What is mobile PureOS

Call me biased if you want. But could not resist to share this article. A good read specially for talking about the approach of developing a unified convergent software stack. :sunny:

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Biased :slight_smile:
I’ve missed the monthly reports about progress and behind the scenes stuff like this (vs. the more specific topics, which are good too).

i was just about to link to it myself … biased ? … why yes ! - yes ! please ! :slight_smile:

I appreciate that post. To not re-invent everything is key. To try to get everything mainlined and hopefully as purism chose gnome into mainline gnome is very important. This was also part of the original mission and a reason why I backed this project.
The OS running on desktop in the end should be the same as on the mobile. Most but not foremost for convergence and ofc for writing compatible software which works on both with currently libhandy to have responsive programs like responsive web-apps.

Edit: See further comments of Caliga and Richard - it explains my misconception of the following paragraph:

I don’t understand why there is now something called “Mobile PureOS” (which will differ in the /etc/apt/sources/ as far as I understand). While I understand that not all packages are into debian or ubuntu purism has full control over what they put into their repos.
For me, with the reasons above, I would say that there should be only one repository for mobile and for laptop / desktop, for the different architectures etc with all packages and maybe for now the GUI can be selected between kde, gnome or phosh simply via apt install.

@dos, thanks a lot, nicely written summary with a bunch of interesting details.
I learned something :+1:

That might happen one day, but for the reasons outlined in the post (development pace, temporary non-upstreamable hacks)

amber-phone suite was created, which is a thin repository overlay that augments amber

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Does that mean that additionally to amber there would only be an additional amber-phone line which serves for the diff for phone and anything else is served via amber? That would be cool, didn’t understand it that way after the first time reading.

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Yes, that’s exactly how it works.

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Guys, I’ve tried PureOS on the Pinephone, and even being an unofficial, single-person port, it is really good. So far one of the best experiences with Phosh. This is really promising for the Librem 5, if it runs so smoothly on a port, I can only imagine how well it can run on its main phone!! Well done Purism!!

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Reverse the words to PureOS Mobile and it almost sounds like a 1970s brand name gasoline additive.

I have to agree. I’ve also tried Manjaro and Mobian, both with Phosh, neither of which seemed to lock up and spontaneously reboot (PureOS did). But I just now had to reflash Mobian to the SD because it borked (refused to boot) after an update.

It’s true! I expect PureOS to be the most satisfying to run on the L5 when it’s ready, but I’m happy to have paid for the L5, even if it ultimately fails. That’s because Phosh is worth the price, all by itself. No other mobile environment has done as much to promote GNU/Linux on the phone.

How complicated will it be to connect my L5 with this os to my desktop with mint20 ? To do updates and transfer pics/contacts back and forth

I would expect that the L5 would operate autonomously to achieve that i.e. needs connection to internet (directly via cellular modem or indirectly via WiFi) and it will do the rest.

Once the camera is working, I expect some means of doing this but I don’t know what it will be.

How long is a piece of string? This is always messy. It will depend on what mail client you use on your desktop and what mail client you use on the L5.

There is an obvious need to share and/or sync contacts between devices but I have no idea how simple this will be.

Thank you very much. I use Thunderbird for my desktop email

At the moment there is not yet a solution like KDEconnect. So move/share files across devices at this moment you can use a solution like nextcloud via GNOME Online accounts.
Or if you are familiar with SSH you should be able to use SSH via mint’s file manager for it to show you all the folders of your Librem 5 device.

As for sharing contacts, at this moment you can either use a nextcloud contacts to sync contacts across devices or you can use the package librem5-goodies it has a small bash application with a graphical interface “contacts importer” that allows to import contacts to the librem 5 via a .vcf file imported either locally or via bluetooth (e.g you can create a vcf file in your android device with your contacts, send it via bluetooth to the Librem 5 and and they are automagically imported to gnome contacts.)

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Good info. Thx

To elaborate on that … I am assuming that there is an SSH server installed, running, configured on the L5 and that you have credentials to access it …

You can use either

gio mount sftp://user@host:port

or

sshfs ...
(yes, read the man page :slight_smile:)

to do a local mount of the file system that is on the L5, and thereby access its files transparently either from the file manager or from the command line.

Those of course work via the network from anywhere in the world (which is both a good thing and a bad thing).

It would be nice though if it could also work the way it does e.g. on spiPhones using MTP or PTP. The file manager seems to have built-in support for that. So, plug in the spiPhone via USB, and it pops up in the file manager, a bit “like” a USB flash drive.

this is being worked on, the “L5 working as a USB”

No you have to set it up. Sorry but no port 22 with password login open by default, an SSH server on a Librem 5, is a user’s choice to make, not ours.

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@kieran Sorry, I misunderstood your reply. You were assuming that the user already done those steps

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That’s what I meant. I am assuming that the owner of the phone (the user) has already tackled those tasks successfully.