I know that purism does focus on the tech nerd audience - but with demos like that, good luck selling it to people who are just privacy-conscious who want a glorified, private flip phone replacement.
I know far more people in my life who are privacy conscious but not tech nerds, to the point they would consider buying a flip phone.
If Purism marketed to them as being a superior private flip-phone alternative, they could sell far more phones.
I guess what upsets me most is that Linux companies like Purism claim they want to build a 3rd ecosystem. You aren’t going to get a 3rd ecosystem going with videos like that.
I think my point is more along the lines that Linux people overestimate regular folk's interest in specs and details. But that isn't a winning strategy in the real world. Apple doesn't say how many megapixels their cameras have, or how many GBs of RAM their phones have, or the CPU clock speed, or the modem version - and the specs they do give, they don't advertise them out loud. Has Apple ever announced that we have a 2000xSomething OLED display in huge letters? No, it's a "Liquid Retina XDR" display and that's all most people need to know. If you really care, it's in the specs sheet.
That's also not counting the actually embarrassing parts of this release. You just got a Camera app? In 2021, where phones are all about Cameras, you only got an out-of-the-box Camera app just now? (Maybe there was a camera app earlier - but the release video implies the camera app is all-new and wasn't there before.)
And despite not advertising specs - they sell just fine. If Apple got overly technical, they might sell less because it's confusing.
The whole post is droll, it's a big fat nothing-burger based on my casual perusal. Felt like they just needed to say something about the version number changing on their distro.
So, what exactly am I supposed to be impressed by here? Maybe I need to revisit the post, since I did skim it pretty quickly.
It's a desktop OS. If you connect an external monitor, you can use any desktop software, including GIMP. Works fine on my Pinephone with phosh.
How is that any different than literally any other distro you can boot on a handheld?
You're basically confirming my point; nothing especially "convergent" about pureos to see here, no?
People aren’t going to connect their phones to a monitor and dock to use GIMP. People might use GIMP on their phones if it were available.
Upd: here is GIMP for you: https://social.librem.one/@eliasr/105589789106877911.
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
We've had the ability to run unmodified desktop linux apps on handhelds since the bad old FPU-less days of the Sharp Zaurus.
That's ancient history, and the whole f!cking promise of "convergence" AIUI is to make those applications usable in touch interfaces while being capable of transitioning seamlessly back into a desktop point-and-click interaction model when you dock the handheld.
It's basically just an Android thing to be a linux-based handheld that actively obstructs running conventional desktop linux software. And even in that world you can coax it by adding the missing userspace bits, isn't there an android app that does just that (termux)? https://github.com/termux/x11-packages/issues/144
Anyways, this feels like a pathetic strawman discussion at this point, I have better things to do today, cheers.
Or is KDE now a Purism project? Or is Sailfish? Or sxmo? Or is p-boot? Or Linux kernel when no drivers overlap between the two SoCs? Or is crust? Or modem manager? Or all the work going into modem's kernel and firmware? Or is megapixels a purism project? Or debian/arch linux arm and all the packaging effort done there that many distros with pinephone support rely on?
Pinephone software support is so much more than re-using PureOS components.
Anyway your question was:
> Perhaps you know some other vendor developing and selling phones with a desktop OS and desktop apps?
And that doesn't require any PureOS components for full functionality. I run i3wm on my Pinephone for convergence. Easy to dual-boot into i3wm/arch linux or any other mobile distro for use on the go (mobile wayland based DEs have terrible performance with dual monitor use anyway, compared to plain old Xorg, and if anything is less needed is to fluidly swap between desktop and mobile UI, when reboot takes a few seconds anyway). Maybe some people really need that kind of convergence, but dual boot is enough for me.
I've made this project to showcase that functionality to people, and to also show that there's not just PureOS/phosh
Thank you for the p-boot, it's great and I'm using it myself. However I don't think that volunteer development is sustainable in the long-term and can lead to a usable (daily driver for non-nerds) GNU/Linux phone without commercial contribution.
That's interesting, but arguing that is not my goal in this discussion.
