image is now hosed....Pandora specific issue.

This isn't even touching Cups which is broken by default but still in the image, squeeze which has limited utility, giglo which requires modification, amongst other stuff on the image. Oh and the whole angstrom image is held together by isoteric scripts cooked up in a shadow chat room on a remote place on the net. So yeah @Grench you already use those if you have a Pandora.

This isn't to bash the Pandora, it is a great product, but these are not plug and play. You figure out how to make things work and go froward. If you want plug and play get a GPD.

Lets switch to the Pyra

-With an overlayFS file associations will likely still be problematic
-Emulators still won't be preinstalled requiring someone to either use CLI, Synaptic, or the DBP repo... Oh and last I checked the mupen in stable is CLI only, the GUI wrappers are in testing, so they will have to switch, and hopefully not break things (the lowest common denominator isn't "too elite" after all) But look they are having to install programs...That means they are fully capable of installing all the programs they want without any being forced on them.
-Various things will get HW acceleration over time, you really think someone like the above will recognize that?

So again, how is packing an image with claws, gimp, libreoffice and tons more helpful? No matter what you have to learn the system and how to do the things you want. If you can install one thing you can install more things. Hence no need for the condescending "I know what you want more than you do, use this program."

 

[levi]

I thought of LaTex. But maybe it's called something other than type setting?

Yeah, that's typesetting. But it comes from '84 originally, so doesn't pass my time test.

You mean Inkscape?

Er yes. I spotted that earlier, and couldn't work out what I was thinking when I wrote it. Your edit fits

 

[comradekingu]

Added. I like the "made on Pyra" moniker. It sends a message to advertise Gimp and the like, because it isn't going to be a thing on a generic phone.
Major display of capability. It is as easy to produce things, as it is to get general productivity done on a phone.

@Swordfish II Argument went in many directions I thought.
Having preinstalled programs is not condescending. I don't see why a "full" is wrong, for the same reasons you argue minimal from default.
Every single other device does stuff-you-don't need defaults too. Here you get that potential problem washed clean with the "minimal" option, and at your option a preselection of good things.

We are developing and contributing to a device that nearly nobody knows what is. For reasons it is different from all others.

It makes total sense to bring 2020 on the software front tot, seeing as we develop and contribute to it, under the exact same pretenses.

 

[Swordfish II]

Added. I like the "made on Pyra" moniker. It sends a message to advertise Gimp and the like, because it isn't going to be a thing on a generic phone.
Major display of capability. It is as easy to produce things, as it is to get general productivity done on a phone.

@Swordfish II Argument went in many directions I thought.
Having preinstalled programs is not condescending. I don't see why a "full" is wrong, for the same reasons you argue minimal from default.
Every single other device does stuff-you-don't need defaults too. Here you get that potential problem washed clean with the "minimal" option, and at your option a preselection of good things.

We are developing and contributing to a device that nearly nobody knows what is. For reasons it is different from all others.

It makes total sense to bring 2020 on the software front tot, seeing as we develop and contribute to it, under the exact same pretenses.

My argument is premised on the following:

1. Usability is what people preach with pre-installed software. Usability for the Pyra/Pandora takes more than installed software. It takes knowledge, and with even a bit of knowledge pre-installed software doesn't matter.
2. Even installed software doesn't fulfill the use cases presented.

Why not preinstall emulators? Gaming capabilities are a key feature.

The choices for software are arbitrary at best and not at all useful.

Useful would be: codec pack, emulators, video player and web browser. Yet two of those will not be included, and a bunch of random stuff will.

 

[levi]

FWIW, I also found the d-pad acting as arrow keys a great help in text editors, and the shoulder buttons acting as ctrl+shift made my work in the terminal a lot easier on my Pandora.

I'd argue against preinstalling emulators because all we have at present is debians janky ones. Our community can built much more targetted and efficient ones (that include gui launchers for mupen, per your last example). Maybe once they're produced they could be included as default, but I'm not sure everyone will want everything to be honest.

 

[docbroke]

I wonder why some posters love to criticize every software they are not even aware of.

Oh I don't know anything about fluxbox, it must be very bad software, let me run away from it and make everyone run with me

 

[pimaster]

You don't need to understand Onion-routing, or the specifics of how Tor does anything to actually use the Tor Browser.

If you don't understand what Tor does and does not protect you from you are blindly going into the web thinking you are "safe" or at least "safer". That is a dangerous position to be putting users in. "How did I get a virus, I was using Tor Browser?!"

Alas, the trend of FF dropping marketshare didn't just start 10 months ago. I will also add to that you got your FF numbers from Mozilla… The bigger picture is one of continual downward trajectory. Mozilla will run out of the types of money it has very soon too.

Similarly, the daily usergraphs of the Tor Browser are inflated with bots. Those giant spikes wrt. the total are known to not be accurate, and presents a problem since the network does not scale with the amount of users. This is one reason why the Tor Browser is in some sense unreliable, and could be argued to now be at the whim of someone wanting to re-instrument said "growth".

If you have numbers better suited to the argument then YOU need to provide them. Apparently I'm doing it wrong. I grabbed 2.5 years of data so I don't know what your gripe is with 10 months.

The 701 was Asus biting Microsoft in the ass on licensing.

