
PureOS is convergent - iBelieve
https://puri.sm/posts/converging-on-convergence-pureos-is-convergent-welcome-to-the-future/
======
AdmiralAsshat
My primary concern with this is that different applications are inherently
optimized for the platform on which they were originally designed. There are
some applications that have a very _dense_ UI because there's simply alot of
functionality that the program handles (think of a video editor, an IDE, etc).
Trying to slim down those applications to make them reactive so that they will
scale onto a phone or tablet just seems silly, and I fear that in the name of
making "everything work everywhere", we're going to compromise a bunch of apps
that worked beautifully on one platform in favor of making them work
adequately on several platforms.

I mean, if someone said, "I've successfully ported Vim to Android!", my first
thought would be, "Why in god's name would I want to run vim on my phone?"*

* Ruling out, of course, someone plugging their phone into external KVM.

~~~
tombert
I have the GPD Win that I bought a couple years ago, which is more or a less a
Nintendo-DS-Sized computer running "real" Windows, and I love it. I can do
programming on the train, even while standing up, as well as use all the
tooling that I like, including Vim actually. The only limitation for me has
honestly been Windows, since I'm more of a Unixey guy.

Something that has always bothered me is that smartphones are basically
supercomputers nowadays, at least compared to what we had in the 90's, but I
feel incredibly limited in what I can actually _do_ with my iPhone. I can't
easily code stuff for the iPhone in Haskell, I can't open up multiple "tabs"
of videos on the YouTube app, and even a lot of the apps that _do_ get ported
over end up having incredibly limited "mobile optimized" versions.

I would absolutely love a phone that could let me run the "real" versions of
apps when I need to. Ubuntu Touch was trying this, and I honestly don't think
I'm unique in this desire.

~~~
squarefoot
"but I feel incredibly limited in what I can actually do with my iPhone"

That's because they're intended to work as media consumption devices rather
than productivity ones. If someone feels productive on a phone, he or she has
very likely adapted herself to the device than the other way around.

I had to struggle yesterday with my GF new phone because her lawyer sent her a
paper in .doc format using Whatsapp (no kidding[1]) and she had no capable
reader. Fine, I thought, let's fire up the app store and find one. Now I just
have a couple old tablets I keep at home 24/7 and don't use smartphones at
all: no feature in the world can convince me an € 5000 smart phone can be more
usable than my €20 dumb one plus my € 400 used Thinkpad, so I'm not exposed to
the level of annoyances the usual phone user experiences every day. Back to
ther phone, I knew the google app store wasn't that wonderful land where you
tap the equivalent of apt-get install name-of-a-free-as-in-unicorns-and-
fairies-doc-redaer and it magically installs, but man... I didn't expect that
level of crap! I tried a couple "free" reader apps and every attempt to run
them had either popups appearing asking to click to buy something, or more
subtle ones where the click to buy button was a lot bigger and dangerously
close to the window really small X (close) button. In the end I installed
f-droid, dns-66 and libreoffice reader, but what if she had to do all for
herself and could only find those pieces of crapware?

[1] apparently that practice is widespread among non IT professionals, and I
find it rather dangerous. The privacy implications should raise some big
alerts.

"I would absolutely love a phone that could let me run the "real" versions of
apps when I need to. "

That's my dream as well. Give us an open (hardware) phone and OS plus apps
will follow. Manufacturers however would hate this because the phone (tablet,
etc.) as a platform allowed them to undo what Open Source achieved in the last
decades on personal computers: now they have again a piece of hardware they
can fully control; the software is closed and incredibly dumb, and it forces
you to connect to online services to do anything. We're sort of back to
mainframes, that's like killing over 40 years of IT development!. Also by
keeping some parts of the firmware (mainly drivers) closed they can ensure no
FOSS hippy is going to ruin their dominance. If there was a way to install a
working native mainline Linux image (no chroots/VMs/frankendroids etc.) with
full hardware support all those phone left in a drawer collecting dust could
magically become useable again, with some important side effects. For
starters, I'd dare to say every 10 of them at least three new phones would
remain unsold, then it would become a lot harder to put spyware into user
phones, and third, what would happen when even a few thousand users in the
world started showing their colleagues, friends and families that their old
phone isn't just faster than new ones but also safer and cheaper, shows no
ads, doesn't steal personal data, doesn't require constant updates (==cheaper
data plans) and supports the same software they could have installed on their
PCs. Definitely, phone (and their OS) makers would hate that.

~~~
notonmywatch
>> "but I feel incredibly limited in what I can actually do with my iPhone"

> That's because they're intended to work as media consumption devices rather
> than productivity ones. If someone feels productive on a phone, he or she
> has very likely adapted herself to the device than the other way around.

What are you talking about? Literally millions of people use their phones to
create every day. They take pictures and post on Instagram, create videos with
apps like Clips, iMovie, SnapChat, make music with GarageBand, and yes, also
consume video. But iPhones are every bit intended to be creation devices as
much as desktops. The form factor lends itself to a different type of content
creation, but it's stellar at letting users create in addition to consume.

~~~
tombert
There's no doubt you can create lots of stuff, and I would not say otherwise;
the iPhone has a nice camera and the tools for media production on the iPhone
are actually pretty ok.

All that being said, I don't do any of that stuff; I write software and write
the occasional blog post. For me, I need a compiler, text editor, git, a good
terminal etc. In this regard, my old Packard Bell is honestly more powerful,
and despite my iPhone having objectively awesome hardware in comparison, I
accomplish much less.

~~~
bashwizard
Funny. I do all of those things on my iPhone XS these days. Not that I do any
heavy work on but it works on the go if I have to.

Blink Shell and mosh = terminal, vim, git, etc.

~~~
tombert
Well, that's kind of cheating; that's not using the "phone" to do any of the
real work, you're offsetting the work to a server. I've used my iPhone for
that stuff too, but that really doesn't require all the horsepower that modern
iPhones give you.

------
wanderfowl
The exciting part of this to me is not the ability to run the same software on
two devices, but the potential to run two 'kinds' of software on one single
device.

This unlocks what is for me the most appealing computing fantasy: I have
exactly one device to compute with. At home or work, I plug it into my dock,
where it pairs to an eGPU/monitor, external storage, keyboard, and mouse, and
is my desktop computer. There, I can access the 'pro' level apps we're
discussing below.

On the couch or on the go, maybe I slide it into a bigger touchscreen with
some extra dumb batteries, and it's now a tablet. Throw in a keyboard case,
and now it's a laptop.

And if I'm sitting on the bus or walking to work, it's my phone, and I can
edit today's lecture right there, or access all my files. Maybe I'm not firing
up emacs or MATLAB, but it's still there if I needed to.

This, to me, is the fantasy of convergence. And considering we're now
currently paying $4000+ for the trio of a laptop, tablet, and smartphone, I
suspect one could create something pretty compelling and high-end and still
feel like a bargain to many.

~~~
linuxftw
> $4000+

That's an excessive number. Great laptops can be had for under $1000.

Obviously, you _could_ spend over $4000, but I don't think this is a
reasonable number for most people. Even most 'computer' people. And who still
buys tablets anyway?

~~~
hacym
iPad sales in 2018:

Q1 2018 13.17 million Q2 2018 9.11 million Q3 2018 11.55 million Q4 2018 9.67
million

I think a few people still buy them...

So if you spend $2500 on a MacBook Pro, $800 on an iPad, and then $1000 on
your iPhone, boom, you're over $4000.

$4000 doesn't go very far.

~~~
beatgammit
Sure, it doesn't go very far in the Apple ecosystem, but you can get a solid
set of equipment for much less. For examine, a Thinkpad will run $500-1500
(depending on the model), a solid tablet can be found for ~$500, and plenty of
decent phones are ~$500 (mine was $250). Altogether, that's <$2000 for a solid
set of devices.

~~~
hacym
OK -- but no one specified that, and I'd argue that Apple has the most
complete and polished ecosystem available. So I think it's very fair to
compare that cost of Apple products.

------
rossdavidh
This reminds me of the idea of "wouldn't it be great if we could use the same
programming language for frontend, backend, and database queries". Well,
maybe, but in practice not really. They are doing different kinds of things,
you will have to use them differently, it doesn't really help all that much to
have the same language. It SOUNDS like this would be really helpful, until you
get it, and then discover that it doesn't really help all that much, because
what matters most is not the language syntax, but the problem space.

Laptops and smartphones are made for doing different kinds of things. The
real-estate requirements are different, as are the typical use cases, and even
in the case where you solve them both with, for example, dynamic web pages,
you still end up coding for both use cases separately, you just now have it
all stuffed into the same codebase, which is harder in many cases instead of
easier.

I believe Microsoft has been trying to make all OS usecases the same for
decades. I believe they have not succeeded, not because Microsoft is deficient
somehow, but rather because it's not, fundamentally, a good idea.

~~~
robto
You can live that dream in clojure land! Clojurescript on the front end,
Clojure on the backend, and datalog/honeysql for the database if you'd like.
And it is awesome! After using a stack like this I'm spoiled for the slog that
is developing in separate languages for each of those things.

I think that dream is possible with OS usecases as well, it's just that nobody
has made it work yet. And I can't think of a better way to eventually get
there than to build it slowly out of free and open source software. It might
take a while, but since people have the ability to adapt the software to their
needs when it is free, I'm confident with time that it will serve those needs.

~~~
themacguffinman
It never works out that way though.

Clojure for the frontend? What about native APIs that you need to use on, say,
iOS or Android? What about graphics libraries and APIs? What about browser
APIs? I'm sure you can write your own wrapper or bindings for whatever you
need, but it's an ongoing effort/pain that isn't worth it for most people.

Every platform, backend or frontend, supports specific languages that are
suitable for the platform's problem space and are subsequently preferred by
the platform's community. Software rarely stands alone. You can always go
against the grain with your own efforts, but it's no longer a dream, just
another compromise.

~~~
robto
In my experience, it works just fine.

Clojure for the frontend is the best-in-class frontend dev environment that
I've worked with. Instant hot code reloading, a browser-connected repl, great
debugging tools, and a really nice collection of libraries for getting stuff
done. I've never had to use native APIs for iOS and Android, so I can't speak
to that from experience, but I know that there's some really nice machine
learning work that's done in Clojure[0]. One of the main bits of Clojure
philosophy is to just embrace the host platform, and our company has done that
very successfully.

I think I agree that there are compromises, but on the whole I've come out
pretty far ahead with the tools I get to use. My point, though, wasn't to
proselytize for Clojure (even though I do love it!), but to point out that
there are ecosystems that have made significant progress towards this idea of
convergence, and that some people (me in particular) are very happy to be
moving in that direction. I'm excited to see progress on the OS front.

[0][https://dragan.rocks/](https://dragan.rocks/)

~~~
rkangel
In that land, what are you doing about UI? Still falling back on Java?

~~~
robto
Nope! Usually if I need ui I reach for Clojurescript, but if I need something
"native" I go for cljfx[0], a wrapper of javafx. But it's so much better than
javafx - you get a really nice repl-driven, live coding plaform with
functional state management and smart re-rendering.

[0][https://github.com/cljfx/cljfx](https://github.com/cljfx/cljfx)

~~~
rkangel
cljfx looks lovely, but I think it's misleading to talk about something being
useful for 'frontend' if it can't do (at least one of) mobile and web.

