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Cellphones Operating Systems Linux

Mass-Produced, Librem 5 Linux Smartphone Begins Shipping to Customers (puri.sm) 155

Posted by EditorDavid from the mass-production-environment dept.
This week Purism began shipping its mass-produced Librem 5 phone to customers, according to announcement from the company: The Librem 5 is a one-of-a-kind general-purpose computer in a phone form-factor that Purism has designed and built from scratch following a successful crowdfunding campaign that raised over $2.2 million. Both the hardware and software design is focused on respecting the end user's freedom and giving them control over their privacy and security.

The Librem 5 doesn't run Android nor iOS but instead runs the same PureOS operating system as Purism's laptops and mini PC.

The Librem 5 has unique hardware features including a user-removable cellular modem, WiFi card, and battery. Like with Librem laptops, the Librem 5 also features external hardware kill switches that cut power to the cellular modem, WiFi/Bluetooth, and front and back cameras and microphone so that the user can control when these devices are in use. All hardware switches can also be triggered together to enable "lockdown mode" which also disables the GPS, accelerometer and all other sensors...

Another unique feature of the Librem 5 is convergence: the ability to connect the Librem 5 to a monitor or laptop dock and use it as a desktop computer running the same full-sized desktop applications as on Librem laptops. When in a phone form-factor, applications behave much like "responsive websites" and change their appearance for the smaller screen. This allows you to use the Librem 5 as a phone, a desktop, or a laptop with the same applications and same files.
Their announcement notes their work on software making desktop applications "adaptive" to phone form factors, adding "This suite of software has now become the most popular software stack to use on other handheld Linux hardware." And they close with an appreciative comment from Purism's founder and CEO Todd Weaver:

"Shipping the Librem 5 has been an immense multi-year developmental effort. It is the culmination of people's desire to see an alternative to Android and iOS and fund it, coupled with dedication from a team of experts addressing hardware, kernel, operating system, and applications that has turned a lofty near-impossible goal into reality. We have built a strong foundation and with the continued support of customers, the community, and developers, we will continue to deliver revolutionary products like the Librem 5 running PureOS."
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Mass-Produced, Librem 5 Linux Smartphone Begins Shipping to Customers More

Mass-Produced, Librem 5 Linux Smartphone Begins Shipping to Customers

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  • Mass-Produced smartphone.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Vomitgod ( 6659552 ) on Sunday November 22, 2020 @10:08PM (#60755500)

    I would bet it would be mass produced.

    Doubt they would make a profit if they made them all by hand....

    • Considering that they are charging $2000 for a phone with last year's specs (or older) they better be hand making them, lovingly, in a plushly appointed space with artisan furniture made only of leather peeled from cows that were only ever fed the purest of grains and never any rBST or antibiotics.

      When your price makes even Apple's eyes water, you're doing it very, VERY wrong. But hey, at least there's an option for the vocal minority around here that is always mewing for a phone with a removable battery a

      • I'm sorry, but you seem to forget that the usual phone you buy is made by slaves for pennies, and on a $1000 one, 80% are profit and bullshit jobs.

        Surey, of you make a billion, you can fully automate making a librem, and sell it for under $200, given no marketing or the like, but not at the current quantities. At those, yoi get that price you seem to expect only on the backs of slave labor.

      • Currently $800. Still, $800 for a phone with the specs of a $200 phone is going to be a hard sell.

  • Docking smartphones (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Sunday November 22, 2020 @10:08PM (#60755502)
    I don't understand why in 2020 ability to dock and connect to K&M and display is not supported by most phones. There were attempts to do just that right before Windows Phone died, but hardly anyone tried this again. You now have enough RAM and CPU to run most desktop applications except maybe high end gaming. Why is it not done more?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Most of the power in mobile phones for most users is simple poseur status for high end phone. Screen real estate counts, gaming power for most users, not that much. Right now Linux products are the new hotness because of the flood of products expected to come out of China, to specifically kick M$ arse and Google's to boot. A more open market is better for competition and for technology access.

