Being well aware of all the positives Purism is bringing to the table here with regards to right of ownership, no bloatware et cetera. I was merely addressing the fact that one should not be ‘scared off’ by Linux or programming aspects when Librem 5 is an option and you’re supporting this great concept. As @wctaylor pointed out, the future iterations are likely to work for everyone, that is a truly remarkable achievement and sincerely hoping this will be a game changer to break the duopoly on the current market
6 Likes
Hi and welcome 
Fellow non-techie here and I can assure you you’ll be fine.
That’s the most important part and it looks like you’ve got that down pat PureOS is based on Debian so you should be able to pull from their repositories in desktop mode (at least that’s my understanding of it right now (?)) and I think you’ll be pleased with not only Free as in Freedom editors (like libreoffice) but also tools lspecifically for writers like manuskript. Others here have already mentioned about the battery and also the terminal. I haven’t really anything to add to that except for getting around the terminal is a lot easier once you’ve learned the basics …from puppets! 
4 Likes
Not a writer, but Manuskript looks quite cool.
Here is the homepage, for a better view of the features and interface:
4 Likes
makes you wonder - how in the world was the Bible written without “Manuskript”
According to the shipping announcement “long term software support” is included as of the Evergreen release. What exactly does that mean?
Does it imply that the Librem 5 will then be a privacy/security/freedom respecting smartphone out of the box and terminal GNU/Linux command line editing scenarios will be a thing from the past?
Reference the above link by @reC to “Introducing friends to GNU/Linux” and specifically the comment made by @hippi makes sense to all potential customers for Librem 5 to get onboard and make them forget about the other OS.
> “a newbie will feel better if everything works out of the box and they dont even need to touch anything thats conf/install related other than the updates… newbies will discover a well-crafted stuff thats alive, and they dont need to find out how to make their wishes happen, and how to bring alive whatever stuff thats not fine as it stands…”
If by the time of the Evergreen/Fir release Pure OS store and Librem 5 have indeed developed to that point, there’s no longer any argument for to not adopt the concept, it would be the best chance for Purism and the wonderful community to get people switch to Pure OS based devices, offering the basics and go and learn from that point forward to discover the benefits of having a Linux based device.
3 Likes
Hi f1v3
Don’t worry about what they say about the Linux learning curve. There is a curve, but let us guide you towards the easiest route. There are many flavors of Linux. Some of them are easy, and some are insane. If you start easy, you will be able to change over to all the others if you so wish. You will be lost for choice with all the possibilities, so let me just tell you where I wish I had started knowing what I know now…drumroll please… Linux Mint Cinammon. I’m not saying it is the best, I’m just saying that I think it is the easiest start and a darn good choice anyway.
PureOS seems to be a reasonably easy start, however… BUT I seriously don’t like the desktop that comes with Pure OS and will replace it with KDE as fast as I can If I was to use it for a computer! Sorry, I’m just being honest!
https://tracker.pureos.net/w/pureos/tips/install_kde/
Perhaps for a phone, the default desktop is actually the better choice.
Whichever system you start with (and there are Many) if you have a computer to try it on, and feel very unsure of what you are doing here is how I would do it.
- Go to the Linux download website of your choice and get the ISO file
- Read the instructions (probably given somewhere) to make a live USB from the ISO
- Make the Live USB
- So as not to endanger your current system, either clone your hard drive or physically remove it and put a new one in - that way any amateur mistakes can be fixed with no more hacking skills than a Philips screwdriver!
- Install and get used to Linux. Download Word Processors like Libre office or Install book authoring software like Scrivener (Scrivener Isn’t easy to install If you don’t know Linux yet, but it is my favorite authoring software). Easiest install by far is now obtained from https://wayoflinux.com/blog/scrivener-returns
4 Likes
Thanks,
looks like the L5 might be compatible with the nexdock2, too?
That would be ace!
If I got myself up to speed, linux wise, I would be able to work out and about, keep the phone charged, and not have repeating technology on two devices.
Then all I would need is some librem/nextcloud-y thing to save my work live to a safe place so I never lose anything!
Total success!
x
2 Likes
x indeed !
i dare not say since nobody has a L5 review out yet. we can speculate and if you want to do that be sure to get friendly with the forum search tool. you’d be blown away at what you find 
2 Likes
“Long term software support” means that the software on Evergreen will be finalized enough that they will support whatever that batch ships with for some number of years (I forget what the standard is, but I believe it’s 5 years). Software on earlier batches may be tweaked or replaced within a short period of time (weeks or months), but by the time Evergreen ships, Purism will know what works best and will focus on keeping it up to date versus making sure it works.
2 Likes
Thank you @Gavaudan for clarifying.
Still eager to know as to whether the Evergreen and/or Fir versions are expected to be rolled out without the need for terminal/GNU/Linux command line editing.
I don’t think that’s even the plan for Aspen. The Software center is functional.
It’s rather the risk that if things go wrong, one might have to execute some commands.
3 Likes
Hi! I’ve got a degree in art, but I’ve got the Librem 13 computer and it’s working out fine. I pre-ordered the Librem 5 phone too. A lot of it is the same as or similar to other operating systems and I’ve found that for the most part, the “what does this do?” approach is fine. The only thing I have some trouble with is installing non-PureOS software. I am currently taking an online class to learn more about using the Linux command line. There is a lot of PureOS free software available however, at least for the laptop. It’s not as scary as I feared.
7 Likes
The terminal will never be obsolete, there are just too many programs that run on too many distros to make GUIs for all of them, even only those that can run on a phone. But as for “acceptable phone usage,” I think by the latter batches terminal usage can be more or less avoided.
But the terminal can be awesome, too. For an example, type this into a Linux terminal (I swear you won’t get hacked, and forgive my lack of formatting, I’m at work in my phone and don’t have the gumption to figure out how to properly format it):
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
2 Likes
That one is a classic
1 Like
When I get fed up with pointing and clicking and dragging I open a terminal window and handle things the fastest and easiest way: By typing commands. I have a bunch of aliases for the most used command strings and that is much faster than the graphic business. And on a phone it is really a pain in the — to point on the small screen - there will always be errors and it takes a lot of time to go back and do it again.
I am perhaps not the best adviser for people with no computing skills because I have been using Linux for as long as it has existed (and UNIX before that). I just want to say that using a terminal is a fast way of working even if it takes some time to learn it. Once you are over the hill it is downhill all the time (until you start with the next program :-).
2 Likes
Until you type
ed
in your terminal %)
1 Like
I never type ed and never vi. Even on the smallest systems (like my Raspberries) I always use Emacs. We started to use Stallmans Emacs on DEC-20 when it was quite new and I am addicted to it …
2 Likes
Just referring to an old joke - if you need to generate perfect entropy for cryptographically strong random seed - ask a CS student to type ed in his terminal
4 Likes