New to this PureOS thing and have a few questions.
Would PureOS be great for Mobile/Tablets? I’m thinking about creating a device but do not want to run it off of Android (I feel it is clunky in the core) and plus… there are already enough android phones/tablets out there.
Is PureOS customizable? I would like to use it as the base OS and branch off. Kind of like how Fire OS is branched off of Android.
The thing I need to change is some functionality and the looks for the device.
All wisdom and guidance here are appreciated! Even critics…
Katone
Edit: I was told that I tend to ask hard questions… I apologize for that.
It is 100% open source so you are free to change anything. However I wouldn’t underestimate the effort in understanding the code sufficiently to do this or the effort to re-apply your changes as new versions of PureOS are released with security or other improvements.
Probably not for an arbitrary mobile/tablet - because an arbitrary mobile/tablet will have hardware for which no open source driver exists (and no or insufficient documentation to create an open source driver). This is normal even for more permissive distros if you install Linux on a random desktop or laptop. It may well boot fine and most hardware will work but some hardware may not work.
If you are creating the device yourself then you could in theory avoid that problem by limiting yourself to hardware for which open source drivers exist. But then I would wonder what your device will offer that the Librem 5 (in the case of a phone) does not already offer.
If you’re really interested in developing Linux for a tablet, I would also point out that Pine64 is developing a tablet (PineTab) for Linux that does not currently have a stable OS. Although production has been slowed by COVID-19, they still anticipate taking orders for an early-adopter batch in the near future.
So, further to the above comment, what you are supposed to be doing is making your changes in a compatible and cooperative way so that they can be upstreamed and you don’t keep on having to re-apply them.