PureOS on Liberty Phone and Librem 5

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David Hamner

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With the Librem 5 just hitting shipping parity and Purism holding stock for new purchases, it was time for an updated review of the tremendous progress our team has made with PureOS for the Librem 5 and Liberty Phone with Made in USA Electronics.  Here we will talk about the good, bad, and lasting effects of PureOS on the Liberty Phone and Librem 5.

Both the Librem 5 and Liberty Phone were a giant gamble that paid off in a big way. Prior to the Librem 5, nearly every new phone produced used the software stack from Android or iOS, both of which are fundamentally flawed around data protection and proper transparent fully released source code. Instead of using this problematic base and adopting apps that monetize your data, or where the source code is not released, or worse… both of those. We chose the much harder but proper path and built an Operating System, PureOS, using only free software thereby avoiding data collection entirely, advancing fully free software, and bonus we invented true convergence within PureOS which is a non-Android Linux OS. With PureOS, you get a full Linux Desktop on everything from servers to phones. We don’t collect user data nor provide avenues to easily incorporate ads into our ecosystem. Resulting in a pure experience free of nagging apps and unalterable defaults. The Librem 5 and Liberty Phone running PureOS do not spy on you, giving you peace of mind that you are fully protected from the hardware all the way to the apps.

The Good

On the Liberty phone and Librem 5 the Linux kernel is kept up to date by Purism and its many investments in upstream, it needs a shrinking number of alterations from the main branch because of these advancements. This keeps kernel features up to date and makes it easy to port alternative OSs to the Librem 5 or Liberty Phone. Congratulations are in order for our Linux kernel team.

You get root access out of the box, all protected by an encrypted filesystem. Open a terminal and take full control over your microserver running in your pocket. Because PureOS is based on Debian, tutorials for server apps, almost all work as expected on your phone. Allowing you to take your portable services with you.

Easily install Desktop apps and force them to fit the screen, or attach a monitor and use them as designed.

With our investment in creating Libhandy and merging upstream in Libadwaita, convergent Linux apps feel right at any size on any device. Congratulations are in order for our entire PureOS, GTK, and Librem 5 development team.

Software development has never been easier on any platform. Create an app on your Linux PC, and run it on the tiny PC in your pocket. Build terminal apps, graphical apps, or use a drawing library like pygame.

Recent enhancements around Suspend enable you to boost your battery life to a full day. This was a multi-year investment and congratulations are in order for our Linux kernel team. Incoming calls and texts have become very reliable, even while suspended.

Rough Edges

While we have made many groundbreaking achievements, our first-generation devices still have some known and expected rough edges. While not suspended, battery life can be drained quickly, it is therefore advisable to enable suspend, and we are planning on having suspend be the default after more testing and potentially additional minor tweaks on usability.

As a couple examples of a known issue around suspend: Matrix chat, VOIP calls, and alarms don’t wake a suspended device yet. You can work around this by disabling suspend while charging and plugging in your phone for your morning alarm. A common setup while testing suspend has been to enable suspend on battery only, disabling suspend when plugged in to power.

Browsing software in PureOS Store can be slower than desired, making it take longer to find new apps to install. While this won’t always be the case for PureOS Store, an easy workaround is to use the terminal method for searching and installing apps.

Example of search:

sudo apt search games

Example install:

sudo apt install warmux

For now the stable releases of PureOS is based on an aging version of Debian 11. This can make it tricky to run the latest and greatest software and their libraries; however, we are upgrading PureOS to use Debian 12 as a base in the upcoming Crimson software release soon.

Shipping all the Librem 5 phones to all the early supporters has taken a long time (including COVID delays and supply chain shortages), but we have reached shipping parity; meaning any new orders will be pulled from stock on hand and are typically shipped within our 10 standard business days, and all respondents to our shipping address confirmation will get their Librem 5 within the next few weeks. note: If you are any of the few who have not responded to the shipping address confirmation or you are waiting on your Librem 5, contacting support with your order number will get priority for delivery. We have your phone ready to ship!

Summary

The Librem 5 and Liberty phones are computers you have full control over. Vastly different than other smartphones on the market, which are more of a way to consume apps that monetize your data.

Help us redefine what smart portable computers should be able to do.

Purism Products and Availability Chart

	Model	Status	Lead Time
	Librem Key (Made in USA)	In Stock ($59+)	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 5	In Stock ($999+) 3GB/32GB	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 5 + SIMple (4 GB Data)	In Stock ($99/mo)	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 5 + SIMple Plus (10 GB Data)	In Stock ($129/mo)	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 5 + AweSIM (Unlimited Data)	In Stock ($169/mo)	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 11	In Stock ($999+) 8GB/1TB	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem 14	In Stock ($1,370+)	10 business days	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem Mini	Apr 2024 ($799+)	Shipping April, 2024	Learn More Buy Now
	Liberty Phone (Made in USA Electronics)	Apr 2024 ($1,999+) 4GB/128GB	Shipping April, 2024	Learn More Buy Now
	Librem Server	Apr 2024 ($2,999+)	Shipping April, 2024	Learn More Buy Now