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GNOME Partners With Purism On Librem 5 Linux-based Privacy-focused Smartphone (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the make-do dept.

BrianFagioli writes: The Librem 5 smartphone by Purism has a long and difficult road ahead of it. Competing against the likes of Apple and Google on the mobile market has proven to be a death sentence for many platforms -- including Microsoft with its failed Windows 10 Mobile. Luckily, Purism has found itself a new partner on this project -- one of the most important organizations in the Linux community -- The GNOME Foundation. The GNOME Foundation explains, 'The Librem 5 is a hardware platform the Foundation is interested in advancing as a GNOME/GTK phone device. The GNOME Foundation is committed to partnering with Purism to create hackfests, tools, emulators, and build awareness that surround moving GNOME/GTK onto the Librem 5 phone. As part of the collaboration, if the campaign is successful the GNOME Foundation plans to enhance GNOME shell and general performance of the system with Purism to enable features on the Librem 5.'

3 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. The only thing that's dead, is Privacy. by geekmux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Competing against the likes of Apple and Google on the mobile market has proven to be a death sentence for many platforms..."

    No, competing against the ignorant masses who no longer value privacy at all is exactly why this project will fail, especially when the first fucking thing your "privacy-focused" smartphone customers will ask is, "Where's the Facebook app?"

    Not only is privacy itself dead, but the demand for privacy is as well. Manufacturers need to wake up to this reality.

    1. Re:The only thing that's dead, is Privacy. by Thad+Boyd · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's quite clearly a product for a niche audience. Like desktop Linux. There's nothing wrong with that if you can find enough customers within that niche, but there's a definite chicken/egg problem there where most people don't want to give you money until your product is complete, tested, and stable, and you can't get a complete, tested, stable product without an existing market. It's extra daunting to know that even companies with the resources of MS and Canonical couldn't crack the market; smaller companies like Purism really have their work cut out for them.

      I think Canonical made a lot of serious mistakes in Ubuntu Touch, and that's a shame, because an alternative to Android and iOS would be nice. I tried installing Ubuntu Touch on my phone a few months back and I was really impressed with the interface and the depth and breadth of available packages, but, uh, it didn't work as a phone. Couldn't call, couldn't text, couldn't connect to my data network; asked for help on the UBports forums and never got a reply. So now I'm on LineageOS without Gapps; no Gapps means missing a lot of compatibility and functionality, but for the most part I haven't had too much trouble.

  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion