Purism Librem 5: Most use Android smartphones. Others choose Apple iPhones, but there are also those who seek a truly free software smartphone without a trace of closed source or firmware. For them Purism and KDE started a collaboration to create the Purism Librem 5 smartphone.
The Librem 5 is meant to be a secure smartphone with privacy protection up frontchoice. Οι δημιουργοί του σχεδιάζουν να το κατασκευάσουν με ελεύθερο λογισμικό ανοικτού κώδικα που θα τρέχει σε λειτουργικό σύστημα GNU/Linux.
It is very likely to be based on PureOS of Purist, a Linux based system (Debian).
Originally, Purism had chosen to use GNOME as a workspace, but this particular DE is not designed for smartphones. Instead, KDE's Plasma Mobile is a desktop version of KDE designed for phones.
Plasma Mobile already works on some smartphones. But most of these smartphones include hardware that requires proprietary software to work.
This of course comes into conflict with the principles of KDE's freedom and openness. It also makes development difficult, as proprietary software that requires some hardware prevents full access to the code.
“The development of a free phone with Free Software for privacy has been a dream of the KDE community for a long time. We created Plasma not only for desktops and laptops but for the whole range of devices, ”said Lydia Pintscher, president of KDE eV.
“Our partnership with Purism will allow us to prepare Plasma Mobile for the real world and seamlessly integrate it into a commercial device for the first time. Librem 5 will make Plasma Mobile shine as it deserves. ”
"KDE created an advanced, completely free platform with Plasma Mobile," said Todd Weaver, CEO of Purism.
“We believe that Plasma Mobile will become a serious contender that can break the current duopoly and bring a fully functional, fully free, open source mobile operating system to market. We look forward to testing Plasma Mobile on our test hardware and working with the KDE community. "
Sounds pretty good project, but Purism has accumulated so far only 323.375 dollars from the 1,5 million needed.
Here we should mention, that the history of an operating system that will replace Android and Apple iOS is not encouraging. Of the top six OS alternatives for cell phones that were released (Blackberry OS, Sailfish, Ubuntu Mobile, Firefox OS, Tizen and Windows Phone) or have stopped development, or their development is progressing very slowly.
https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