      This https://shop.puri.sm/shop/libr... [shop.puri.sm] is sure to pick them up a lot of government contracts whilst the competitio

    • I have asked this before, and the answer I get is always something along the lines of mobile UI's being completely unusable in a desktop situation. That doesn't make much sense to me given things like Chromebooks and Ipad Pros exist, but that is what I am told.

      • My cheap phone doesn't do HDMI over USB (DeX) - if they wanted mass adoption they wouldn't make it a 'pro' feature.

        But I do have a $50 Android streaming box. The basics work with keyboard and mouse, in a 'tablet' profile, although Mozilla broke Firefox with their latest Fenix update*. Notably some games seem to require touch and google maps doesn't under scroll wheel zoom.

        85% there, I dunno what it's like within the ChromeOS layer.

        * If any Mozilla employees care, https://github.com/mozilla-mob... [github.com] https://g [github.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kisai ( 213879 )

        Well that is mostly true on Android. That has a lot to do with the Java garbage that Android relies on, and most developers don't bother to implement or test mouse and keyboard support outside of their development version if at all. Usually all the mouse and keyboard does in an Android emulator is emulate a one-finger touch. So unless the app can work by only being tapped-on (no dragging, tap-to-hold) it's usually a terrible experience.

        Funny enough the Mac, always had a 1-button mouse, which means that 100%

        • WTF... this has nothing to do with Java.
          Amd I actually used a mouse and keyboard on Android 4.4, 6 and 10, and it worked fine, just as expected.

          Try scrcpy over adb, to test it on any phone.

          The only crappiness is that the UI is obviously optimized for small screens and touching. But there is no reason to not just use every app's tablet mode. Plus screen spliting.

          I don't find it particularly worse than the typical desktop UI that consists of teensy tiny buttons for the most commonly used functions and pointle

        • So unless the app can work by only being tapped-on (no dragging, tap-to-hold) it's usually a terrible experience.

          Click and hold.

          That has a lot to do with the Java garbage that Android relies on

          Android doesn't use the Java VM.

    • Re:Docking smartphones (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 22, 2020 @10:38PM (#60755574)

      I don't understand why in 2020 ability to dock and connect to K&M and display is not supported by most phones.

      Because people don't use it. It's been there as a feature before and it's hardly driving sales for those that support it. What workflows do you have that demonstrate the value here?

      There were attempts to do just that right before Windows Phone died, but hardly anyone tried this again.

      Samsung still have it, it's called Dex.

      You now have enough RAM and CPU to run most desktop applications except maybe high end gaming. Why is it not done more?

      Can you run all your desktop programs on it? Probably not. Also UIs that work well for one input method generally don't work well for the next so you need to also have adaptive UIs. How many examples of this done well are there?

      I seem to remember Motorola had some laptop chassis thing that was a dock for the phone, of course if you switch phones or upgrade to a different phone formfactor then you just have a useless hunk of junk laptop docking station.

      • >Also UIs that work well for one input method generally don't work well for the next
        Very true.
        >so you need to also have adaptive UIs.
        For the OS, certainly. And there are some decent examples out there.
        For everything else... that depends entirely on your approach. And I think adaptive UI is generally the wrong one.

        Personally, I run very different kinds of software on my phone than on my PC. Even the web browser is very different, with an interface so dumbed down as to be torture to use for anything

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sinij ( 911942 )

        I don't understand why in 2020 ability to dock and connect to K&M and display is not supported by most phones.

        Because people don't use it. It's been there as a feature before and it's hardly driving sales for those that support it. What workflows do you have that demonstrate the value here?

        There are enough people that only use a dozen applications during work and none of them are computationally intensive. There is no reason to buy them a laptop if a phone docking station would do it. The issue is not CPU power but battery, screen size and inputs, all of these could be easily solved with by docking.

        • There are enough people that only use a dozen applications during work and none of them are computationally intensive. There is no reason to buy them a laptop if a phone docking station would do it. The issue is not CPU power but battery, screen size and inputs, all of these could be easily solved with by docking.

          Why buy them a phone, a docking station, a keyboard and a mouse when you can just buy them a laptop? Oh you want them to use their personal phone for work to save you money?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      It's been tried a few times but so far it hasn't caught on. Maybe with ARM getting more powerful in mobile devices, and with Apple doing ARM on desktop, we'll see some interested in it again. It's really up to the OS running on it and how well the manufacturer can merge mobile and desktop modes. Another issue is people tend to replace phones more frequently than laptops, so ongoing compatibility with new devices would need to be there.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Compuser ( 14899 )

        It has never been tried before. There has never been a commercial phone which allowed unmodified desktop apps to run on an external monitor while allowing phone apps on the phone itself. The closest so far is DeX but that is a joke. It does not even support 4K much less multiple monitors. Are there still desktop users who are happy with just one monitor? I prefer four on my desk, not sure how a phone could be a desktop replacement with just one video output. And it should be easy - DP with MST allows multip

        • If you're not happy with one monitor, you won't be happy using your phone as a PC either. It won't have enough RAM and the storage won't be fast enough to actually make use of multiple monitors, especially at 4k.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Compuser ( 14899 )

            MaruOS works fine on one monitor even on older hardware. There is enough processing power to get 4K out on most phones now. Galaxy phones supposedly can output 4K from USB and 4K out the network and still work well. People have this vision of smartphones as underpowered toys which they were ten years ago. Now - they can do some real work.

            • Most phones limit out at 4 or 8 GB RAM. I'm about to upgrade my PC to 32GB because 16GB isn't enough to avoid swapping. And swapping to your mobile phone's slowassed storage is going to punch performance right in the nuts. Also, eight mobile cores get their asses kicked by eight desktop cores, and you can build a whole PC system with a mediocre dedicated GPU for about $400 that will shit directly on any cellphone in every department but portability.

              YOU might want this functionality, but most people would ra

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Compuser ( 14899 )

                It is an often observed fact that for most people PCs were powerful enough ten years ago. A lot of people have not upgraded their systems in ages or even downgraded to chromebooks and tablets. Also do not forget that there is now a large class of people who do all their computing via their phones. Corporations are also stretching their upgrade cycles because truth be told Word 95 is still good enough for most office writing tasks. Other than for games or serious content creation work (coding, art, science),

                • Ten years ago that was valid. But now webpages beat a computer of ten years ago like a pinata.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Compuser ( 14899 )

                    Cell phones actually do a very good job with web pages today. If that's the intended workload then smartphone-based computing is a great fit.

          • My phone has 6GB o RAM, 8 cores and 128GB of internal storage.

            It will *easily* run a full KDE desktop with two screens and all that I need for even mobile game development.

            I know, because I did exactly that on a 4GB RAM machine, some years ago, and the only thing that changed in my usage is the bloat and crap thar browsers bring. And the phones already run those modern browsers, so clearly that is not the problem.

            But maybe you run a 100 tabs because apparently you types haven't heard of bookmarks yet.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 )
          Sure it has. For example Razer tried it, as did Asus. The problem has always been, as I suggested in my reply, that no one has got the mix of mobile and laptop OS correct yet.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          DeX is good for what it is. You wouldn't replace your laptop with it but if you need to work on a long email on the go or edit a document it gets the job done. I'd take that over having to lug an extra device around to do those things.

          You have to remember that most people don't want to install Gnome, don't even know what KDE is. Supporting all that stuff would be a huge amount of time and effort for the 3 people who would actually use it, and they probably wouldn't buy a Samsung phone anyway because of some

        • Are there still desktop users who are happy with just one monitor? I prefer four on my desk, not sure how a phone could be a desktop replacement with just one video output.

          Yes, almost all PC and laptop users have a single monitor.

          I prefer four on my desk

          You are really getting this thread.

          There has never been a commercial phone which allowed unmodified desktop apps to run on an external monitor while allowing phone apps on the phone itself.

          Yes, of course. Yes because a phone is a phone. If you don't like the cost of them now, you're going to love it when they have the graphic prowess to run an external 4k monitor, and the flash speed, RAM speed, and processor speed to run desktop apps, all packed into a phone form factor. And the internal memory to store full desktop application. And a battery the size of laptop battery so it can last >1 hour off c

    • Well,
      it actually is. All iOS devices can connect to an Apple TV, or share screen with an Apple computer, can use blue tooth keyboards, or as in an iPad can be used as external/second monitor for an Apple computer.

      Oops - but "walled garden" makes non iOs users blind.

      • Ooops, ALL smartphone can do that. And USB-OTG too. Get a USB3 hub. And if the phone's usb supports displayport, it an use displays too. But not only to Aplle devices over weird locked down protocols that require a weird "I am stupid" dance. Because no walled garden. For half the price. and repairabity. Ooops, you joined a cult.

        • Then list us some of those android phones :D

          oops, you joined a cult.
          Actually I did not ... no idea why you 'believe' that.

    • Motorola has been trying for years with ideas like the Motorola LapDock and MotoMods and no one ever buys them.

      • You shouldn't need any additional hardware beyond a display adapter. Everything you need is in the phone already: Bluetooth for input, a USB-C port for output to a display, via a USB video adapter... which could be built into the display, and would be if there was any demand.

        The truth is that statistically nobody wants this functionality, whether it requires additional hardware or not.

        • No need to build anything into anything. USB4 is Thunderbolt, which is DisplayPort too. And Ethernet. And power.

          So you just connect them with a USB cable, and be done with it.
          Your display probably already has an USB hub, with your moise and keyboard attached. So on newer displays it will be all USB4, and your display will BE your dock.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dmay34 ( 6770232 )

        Moto Mods were really fantastic. I have a Moto Z and a few mods. Some of them were really useful and the potential was huge. I really wish Moto would have licensed the platform for other small phone manufacturers to adopt. That really could have kick started the ecosystem.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      Most actually do support docking, that includes both Android and iPad models. The catch is that only USB-C models do, to laptop docks.

      What is actually supported however by the device/dock can be an absolute crapshoot though. On an Android device, if you plug in a laptop dock, you may/may-not get the screen replicated onto the monitor, you might get the wired ethernet to work, the keyboard and mouse will usually work, but applications on Android don't know how to deal with a mouse and only support emulating

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday November 22, 2020 @10:21PM (#60755530)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      ...which isn't really surprising considering that it's more powerful and that this price pays for software development that both devices utilize.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Even so could they not have added more than 3GB of RAM? For a phone costing $800 that's a bit low and RAM is really cheap.

        I couldn't find a support guarantee either. They have a blog post about they they promise to support it for a long time, but don't say how long.

        • This phone has been in the works for a long time. 3GB was a decent amount of RAM when they first announced it, same with the screen/storage/etc.

          Given that it runs Linux, for most of the things you'd probably use it for 3GB will likely be more than plenty.

  • I did a quick scan of some of the articles and did not see any mention of providers who support this phone. Does anyone know?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why would any provider specifically "support" a phone? Just get a SIM and put it in.

      • Agreed. "Support" usually amounts to little more than "your device connects to our data network" - and that boils down to "Do you have the right kind of radio built into the phone (GSM/CDMA/3g/4g/5g/etc.) and properly configured? It's not like they're going to provide tech support much beyond making sure that connection works properly. Not unless you're buying it from them, and quite possibly not even then.

        Well, maybe that's not entirely far - there's some places (and particular techs) that will really

    • And what does that even mean "a provider supporting that phone"?

    • i Iasked Ting if their network would support this phone. Their reply:

      "Looking at the Pinephone it has the right band frequencies to work on our GSM network but the one thing I wasn't able to confirm is if it had the VoLTE software on it. Our GSM partner is sunsetting the 3G network this year and you'll need a phone that is capable of using VoLTE to connect your communications. It might be worth reaching out to Pinephone directly to see if they have any information regarding the VoLTE abilities on an MVN

    • Depends on the radio module you order. There is a forum post that goes over expected compatibility of each variant.

  • For who? (Score:3, Informative)

    by dmay34 ( 6770232 ) on Sunday November 22, 2020 @10:42PM (#60755586)

    Who is this for? Who is asking for this?

