I was wondering if the launch of the Librem 5 would be delayed by delays in the development of Pureos Mobile (seeing applications like the PureOs store in landscape only does not reassure me). So I was wondering if Pursim would offer the possibility of receiving the phone with KDe PlasmaMobile since their development is more advanced and thus allow the backer to receive the phone sooner (consider that the phone is ready to ship).
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I assume if you want something different than PureOS, you’ll have to do it on your own.
Also, as PostmarketOS still has the “Calls don’t work” line very prominently on their front page, you might not be happy with that either, unless somebody puts some work into it 
My hope would be that one can switch between Gnome & Plasma mobile just as easily as on the desktop. There are actually ARM Plasma packages in the repo, but that seem to be the desktop packages.
So, on day one we’ll proably only have Gnome mobile, but I think we’ll be alright 
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Does the problem for PostmarketOs is in KDe Plasma Mobile?
Im sure the short answer is no. This is purisms product . While they have bent over backwards to give you a device that you truly own and can install whatever you want on it . They designed their own OS to be optimized to work with the hardware on this phone to give you the best experience possible out of the box.
I couldn’t see them offering experimental OS that while may work will certainly not be tailored to the device itself .
However being the awesome company they are they certainly give YOU the ability to do that if you so chose.
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I’ll most likely stick with PureOS for a while and see how I feel about it. When I feel confident that all the hardware works and if I feel that PureOS bloated, I might try installing Arch instead.
Arch? On mobile? Am I missing something?
Arch and Manjaro both have an ARM version of their distros.
After the Librem 5 launch, I am curious to see who will get calls, SMS and browsing working first with Plasma Mobile. Whether its Arch/Manjaro or postmarketOS.
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I am feeling relatively confident that Arch will work without much effort, at least the GNOME side of things will. As for interfacing with the modem, sensors, etc… we will see. I know Purism is doing a lot of upstream work, but only the GNOME-based components of that will make their way to Arch on their own.
then i have to pay 300 a year to run arm arch ? so much for FOSS
I’m predicting that Arch/Manjaro will figure it out before postmarketOS, simply because the Arch community is so large and they seem to try everything and document it on their wiki. It will be interesting which communities adopt the Librem 5 as their own.
Currently it appears that the PinePhone is doing better in terms of working with the community projects, but the Librem 5 is a much more interesting phone in terms of the hardware and more interesting for geeks to work on. I wonder which phone will do better with groups like postmarketOS, UBports, Maemo Leste, etc. once they both are available for sale.
I’m surprised that the people over at XDA-developers and the independent AOSP ROMs like LineageOS and Replicant don’t seem to be interested in the Librem 5. Usually XDA-developers start a new thread on their forum for new phone models the moment they have either code or a phone to work on, but I can’t find one for the Librem 5. Considering that the Librem 5 code is already available and there are 300 Dev Kits in the wild, I would have expected someone to have started working on an AOSP port.
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I saw the Librem 5 mentioned in the Replicant chat room in Matrix, so at least it’s on someone’s radar.
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Purism’s upstream changes will first have to be tested and released by upstream projects, then downstream distributions will have to test and release too. So you have a upstream release cycle, and a downstream release cycle. Both are subject to code freezes prior to release testing, which means that something essential might not make it in for the upcoming release cycle, delaying it until the next release.
I expect that Plasma Mobile will require a few patches to fully integrate with the Librem 5’s hardware. The current version of KDE in PureOS might not get the necessary patches, as new code is put into new releases, usually not backported to older ones. But eventually, KDE will be upgraded to a release that contains the patches.
PureOS is focusing on the essential functions of a phone, so I expect that they will not delay shipment based on the software. Other things might not be finished, but those will be completed after we have our phones, they finish these features, and we run updates.
That would be a terrible business decision for a company that is building a phone from a scratch optimizing it with it’s own Pure OS. They need to release a fully functional device which they can continue supporting.
it would be a wonderful business decision. They would prove to have managed to make the phone with the features they wanted and to respect the promised delivery date.
Obviously they would expect that, as the phone works, purchases will increase.
And Linux users are accustomed, to have the freedom, not to have other small comforts
They won’t limit your freedom to tinker and do whatever you want. It’s just that as of now, they don’t have time nor resources to play with other OS on their device. Their main goal of to iron out as much as they can their software and optimize it with this Brand new hardware.
They been making laptops for long time now and all come with PureOS only.
That may change in the future, but I’m certain that it won’t be an option in the next year or so.