There are lots of great languages I'd love to use, but if you want to target
those common frontend platforms, your choice quickly becomes limited.

~~~
robto
Oh, I don't know if I was unclear but it can definitely do web. The mobile
story is a bit more hazy (I think mainly accessed through React Native
wrappers), but the web is a first class, I would argue best-class, use case
for Clojurescript.

Libraries like Re-Frame[0] and Reagent[1], as well as build tools like
figwheel[2] or shadow-cljs[3] are the best frontend web development tools I
have ever used, and I've used Javascript, Typescript, and Purescript
professionally with Angular, AngularJS, React, a big 'ol jQuery glob, and
Halogen.

[0][https://github.com/Day8/re-frame](https://github.com/Day8/re-frame)

[1][http://reagent-project.github.io/](http://reagent-project.github.io/)

[2][https://figwheel.org/](https://figwheel.org/)

[3][http://shadow-cljs.org/](http://shadow-cljs.org/)

------
_bxg1
I've become unenthused about this software "dream". Having spent years
designing and building UIs on the web, what I've learned is that:

1) Convergence works great for "casual" apps - messaging, stores, content
feeds, etc.; anything where the amount of stuff you need to see on screen at
once doesn't need to be especially large. But the web already does a great job
of making this type of application both responsive and cross-platform.

2) Advanced, dense professional tools will never adapt automatically to mobile
screens in any meaningful way. And frankly, these are all I find myself
installing natively on my desktop anymore.

The vast majority of software these days falls squarely into one of these two
camps, and neither seems to benefit much from the prospect of convergence.

~~~
maxsilver
> Convergence works great for "casual" apps - messaging, stores, content
> feeds, etc.; But the web already does a great job of making this type of
> application both responsive and cross-platform.

I'd argue this is where Convergence actually works best. (Especially the way
Windows does it, anyway).

For most people, "casual" apps are 95% of what they need a computer for. And
the web does a _good_ job, but not a _great_ job, at making these apps
responsive and cross-platform. Usually, these applications sacrifice lots of
performance and/or usability and/or reliability, just for the benefit of being
able to run in a browser. Which is fine if that's a trade-off you want to
make, but this is usually not being done out of benefit for the user.

Convergence can help fix part of this, by reducing the cost of native app
development even further while preserving the majority of the
quality/performance/usability benefits native apps provide.

~~~
JohnFen
> the web does a good job, but not a great job, at making these apps
> responsive and cross-platform

I would say the web does an adequate job, not a good job, at this.

------
dharma1
I worked on this stuff for Ubuntu. I think this can work pretty well for some
classes of apps - browsers, chat/messaging apps, voice/video calling,
terminal, contacts, gallery, music player etc - relatively light weight (at
least in terms of interactions) apps.

Android/ChromeOS and iOS/MacOS are already moving to this direction for these
classes of apps.

It doesn't work so well (or is more difficult to execute well, or at all) on
apps with very dense UI - video editing, 3D design, IDEs, interface design
apps, CAD etc

An aside - I'm not sure I'd use GTK+ for this. Why not Qt, or something like
Flutter?

~~~
gcbw2
> An aside - I'm not sure I'd use GTK+ for this. Why not Qt, or something like
> Flutter?

This is why ubuntu phone tanked. Trying to be too smart and centralizing.
Librem5 phone will probably succeed on this but not for the reasons their
marketing people think (convergent apps with magic! ha!). PureOS will be as
irrelevant tomorrow as it is now. But their phone, being a proper linux phone
like android never was, will have some small chance of success after the
community buys into it and start porting a decent effort to the applications.

~~~
dharma1
here's to hoping we have a usable (non-android) linux phone in the future!

------
wjoe
That's cool, and it's good to see work going on in more fundamental building
blocks of Linux like Gnome to support mobile and reactive UIs. I always felt
like this was the biggest blocker to using a Linux system on handheld devices
- having a good ecosystem of open source projects that work for that, and
having the ability to pick your own desktop environment and components rather
than having to have an "all in one" solution equivalent to Android. Admittedly
I know that isn't a killer feature for average users - they do want the all in
one solution. But having these things available makes it easier for a company
like Purism to build a product using existing software.

It feels like this announcement is missing a step though. What can we _do_
with this? Does this allow plugging your phone into a monitor and then running
your phone apps in larger windows (eg, the opposite of what's shown in the
videos). The idea of having the same programs running on your phone and laptop
is nice in theory, but I'm quite happy with my own custom Linux setup on my
laptop, I don't want to install PureOS on there.

Of course, much more work will need to be done in other programs to support
this. The Gnome Web example looks really slick, and it's great to see this
sort of 'responsive design' applied to native application interfaces - Android
took a step backwards in this regard. But on desktop I'd rather use Firefox,
and they have entirely separate builds for desktop and mobile. I wonder if
Mozilla have any plans to support this?

~~~
0815test
> ...I'm quite happy with my own custom Linux setup on my laptop, I don't want
> to install PureOS on there.

PureOS is just Debian with a few tweaks. This work is being done as part of
the GNOME mainline branch, so any GNOME user is going to benefit from it down
the road. And as "alternative" Linux desktops (MATE, Xfce, LXDE) transition to
GTK3+, users of these environments will likely be able to make use of it, as
well.

~~~
wjoe
Exactly, and this is why it's an important development. But the article starts
out by saying it's allowing "applications to run on both the Librem 5 phone
and Librem laptops, from the same PureOS release." which is sort of missing
the point - this isn't about about buying a phone and laptop from them so that
you can use their software on both, but an important step on Linux for
handheld devices.

Good to see that Gnome are involved in this themselves too, and it's not some
Purism fork of Gnome.

------
sinuhe69
To be frank, I don’t see the benefit of convergence. Admittedly, one code base
is cool and convenient, sure but if one considers the additional cost of
design, maintenance and the _loss_ of the optimal user experience, I think
convergence is rather a minus. A small touch screen requires a totally
different convention of user interactions as a big screen with only mouse and
keyboard support. It’s simply the reality.

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel (admittedly a new and shiny one), why
don’t we just stick to the well proven approaches and design different UIs and
front ends for different platforms? The bulk of the codes would go into the
common business/security layers anyway. With CI/CD, each user would have
his/her app with the same functionality but different UI for the optimal user
experience without much headaches or additional burden.

~~~
Skunkleton
> I don’t see the benefit of convergence.

To me the benefit is not to have a single application that works both with a
touch screen and a mouse/keyboard. Rather, the benefit is to have a single
filesystem that I can access with both touch screen apps and mouse/keyboard
apps. This way I could for example create a grocery with a mouse/keyboard,
then take my phone and check items off with a touchscreen. There are lots of
things we rely on the cloud for that would be better served by a "convergent"
environment imo.

~~~
thekyle
I use Syncthing right now to achieve the effect of having a shared file-system
across all my devices. It works really well and since it doesn't rely on any
sort of cloud or client-server architecture it even works offline if you're on
the same network.

[https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

------
moron4hire
Windows has had this with .NET apps for... Oh, pretty much since there has
been a .NET. I had written several apps for Windows CE that ran both on
desktop and mobile (same EXE file, even). Today, you can do it with UWP.

It's a shame Windows Phones didn't take off. They had a great UI paradigm and
I think Microsoft has done a lot of very hard work that goes mostly
unappreciated in the development world, just because Google's reputation is
still based on a decade-old memory of their (never official) motto "don't be
evil". Microsoft hasn't been the "Halloween Papers" company for longer than
Google has been a company, period.

EDIT: I'm not saying MS isn't an evil corporation. I think all corporations
get to some degree of evil proportional to their size. But for some reason,
Google and Apple don't get that same evaluation, getting some sort of pass,
that I think is worse in the specific case of Google (being an ad-tech
company). We are collectively missing out on a lot of inovation and market
diversity because of this cognitive dissonance.