    If they wanted a secure phone OS that has access to a wide variety of applications without strings tied to "big corporations", then they should have just forked Android.

    • Re:For who? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Presence Eternal ( 56763 ) on Sunday November 22, 2020 @10:59PM (#60755616)

      Their emphasis is not strictly on the OS, but also the hardware. Their goal was to get hardware that isn't locked down wherever they could find it. That is why they also offer a USA supply chain version of the phone.

    • Re:For who? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Compuser ( 14899 ) on Sunday November 22, 2020 @11:19PM (#60755640)

      There is a need for a phone which
      1. Has kill switches for any data it is equipped to collect
      2. Has auditable code base. Ideally all code would be auditable in code, realistically some binary blobs may exist for some time but they could still be reverse engineered and audited for back doors so long as the blobs are small. Not free software, not OSS, the minimum need is for just auditable software layer.
      3. Has the ability to autodetect when an external monitor and power are connected and to run desktop applications in that context while running phone apps in the phone screen context at the same time.

      Benefits:
      1. Ability to carry your computing device on you at all times. Helps any time you need physical security and do not trust access controls at home. Most common example - you are cheating on your spouse and do not want your computer accessible when you are not home.

      2. Eavesdrop security via kill switches. The benefit is obvious

      3. Confidence that you will not be served ads via your OS and will be able to install ad blockers and filters at will. This includes easy access to etc/hosts or equivalent

      4. An upgrade and maintenance plan for older hardware if you can get a community around it.

      This is just the obvious stuff that comes to mind. Right now you can get most benefits of Librem 5 and PinePhone from almost any LineageOS phone by compiling MaruOS on top of it. That gets you Debian running in a container on an external monitor. However the MaruOS community is small, phones already supported are few, and the polish is lacking severely. The big deal with PinePhone and Librem 5 is that they have some hope of sustainable development. And kill switches dont hurt either.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dmay34 ( 6770232 )

        Every single one of those things can be done with a forked version of Android.

        Why reinvent everything just because?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Compuser ( 14899 )

          #1 is the problem here. If you want your phone to be your computing device then you need it to run desktop software. The practical ecosystems are linux, mac and windows. So you either need AOSP with a compatibility layer (e.g. in MaruOS the compatibility layer is Linux access via a container) or full Linux on the phone.
          Another option would be to port all desktop software to Android. That seems like more work somehow.
          There is also an option to run an OS like linux via virtual machine or in an app. This is te

    • Re:For who? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23, 2020 @04:13AM (#60756190)

      It's not that simple. Librem 5 is first of all about open hardware: the idea is that every component of the phone can operate without closed-source proprietary binary blobs. It's more about trust than security. Achieving this is becoming increasingly difficult: for example, the most recent laptop that fully supports open firmwares is a Thinkpad from 2009. For phones it's even worse (basically impossible)

      Librem admittedly succeeded only partially in this feat: the GSM module for example is still closed. But they engineered the phone so that the main CPU is isolated from the GSM CPU (usually it's shared). So you're only running a black-box for the GSM stack, which is at least a good start.

      Purism's marketing campaign was aggressive and, according to many observers, dishonest. They advertised a phone 100% free as in freedom, but they knew this could not be accomplished completely because it's still impossible nowadays to fully liberate modern hardware components. Companies like Pinephone or Fairphone adopted a more nuanced stance and focused on other things such as sustainability of raw material or hardware modularity (which I think should just be MANDATORY in consumer electronics even if it requires compromises in design, sorry for your feelings dear hipster)

      Another product that is a bit more under the radar right now but I think it's cool is Shiftphone. Don't hear many talking about this, unsure why.

      My main concern with all these phones is that they are freaking BIG. Especially the Librem 5, it's like a brick. I am one of those increasingly rare people who prefer a small phone. My current one is a Samsung Galaxy S4 mini. I would sell my soul to have a small and "modern" smartphone with fully open hardware able to run LineageOS. With replaceable battery and SD card slot. Sigh.

