Closing the App Gap; Focus and Momentum

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Todd Weaver

Founder and CEO
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Latest posts by Todd Weaver (see all)

• Closing the App Gap; Focus and Momentum - September 9, 2025
• Hardware Encrypted COMSEC Bundle by Purism - April 29, 2024
• Purism Differentiator Series, Part 14: Surveillance Capitalism - April 23, 2024

We are excited to share our plans to include a greater number of applications available across all our devices.

The journey—to properly solve the problem of privacy, security, and digital rights—is to start with the best possible foundational OS and incrementally add trusted and secured apps to that catalog to increase convenience while still retaining your control.

Goals and Convenience

Every day, with every line of code, Purism works to advance technology forward in a way that truly respects individuals. We prioritize delivering the most secure products, with privacy protections built in by default. This means deliberately steering clear of harmful practices to protect the freedom and civil liberties of our customers.

While the Librem 5 or Liberty Phone running PureOS can already function as a daily driver, we understand that closing the App Gap is crucial to improving usability and making our products accessible and convenient for a greater number of people.

The App Gap

Closing the App Gap is a solvable problem. History has long shown success can come from compatibility—sometimes that compatibility is adversarial. Compaq, Apple, and Purism show that new competitors have closed the App Gap before, and that we will do it again.

Compaq’s App Gap Problem

Look at Compaq in the 80s who suffered a similar App Gap problem: Compaq needed to run IBM PC software—the apps people needed—but had an incompatible BIOS; they wrote a fully compatible BIOS that allowed them to run the IBM PC software. Most computing historians recognize this was the single most important advancement for Compaq to gain significant market share.

Apple’s App Gap Problem

Apple in the 90s was seen as niche player in the designer space and needed to close the App Gap. Primarily, they needed Microsoft Office to be compatible with their OS. To a chorus of boos, Steve Jobs told his workers that Apple signed a pact with Microsoft to get Office ported and within 5 years had closed the App Gap. Apple overtook Microsoft a short twenty years later.

Purism’s App Gap Problem

Purism in the mid 2010s created PureOS with the goal of it being a truly convergent operating system—in fact it was the first truly convergent OS, beating Microsoft, Apple, and Google to that goal. PureOS uses the mainline Linux kernel, not Android, not Windows, and certainly not iOS. The benefit is complete user empowerment, the strongest security, and the best privacy protection.

Upcoming LibremOS

LibremOS is an upcoming operating system from Purism that adds often requested apps to PureOS. Since PureOS adheres to the FSF guidelines without compromise, we are creating a separate OS that uses PureOS and makes apps available that users often need to participate in digital society and where there is not yet a native free software option. This allows Purism to expand its market share, not compromise its mission, offer what customers are wanting while also offering an easy path to digital utopia with the FSF endorsed PureOS on any of our devices.

LibremOS will be a middle rung on the freedom ladder that we need to bring a broader audience to Free Software, and this frees PureOS to remain the top rung. It’s not easy for individuals to give up communicating with their friends and family on proprietary chat services. Making those available in LibremOS enables a broad audience to move from Android and iOS to GNU/Linux without compromising PureOS.

How to Close the App Gap

There are quite a number of paths to close the App Gap. Some are easier than others, some require heavier investment, some require heavier maintenance, some require third party approved APIs, some require leveraging public web apps, and some require emulation. The general categories are:

1. Native — An App written for PureOS or LibremOS as native code
2. PWA — A Progressive Web App (PWA) using an isolated browser as a local app
3. Browser — Simply using the browser to open a website
4. Compatibility Layer — Using the Android Translation Layer (ATL)
5. Android Container — Using Waydroid to boot a full Android system
6. Cloud Delivered — Rendering Android from a cloud service and delivering the GUI locally

Our Journey Incrementally Closing the App Gap

We are putting in motion areas we have long discussed and now have the resources to put that discussion into action. We will frequently promote applications across the various categories mentioned above.  Some exist today but need awareness, while the majority will be new app releases. Starting with some of the easier to release and deploy apps will demonstrate the volume of apps we can add to PureOS and LibremOS, while iterating toward more complex apps.

How You Can Help

Use, test, promote, evaluate, document, or develop. Progress will be public, so all the help we can get collectively advances the overall market awareness. Every app released answers a use-case for a potential customer to use. Every app being tested improves usability for those customers. Every promotion, like, share, mention, increases awareness of advancing digital freedom for society. Every app evaluation and ticket cut helps improve longevity and sustainability of the application itself. Every bit of documentation helps future customers to find the resources needed. Every developer and development authoring to improve usability via apps improves the overall ecosystem for all users. There are numerous ways to get involved and help, so please do.

The App Gap is Closing

We will start with a list of highly requested applications based on customer feedback, triage for complexity, begin announcing some native apps and releasing some PWAs. The end result will be incremental new apps, making all of Purism’s devices easier to use by default for the millions of people who desire a convenient alternative to Big Tech.

Ambition and Vision

Purism sets extremely ambitious goals starting with its founding as a Social Purpose Company—putting protecting digital rights above profit, putting individual freedom above controlling users, inventing and innovating GNU/Linux for mobile, creating the first truly convergent OS (PureOS), to shipping the first phone with Made in USA Electronics. The constant throughout the entire company is a belief that people should be in control of their technology. This belief is also extremely valuable to organizations and agencies who need the security provided by controlling their devices fully.

Purism Products and Availability Chart

	Model	Status	Lead Time
	Librem Key (Made in USA)	In Stock ($59+)	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Liberty Phone (Made in USA Electronics)	In Stock ($1,999+) 4GB/128GB	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 5	In Stock ($799+) 3GB/32GB	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 11	In Stock ($999+) 8GB/1TB	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 14	Out of stock	New Version in Development	Coming Soon
	Librem Mini	Out of stock	New Version in Development	Coming Soon
	Librem Server	In Stock ($2,999+)	45 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem PQC Encryptor	Available Now, contact sales@puri.sm	90 business days	Learn More Contact Us
	Librem PQC Comms Server	Available Now, contact sales@puri.sm	90 business days	Learn More Contact Us