I thought Asus were testing the market for the cheapest, smallest laptop that almost had a throw away feel. Something that could be taken to school and not had to be treated like gold. Small amount of storage and small amount of ram meant Linux was better suited.
The market took off!
So they started making slightly better version which Windows could then run on but inflated the price.
But it was so long ago and I'm not looking it up so I'm just going to drop this analogy.

 

[Swordfish II]

FWIW, I also found the d-pad acting as arrow keys a great help in text editors, and the shoulder buttons acting as ctrl+shift made my work in the terminal a lot easier on my Pandora.

I'd argue against preinstalling emulators because all we have at present is debians janky ones. Our community can built much more targetted and efficient ones (that include gui launchers for mupen, per your last example). Maybe once they're produced they could be included as default, but I'm not sure everyone will want everything to be honest.

Agreed on all points. A fresh user would know nothing of dpad and shoulder buttons though.

Post automatically merged: Jan 11, 2020

If you don't understand what Tor does and does not protect you from you are blindly going into the web thinking you are "safe" or at least "safer". That is a dangerous position to be putting users in. "How did I get a virus, I was using Tor Browser?!"


If you have numbers better suited to the argument then YOU need to provide them. Apparently I'm doing it wrong. I grabbed 2.5 years of data so I don't know what your gripe is with 10 months.


I thought Asus were testing the market for the cheapest, smallest laptop that almost had a throw away feel. Something that could be taken to school and not had to be treated like gold. Small amount of storage and small amount of ram meant Linux was better suited.
The market took off!
So they started making slightly better version which Windows could then run on but inflated the price.
But it was so long ago and I'm not looking it up so I'm just going to drop this analogy.

I still have my 701 with 4gb of hd space. It is running a minimal debian install that i built got it going in 2gb total including all needed software, de and networking. The full install was 4gb+

 

[comradekingu]

If you don't understand what Tor does and does not protect you from you are blindly going into the web thinking you are "safe" or at least "safer". That is a dangerous position to be putting users in. "How did I get a virus, I was using Tor Browser?!"

Your argument boils down to safety doesn't exist, nor does safety, because an improvement in both can't be communicated as ultimate either.
This is where the user guide come in. It is also a scenario that you constructed, fortunately. Never have I experienced anything close to it.

You don't need to understand how to calculate a higher centre of gravity to understand an electric car often is safer for this reason. Similarly, I don't see people thinking they are invincible in electric cars. Default privacy and ultimate safety are two different things.

ARM has fewer hardware exploits in the news, I don't see people taking that to mean they are impervious to what is the regular threat of using their device wrong.

What I do notice is how Fairphone has ethical production down to a understandable pitch. If you tell Tor-users about the Pyra on the merits of using Tor Browser, what you don't get is people thinking it is just some regular laptop. Because Tor Browser users have already made an active choice (seeing as there are no products shipping it by default).
If you are a Tor Browser user, you are in every way similar to a Pyra users. Both offer something where mediocrity is downright laughable in 2020.
You can't hope to pay yourself out of it, and seeing as very few sensible options exist, this is how to compete overall. The Pyra isn't shiny or light, but many people will pick privacy.

It doesn't have to be your everyday person, (and it shouldn't up to 2500). What is needed is some cunning negotiation of positioning the Pyra exactly where most everything else sucks at privacy.

Lets just forget this normie this and normie that of trying to be a perfect phone/regular user device for a while. Let's attract serious developer minds and people that produce on the move. Right now it is emulator retro people, but it also is a great photography companion. Secondarily high-end portable audio people, because they have money to spend, and no good options.

In the greater scheme of things, it doesn't need to be many people percentagewise. the Pyra already enjoys ~100% popularity as a subculture, counter alternative product.
Those people are out there.

If you have numbers better suited to the argument then YOU need to provide them. Apparently I'm doing it wrong. I grabbed 2.5 years of data so I don't know what your gripe is with 10 months.

Is it not beyond a shadow of a doubt Chrome has grabbed marketshare on all fronts for a long time? Netmarketshare, W3C numbers, Playstore numbers, etc.

I thought Asus were testing the market for the cheapest, smallest laptop that almost had a throw away feel. Something that could be taken to school and not had to be treated like gold. Small amount of storage and small amount of ram meant Linux was better suited.
The market took off!
So they started making slightly better version which Windows could then run on but inflated the price.
But it was so long ago and I'm not looking it up so I'm just going to drop this analogy.

They made sure to run a Windows variant and a Linux variant. Both were encumbered by the G45 chipset. It is a very relevant example of dropping the ball on updates and stock programs. Xandros could have gotten into ARM. Intel spent about 8 billion dollars trying to keep their small laptop and mobile space opportunities before closing their mobile division. This is how much of a toy it was https://www.anandtech.com/show/2390/4
Back when Ubuntu did things right, back when the OLPC was viable. I don't remember what the e-mail client is, but Thunderbird is clunky in 2020.
Intel had Moblin, which was great, but on the wrong hardware, and no direct sales.

The Pyra is an interesting product, it is the right thing, it is handled the right way, it just needs a boost in the software department. (consequentially this could also help with marketing and outreach, which is where the Pyra needs the most help).

Edit: Video about TOR/blocking https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=ZB8ODpw_om8