      (Daily reminder that Android OS is *not* free. A good compromise is Lineage OS without Gapps)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        My main concern with all these phones is that they are freaking BIG. Especially the Librem 5, it's like a brick

        I can't find any size specifications at all. Sure, it has a 5.7" screen but that doesn't give me width or height, or screen ratio, or bezel depth, or how thick the phone is.

        I think I'm ok with a phone a bit larger than the one you're using but I hate the trend of making phones too big to fit safely in trouser front pockets.

      • >Shiftphone

        Seems to be mostly german-language, and not focused on mainline kernel support.

        >they are freaking BIG

        Ya, part of the issue being the need a huge battery to even consider being an everyday main device. Maybe future revision and silicon will make a librem 4 possible.

    • Android Apps do not run on Linux. Despite the "fact" that Android is Linux.

  • not for me (Score:3, Informative)

    by renegade600 ( 204461 ) on Sunday November 22, 2020 @11:43PM (#60755698)

    interesting concept but according to the specs, it left off several that would be a deal breaker for me. only 3 megs of ram, only 32 gigs of internal storage, no wireless charging, not water or dust resistant and no nfc. I don't think the 800 buck price tag is worth it.

    • The internal storage is expandable to 2TB via SD card, which I think is a reasonable approach. Agreed on the other limitations, especially RAM... 4-6 GB would have been significantly more reasonable at that price point.

    • Can't say the 32GB of internal storage is such a big issue for me - not with a 2TB compatible uSD slot. I've rarely had a Linux laptop with an OS+apps partition that size. More would obviously be nice, but it's adequate, and I'll take upgradable storage over built-in any day.

      3GB of RAM though - that's really rough. I generally recommend people stay away from any new computer with less than 8GB of RAM, because you can be pretty certain it will be banging against that performance-killing RAM ceiling as soo

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by vyvepe ( 809573 )
      And you may miss Galileo support as well. It supports only GPS, Glonass, BeiDou and QZSS.
  • I read that there are plans to support Android apps through https://anbox.io/ [anbox.io] but not sure if it already does. Does anyone have experience with Anbox? Does it support Google Play or does one need to side-load all apps?

    • Re:Android apps (Score:4, Informative)

      by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite ( 721679 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @01:42AM (#60755904)

      I read that there are plans to support Android apps through https://anbox.io/ [anbox.io] but not sure if it already does.

      Does anyone have experience with Anbox? Does it support Google Play or does one need to side-load all apps?

      From the FAQ at the bottom of your linked page:

      Is it possible to install the Google Play Store?
      Yes, this is generally possible. However Google doesn't allow anyone to ship its applications as long as the device is not certified and the vendor didn't sign an agreement with Google.

      The Anbox project does not have any interest in shipping the Google Play store and we're not allowed to do so. We may add an easy way for our users at a later point which allows easy distribution of Android applications suited for the Anbox runtime environment.

  • Just like all of the sheep manufacturers, they have made a large, thin, fragile phablet instead a sturdy, thick phone that will last.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Myself ( 57572 )

      Which phone were you looking at, exactly? It's quite thick, and I suspect it to be quite sturdy.

      • Can it survive a fall on a corner on concrete from 2m ?
        Thought not.

        Can it survive being placed in a back jeans pocket for a normal person's day ?
        Thought not.

        The phone manufacturers are ripping you off.

  • Do I need an account for software updates? I searched for it, but could not find an answer.
  • Why does the US model has a price tag of $1K extra, for what looks like the same unit, is baffling.
  • I saw the device was listed at US$ 799. I then clicked on "USA version" and noticed the price is US$ 1999. That's unfortunate. Not surprising, considering the limited quantities but unfortunate in that it is out of reach of many people. https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5-usa/

  • It's one thing to develop a Linux desktop OS. And to develop it for a phone form factor.

    But how is the phone part? It's trivial to make it make a phone call, or send a text message. Or connect to the internet. One at a time, trivial.

    It's a lot harder to do the whole phone stack, which is why there is only Android providing a phone stack out there - plenty of people have tried, but the work is so tedious and annoying that few succeed.

    The phone stack is what makes you be able to do all those things together.

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