What is Reddit's opinion of
PureOS?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
13 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
There have been various attempts at several alternative mobile OSes, some of them still survive to this day.
- Sailfish OS is developed by Finnish company Jolla. The base OS is free and open source, while the GUI is closed.
- Tizen is Samsung's solution to the question of what they will do if things go bad between them and Google.
- Pure OS is being developed by Librem for their Librem 5 phone, expected to get released some time next year.
- There are others that I don't know much about: Postmarket OS, WebOS (not sure what it's called these days) but they all have their own communities, and several more dead platforms: Maemo, Moblin, MeeGo, Firefox OS, etc.
So there are plenty of projects to choose from if you wish to contribute. I personally work on Sailfish OS, but also respect the others.
You should know that the mobile space is always a compromise, since very few chip vendors develop usable drivers for the mainline Linux kernel, let alone give away the source code for their drivers. So the Linux graphics driver story for mobile chips is a huge mess. (This is why stuff like libhybris is born.) And let's not even talk about the modem firmware and privacy issues with that... so you probably won't get a system that is 100% fully free and open source.
No and not that I know of.
Canonical gave up on Ubuntu Touch years ago so it's now maintained by the UBPorts community.
The closest thing to what you're looking for might be something like PureOS from Purism https://pureos.net/ (based on Debian)
There are also all the OSes that are supported by the PinePhone, but they're virtually all volunteer-driven: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Software_Releases
debian & debian-based distros are suggested more often because of many reasons, few of them are because they are easy to use and have a lot of documentation online. These two factors play a huge role in a novice's starting journey.
Only when you start understanding what GNU/Linux is, you understand you can actually switch to a new distro, and this is when you go and search online "distro hopping tips" or something :) and you begin trying out new distros. Many come back to their first distro thinking it was their best experience, and "it's the best distro". I'm not debating whether debian/ubuntu are the best, I'm stating the fact that because these distros are the user's first interaction with GNU/Linux, there is a big chance it'll play a big role when deciding on which distro to settle.
Trisquel - based on ubuntu, best for old PCs.
PureOS - based on debian, runs better on a mid-range hardware and has a few security/privacy tweaks.
PureOS Prometheus 8.0 Beta 1
It's still in Beta. I never touch Beta versions. I only download and use stable versions of Linux only. Zero problems that way. I would wait if I was you. And I'm not a big fan of Wayland either. Don't seem stable or even 100% usable in my opinion.
> You used them as an example didn’t you? Surely seems like they offer me privacy and peace of mind if I buy their product.
I used them as an example because I was aware that there are organizations which are trying to build privacy-oriented technology. Because people do have concerns about Big Tech, hackers and government agencies having access to one's phone and/or the data on it.
But I still sought to link to the specifications, not the advertising. Because people should know what they're actually getting if they're interested.
Not to mention that some of that stuff doesn't even have a price tag. Purism makes PureOS freely available for use through a Creative Commons license. You don't have to buy a Librem 5 if you care more about the software being security-oriented rather than the hardware.
you have an option to unselect telemetry. On the webpage I attached there's a guide to install ubuntu minimal, so you can install and use only openbox as the gui.
Ubuntu does not include private software by default. Most distros that come from a company (Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE) do not include private software for legal reasons. You can install them if you want to though.
But by the sounds of it, it appears that you might like PureOS. You can't have more of a FOSS distro than this one if you want a debian based. https://pureos.net/
So that's a "privacy" ding.
A "security" ding that they also know about (IIRC, it was a reported bug) is that they don't PGP-sign their SHA-hashes for their download ISO's ( https://pureos.net/download/ ). The BS response to the bug was "the download is https" only addressed the threat of stealing the domain name and ignores the "hack the website" threat (a la Mint: hack the website, replace the ISO's and SHA-hashes).
Ultimately we should buy electronics from companies like this one -> https://pureos.net/ -- that have open source OS as well as open source user applications, hard kill switches for mic, camera (privacy somewhat, data privacy is of course much more complex) -- made in the USA etc, etc. We could collectively make a company like this a massive success and show the world that we'll pay top dollar (actually they're relatively inexpensive) for a high quality, ethical product... disclaimer: idk very much about Purism, it's just an example.
The Librem-5 will be released soon. We'll see how it does.
It's almost guaranteed that it will have at least some Chinese components -there's no way around that, really-, but the whole assembly process will be done in San Francisco.
It will run PureOS by default, but you'll be able to install other Linux builds if you want to.
How about PureOS, which is endorsed by the FSF?
If it's not already on your radar, you may want to check out Purism's Librem 5. (I'm not affiliated with Purism in any way.)
I don't see a stable one. Beta isn't stable and that all I see on front page and on the download link.
How can there be a stable one, if all I see is the Beta one for download?
I second this. I moved from Gmail to ProtonMail, cut off all of my Google accounts, and I have stopped using their services. I use Nextcloud for my own “cloud” storage that includes calendar functionality. I use my own media server for TV needs with Kodi on the front end and a Samba server for the backend, plus extensions for live TV/sports/streaming (KissAnime, 123Movies, etc.) since I don’t play games often I use Fedora GNU/Linux for everything without problems. I use it in order to avoid Microsoft and Apple, If I do play, the most demanding applications are CS:GO, Don’t Starve, and Team Fortress 2 which all work perfectly fine with my AMD FX-8350 and AMD R9 380X.
For mobile, I run LineageOS without Google Applications or the Play Store, and I use the FDroid store for package management. I’m hoping that Purism picks up development fast as it’s what I’ll be using as a mobile device/OS. I use plain old SMS and Matrix chat for communicating with friends, Firefox for web browsing. The only thing I have yet to find is a solid Facebook alternative, but I can live without.