You just asked what other comapny builds phones that can run dekstop OS and apps. Pine64 now has two. And IMO best uscease for that is without any PureOS components, just with straight desktop apps as existed before all this adaptation to smartphone form factor and touch interface. (It's my bias showing here, because I don't like nor use GNOME dekstop environement. Someone who likes GNOME may enjoy that PureOS putting some effort into making it possible to connect to a monitor and seamlessly transition into some convergent environement where their favorite apps will adapt to the current screen size.)
Sure, these aren't usually literally the same pieces of software running on the Mac, the iPhone, and the iPad. But from what I can tell, that's not literally true on Purism, either, because the software is going to have to be recompiled for different CPU architectures. So now we're actually a lot closer to what Apple's been doing the last few years with Catalyst (and kind of slouching toward a grander strategy with SwiftUI). And again, not to put too fine a point on it, but I don't actually care in practice how much code is shared between the versions of my prose editor I'm running on the desktop and on the phone, given that they function the same way and edit the same files. (And share them all completely transparently, because they're using iCloud. Walled garden etc. etc., but this is a real selling point.)
Purism's real argument is free-as-in-freedom software. And that's a good argument. But I think they need to get a lot better at reaching the "casual but concerned" audience, and that means getting better at writing press releases and product announcements. Speaking as a professional writer, the PureOS 10 announcement page is really, really bad. You may not think it's fair to judge the quality of the product based on that, and it isn't, but it's still going to happen. (Judging from the comments here they also need to get better at, well, shipping hardware, which is an even more serious problem, granted.)
The top half part is quite good. It's not presenting itself as modern or slick, but as privacy and freedom and transparency. It's a good angle, because hardware is not this phone's strength.
The bottom half is where things go off the rails. "One Powerful GPU?" Don't gaslight me - anyone who has played a game on a smartphone looks at that and goes oof. HTML5 apps because you don't have real apps? Blegh - especially because it says in the description "we plan to." The "competitive chart"? A huge mistake because it gives the competition absolutely no points - which makes it look obviously biased and completely lacking credibility. What other company makes "competitive charts" that don't acknowledge, at least somewhat, the good points about the competition?
And then there's the availability part which is just really bad. 52 weeks? There will be two OnePlus phones, a new iPhone model, and a new Samsung model by the time that thing supposedly ships. Also, if you are really concerned about your privacy - you can't wait a year being no more private than before!
It's the best mobile GPU working with fully free software. This is for the audience that cares about it.
> HTML5 apps because you don't have real apps?
But they do have real apps. Thousands of desktop Linux apps.
> Also, if you are really concerned about your privacy - you can't wait a year being no more private than before!
If you're in a hurry, consider this: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa.
Agree concerning the "competitive chart". Still it looks funny IMHO.
T860MP4 in Pinebook/Pinephone Pro is similar or better, and also works with fully free software.
"Parents: You will love the Librem 5 because it will allow you to communicate with your child, ..." -- Um, in 2021 people know what a phone is. Maybe skip to the part about why yours is better than the competition?
"Lifetime updates that actually extend your phone’s life" -- Do they think updates from other companies make their phones self destruct? Seems like they're alluding to specific scandals, but it is kind of odd not to link to them directly. Also comes across as really evasive to not say how many years of updates they guarantee.
"Real convergence means bringing your desktop computer with you wherever you go." -- Have you not heard of a laptop? Surely they could have started with an actual definition of what convergence means. Doesn't help that the rest of the paragraph is talking about how hard they worked shrinking the OS instead of why you'd want the feature. (Side note: operating systems are software so nothing special is needed to get one to physically fit in my pocket)
Actually, it's the lack of updates from other companies making their phones self-destruct, as in they become unusable bricks. If the software is proprietary, you have no way of updating it yourself.
> Also comes across as really evasive to not say how many years of updates they guarantee.
It's "forever". The devices run FLOSS, which means that even if Purism disappears, they will still get updates from the Linux community. My 12+-year-old laptop runs latest Debian.
> Surely they could have started with an actual definition of what convergence means.
It's linked: https://puri.sm/posts/converging-on-convergence-pureos-is-co....
If all you care is longevity, then Apple is definitely a good choice. However, if you also value freedom, then your only other mainstream choice is Android, which is only supported for 3 years or less.
Which is kind of stupid frankly, most of those will rather install themselves something custom.