Will you use the Standard PureOS or use a another Distro for daily use on the Librem5?
- PureOS
- Other distro/s
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Depends on what I need. I typically use Fedora on my computers and now Pinephone. I plan to try PureOS anyway when it first comes, but Fedora has been a goal.
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I will use whatever distro has Plasma Mobile. I’ve been using KDE for more than 15 years and I’m not about to stop now.
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Me either. I can’t stand gnome. Although I must say atm KDE’s mobile plasma releases haven’t been awe inspiring, but progress is being made
Haha, likewise. Actually I’ve been using it since it was CDE. Back in the day my work desktop was on Sun systems. I still use Korn shell too 
Purism did indicate that they were inclined to a KDE system back at the start of this adventure, but they seem to be all in on gnome now. Waiting on my PinePhone (UBPorts edition) and Evergreen from Purism. I’ll likely distro hop a bit until I settle into something.
Well, if KDE doesn’t work out of the box on release, I’m just going to have to roll up my sleeves and get elbow-deep in the code. I’m not averse to spending some time on hammering out bugs and improving the functionality. If it doesn’t work, then I’m going to make it work. There’s no point in having this phone if I don’t want to use it.
I’d have to learn their entire development procedure, build environment, coding standards and all the other related stuff from scratch, but hey, it’s better than using Gnome.
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I’m with TungstenFilament. I’ve been on KDE since 2002 and not intending to change to resource hungry Gnome. I’m actually use teh Plasma version of PureOS, not only on my Librem 15, but all the other computers I have. Hopefully Librem will reignite their interest in PlasmaMobile.
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I’ll probably try other distros but I really like where PureOS is going . I love the active app gallery on the home screen . How theyre using libhandy to make apps work on a mobile form factor .
Maybe Ill see if theres a LIVE microSD boot option or something to play with other distros but unless something REALLY moves me and does everything better than PureOS I’ll probably keep it as the native OS
KDE is fairly heavy on the system though no ? Would that be viable on the L5 meager hardware resources while we contend with thermal dissipation issues ?
In my experiences, (desktop only) Plasma uses WAY less resources than gnome. The OS for the phone could be different to the desktop OS, so maybe someone with knowledge in that area could chime in?
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GNOME and KDE are the MAIN Desktop-Environments of the GNU/Linux ecosystem and they have been arround for a LONG time.
imo it’s not wrong for people to keep BOTH installed and keep an eye out for each and report bugs if they CAN.
the CLI is way more powerfull but not everybody want’s to invest time in learning it nor is it a MUST nowadays.
from what i have seen developers and people who CONTRIBUTE to these two DEs tend to “borrow” the things which are good from one and implement them in the other … this is the beauty of the GPL. if you see something worth having in one of them you can bring it yourself in the other.
as such - even if they look different by default people who know how to customise them can probably bring them to resemble each other very closely. it might not be a perfect resemblence but for those that complain that GNOME is too touch friendly on the desktop side out-of-the-box they can massage it a little and voila you have a perfectly usable desktop. the same can be said for KDE/Plasma on the mobile side, though i suspect it needs a little more love to be at the same level on the L5 hardware.
other than that, they are both usable and highly configurable if you massage them ENOUGH to get what YOU want out of each.
i’m quite a fan of the vannila GNOME theming/icon-set from 3.36.
popOS uses the too light blue color and in the Disks front-end this has a nasty side-effect of making the partitions not lisible ENOUGH … i’ve switched to ADWAITA the first chance i got during my testing period …
Fedora and Debian Testing BOTH did EXTREMLY WELL imho with choosing to go VANILLA GNOME. 
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I could be wrong but I don’t think you can boot from µSD at all.
I would like it for backup and recovery purposes. However, as you want, it would also be a way of trying out other distros.
you just need to BOOT first from the microSD …
i’ve recently tried this with an usb 3.0 to microSD thumb stick adapter from Kingston + a Samsung microSD 8GB and was succesful at booting into an ubuntu 20.04 LTS RC (release 0 from 23rd april 2020) LIVE environment and after that i immediately succesfully performed a clean install on bare-metal (asrock x470+AMD ryzen APU 3200g on internal WD blue SSD sata m2)
all this was possible on UEFI with the standard 3 partition scheme
1st fat32 as GPT > /boot/efi min 512 MB
2nd ext4 as GPT > / min 20GB
3rd ext4 as GPT > /home - make it however big you like 
and encrypt it
you can use ZFS or BTRFS instead of ext4 but they are not ready for prime time yet imo
you will get it to boot by entering UEFI after the computer starts and selecting the “temporary-boot-overide” option or something like that if you have some other UEFI closed-hw …
i’m just giving these instructions because that’s what i’ve had to work with but if you can use pureBOOT or coreBOOT on some open-hw that’s available from the FSF or other distributors then that would be a huge plus for you and for anybody else who can do so …
mind you at first i’ve tried with debian stable 10.3 and it didn’t work out-of-the-box because the bundled MESA graphics stack in the linux-kernel 4.19.something is for the older generation 2200G and 2400G APU ryzen … just sayin’
you can get the microSD card bootable by using the GNOME-disks > restore-disk image from the hamburger menu if you’re on that DE
This is the phone, dude. Librem 5. Are you sure about this?
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Sure , this being new device I dont think we’ll see an answer from the purism crew tonight but thats right . Id love an external boot , to try other distros while slurping some ramen noodle soup , for experimental purpose to check out what other distros features and worth is . I mean if we cant have that I wouldnt be mad I just think the ability to do so wouldnt be worthless.
Either way pureOS or otherwise Im still happpy with my purchase. I just hope Fir is due to drop soon .
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aw ! yeah this is an all-nighter for me … so it’s because i’m tired i’ve forgot to re-read the OP 
either way a mini-tutorial right there
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Yea , I just didnt know how the bootloader or bios on the L5 will work. I never selected a temporary boot override . I just changed the boot order from HDD first to USB first , then if no media , DvD drive , then if no media HDD .
This way you wouldnt have to mess with it at every attempt . It would automatically goto the HDD as a last option .
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for what it’s worth this would be a great subject to revisit after we get evergreen or fir …
that is, i’ve already got my usb C to usb 3.0 A female adapter waiting you know …
Well if we had the ability to point to boot media somewhere. You could simply insert a microSD card into its port and point to it .
We’ll see sometime in the future I guess. That would bee cool if you could have pureOS native with the ability to point to a live microSD you simply need to put in its slot with say plasma mobile or something on it .
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aye, and knowing how useful this could prove i bet it’s going to get implemented sooner rather than later …
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