I assume like everyone on this board I am interested in Purism the company, it’s products and the ethos the company espouses. I am moderately tech savvy but by no means a “coder” or that familiar with Linux in general. I have been very close to purchasing the Librem 15 laptop (and am interested in the Librem 5 once it is released) but have not yet pulled the trigger. I have a few questions that I hope someone could possibly answer. I think the answer to these questions would be of use to many people like myself as well. My questions to the community are:
Is the Pure OS operating system /Librem 15 user friendly enough for someone to use it in place of their Macbook pro?
Can I expect to be able to download programs/apps such as Wasabi, Monero QT, Agama, Bisq etc. and use them without having conflicts with Pure OS? How much CLI lingo do I need to use these? Are their GUI as easy to navigate on Linux as they are on Mac OS?
I assume with each new version of the Librem 15 the user experience gets better. Should I just wait for the release of V5?
The OS is very user-friendly, especially if you’re coming from another UNIX-like environment (e.g. MacOS). I’ve used the Librem 15v3 for most of this year so far, and it’s nice and polished.
The apps available will depend on what the software maker supports. Of the ones you listed:
Not sure which Monero GUI you’re mentioning specifically, but both their GitHub project and official site have support for Win/Mac/Linux (perhaps it’s the same client?), so you’re good there.
Monero community member here. Yes, it should be the same Monero GUI interface across PC OSes. Per prior Purism posts, there is work going on to get Monero integrated with Purism’s LibrePay as well.
It was posted right around the beginning of the librem5 launch, but since then news on it has been largely quiet (probably because a payments system for Purism is not a primary focus for librem5 launch).
I thought I would add that Qt (the windowing toolkit used in Monero Qt) is a native GNU/Linux tool and works very well in PureOS. Also, as @jon.armani stated, PureOS is UNIX under the hood. Our shell doesn’t default to tcsh like MacOS used to, but you can install it easily if you miss it.
