Interesting, and choosing KDE is not “locking” you in KDE?
Agreed, but that’s not what I intended to word here. Linux distros should be as diverse as possible. What I was referring to is using Phosh as mobile and desktop OS to make it to the mainstream public as it is now maturing and adopted by several market parties.
I have tried and used gnome multiple times before, I hate it, I can’t stand it, I don’t want it. There are other interfaces I have tried and liked to some extent but I always come back to KDE it’s called user preference. By insinuating all developers are focusing on phosh then yes it’s locking you into one interface as there’s only one available that was developed.
One thing I think is interesting is how we have Ubuntu touch, which was supposed to be Ubuntu on mobile. But the L5 with phosh is probably the closest real things to Ubuntu mobile there will be. It is ironic to me that Purism is the company which is basically going to achieve that.
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And having the same OS whereas Ubuntu and UBports Ubuntu Touch are different OS’s
I’m just the same. KDE only. I never even really “tried” gnome. First thing on PureOS? Install KDE/Plasma 
I only have to interact with GNOME on some virtual testmachines at work. It freaked me out when they introduced this welcome screen where you actually had to use mouse to drag the screen upwards to get to the login screen…
But you know what? That’s not a problem on a mobile device. There, you expect that. Also, in general, the minimalsim of GNOME annoys me, but it’s a natural fit on touch devices. Kate is awesome, but I don’t intend to write scripts on a small screen etc… So, I actually think I might become a KDE-desktop / Gnome mobile user… We’ll see.
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I’m not a fan of extremely minimalist design for OS, either, because it usually means that all the controls and options are hidden away behind endless sub-menus. click.click.click.click. 
You guys have got me interested in KDE again. I tried it out years ago, to compare it to Ubuntu (pre-Unity Ubuntu), but it just didn’t seem intuitive to me. I had trouble understanding it. It’s probably totally different these days, though.
Agree that minimalism works for mobile.
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For me its more than that, I currently have quite a bit of functionality and interoperability between my note 9 and KDE plasma via the mobile app for Android. It’s this functionality that I wish to keep and see grow within the Linux ecosystem
KDE is definitely geared more towards those who like to tweak
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Simply press enter 
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I’m almost certain that wasn’t the case in the first Fedora that had it.
(But even then. ANY key should do, including maouse keys)
or space bar.
But I think Gnome is going the right direction. It is a DE that isn’t afraid of getting rid of some cruft. In much the same way as Wayland. (or systemd. I know, I know, those are fighting words.)
I think Gnome is the best DE going for Linux right now. And it is not because of the default user experience, it is because of how extendable it is. Gnome extensions make the thing work exactly how I want it to.
There is a saying in portuguese: “gostos não se discutem”, which could be loosely translated to “you don’t debate (personal) tastes”.
I am not a fan of KDE. I am still traumatized from my first experience with KDE in 2011, with a distro called “Caixa Mágica”.
That is foolish to insinuate. I would say that application developers focus on a framework for their applications, libhandy or Kirigami. As for DE/Shell for mobile, while yes, purism is focusing on phosh, but the only thing that prevents plasma mobile from being installed is that the pureOS current image for the Librem 5, follows Debian stable, and plasma mobile requires newer packages.
Soon(ish) there will be a image based on testing and it should (“should” being the operative word here) be possible to install plasma mobile.
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Maybe it does set up a narrative of defeat to talk about past Linux phones as “failures,” but it also helps to understand why past attempts at mobile Linux failed to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Linux phones were business failures at many companies, such as Yopy, Sharp, MonteVista+Motorola, MonteVista+Panasonic/NEC, FIC/OpenMoko, Nokia, Nokia+Intel, Palm->HP, Samsung, Mozilla, and Canonical. In order to explain why the current crop of Linux phones have a better chance of success, we need to be able to explain why they are avoiding the mistakes of the past.
It looks like to me that PINE64, Purism and F(x)tec will have success marketing their Linux phones, and it helps to understand why compared to Meizu and BQ with Ubuntu Touch, GeekPhone with Firefox OS, Samsung with Tizen, and Nokia with Meego.
A lot depends on how you define “failure” and “success”. In terms of number of users, Firefox OS was a huge success, because KaiOS has been installed in 150 million handsets, and it is allowing millions of people in places like India who can’t afford a touch screen to have smartphone-like functionality. KaiOS has made the “smart feature phone” a new category of phone.
However, from my perspective, Firefox OS was a failure, because KaiOS’s code is not free and it is getting loaded with apps from Google (who is one of the investors in KaiOS) and Facebook, so it is extending surveillance Capitalism to a new class of consumers. It’s nice that it’s built on open web standards and someone has even managed to make a community ROM, GerdaOS, for the Nokia 8110 4G, but KaiOS is even less free than Android, because KaiOS doesn’t release its code like Google does with AOSP.
As a business venture, Ubuntu Touch was a failure, but I guess that you can argue that Ubuntu Touch has been a success because the UBports community has managed to port it to a bunch of devices, like the Fairphone 2 and Xiaomi Redmi Note 7, and it is offered as a preinstalled option on the Volla Phone, Pro1 X and PinePhone CE: UBports. However, I look at the 75 commits that Lomiri has had over the last year and the struggle to update the huge siloed codebase to a supported version of Qt, and I have to question whether UBports will attract enough volunteers to maintain the code in the long term.
I guess you can argue that Sailfish OS has been a success because Jolla has managed to stay in business, but the community has never been very excited about Sailfish OS due to its proprietary Silica interface. In my opinion, the biggest success of Jolla was developing libhybris, which has made it possible for Sailfish OS, Ubuntu Touch and Plasma Mobile to use Android drivers, so those systems could be installed in many different phones, and helping to maintain essential pieces of code like oFono and Maliit.
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The postmarketOS port for the Librem 5 should support Phosh, Plasma Mobile, i3wm, Kodi, Mate, Sway and XFCE4, so you can choose your interface. According to @dos, Purism hasn’t given up on Plasma Mobile, but its development is on hold until PureOS is upgraded to Bullseye.
With Lomiri getting packaged in Debian, I wonder if Mobian (which has a Librem 5 port) or PureOS will eventually support Lomiri. As far as I know, UBports is still planning on eventually doing a port to the Librem 5.
I’ve always had great success with KDE. The first distro I can recall my introduction to it was mandrake Linux. I absolutely loved it, everything just worked, I was able to setup samba to talk to windows computers without complications, it was quite customizable and I can’t really recall any cons. I have tested gnome on and off throughout the years as they’ve made changes but it just doesn’t flow with me. It just doesn’t fit into the way I want my Linux experience, like you said dont argue user preferences. I always end up getting frustrated and pissed off, when mint dropped their KDE support a few years ago I switched to manjaro, fedora, and KDE neon (all on KDE naturally) why 3? Why get locked into one distro, I like to see how things change over time; better or worse. Also somethings don’t work as well in one where it does in another, VirtualBox for example.
Splendid, hopefully there will be a login screen eventually where we can change these on the fly like on the desktop
You are right about QT. I remember my disappointment when I discovered that a UI developed on my Ubuntu desktop (with Glade) did not work on my bq5 Ubuntu phone. I don’t like QT, it newer worked for me.
NB I’m happy with my bq5 UBports, I like the swiping functions.
There is a login screen right now and it is gdm (exactly the same as on the desktop). There’s a bug causing the on-screen keyboard to not come up all the way sometimes, but other than that it works fine.
Since you’re a kde fan, you probably want sddm. Give it a try and let us know how it goes.