~~~
JohnFen
> They had a great UI paradigm

Many people liked that paradigm. I am not one of them.

~~~
moron4hire
We can probably agree that it was at least a little better than just cramming
Gnome into a small screen, right?

------
SeripisChad
I keep looking at their products (laptop & phone) and can't pull the trigger
based on what seems like a lack of apps/UX. I really want have better privacy
and support companies with that in their DNA. I almost purchased a black-phone
before.

I really think sandboxing built-in emulator for android apps has to occur for
the phone to get traction. I think i'm their ideal consumer and still can't
see the value yet. I'm a technical person who is willing to deal with some
issues/trade-offs for privacy, but still can't reach the tipping point to
purchase.

I also think this a place where duckduckgo could partner with with their
services. I think most consumers wants things to be polished and just work.

~~~
solarkraft
> I really think sandboxing built-in emulator for android apps has to occur
> for the phone to get traction

> I think i'm their ideal consumer and still can't see the value yet

I don't think you _are_ their ideal consumer. They're appealing to the
Stallmans, the people who aren't looking to replace their smartphone, but for
which this would be one of their first. I have heard someone say about the
Pinephone (similar project): "I don't want a smartphone. But I want this. "

I _do_ think they could vastly expand their appeal by adding Android
emulation, but I have a feeling using the (which seems like the) market leader
(Alien Dalvik) would be some licensing hassle, as you'd want to allow people
to install their own distro and still use it. Add to that the whole
(admittedly important) thing about everything being open software.

~~~
AsyncAwait
> I don't think you are their ideal consumer. They're appealing to the
> Stallmans, the people who aren't looking to replace their smartphone, but
> for which this would be one of their first.

That's certainly part of it, however I do have an iPhone currently, (seems
like a better, if less than ideal option than Android), however am not happy
about the locked down nature of iOS. Free software smartphones are necessary
simply because they're the frontier the PC was in the 80s.

------
tobiaswk
Was very interested in their stuff. I was very disappointed when I saw a demo
of the current state of Librem 5 running on development hardware. It did not
look good. Laggy and slow. Very bad UI/UX.

~~~
neilsimp1
I was a little disheartened as well, but that video was made early on in
development. There was and still is time for optimization. I don't think the
hardware is incapable of a smooth user experience. It's a software problem.

------
mastrsushi
Canonical has been trying to make a mobile OS since 2012, KDE since 2011. Do
you guys honestly think a company of 27 employees is going to make this work?

~~~
JohnFen
I'm not sure that what Canonical can or can't do has much bearing on what
others can or can't do. I also don't think that the number of employees means
all that much. Very often, smaller teams can be more focused and able to
accomplish more than larger teams.

~~~
mastrsushi
Yeah, let me know when less than 25 developers crank out a working mobile
Linux distro that will continue to be supported in 5 years. Looking at all the
failed projects in the past and all the managements complexities like software
support, modern touch integration this is virtually impossible. They'll likely
have a brief stint releasing some Debian ARM based mobile OS with a limited
selection of software. You'll get some GTK Calendar, Calculator, etc. The
basic crap that imitates Android phones from 2011. And it will be supported by
up to 5 or so devices, hopefully without some impractical rooting method.

Linux barely exists as a desktop operating system as is. The only difference
nowadays is smartphones don't have that freedom of customization desktops
provide. Smartphones are consumer centric devices, you can't even swap
batteries anymore. Leading OEMs have no interest in supporting an obscure
operating system, they know the majority of users want Android.

When Purism releases this as an OOTB product, it will without a doubt run on
some no named Chinese Phone that holds the mediocre power of any low end
Android Device. Only it will be $600, rather than $180

~~~
emilsedgh
The mobile phone market is already slowing down. Just like PC market did years
ago.

When it gets stagnant, companies will stop innovating that hard and slowly but
steadily open solutions will gain quality and feature parity.

If in 10 years I get an open phone with the features close to what I have
today, I'd be pretty happy. Because I just don't think phones today are going
to be that different in 10 years.

You are right that Linux Desktop barely has any market share. But it's a very
viable solution and I'd personally argue that it's ahead of it's competition.

~~~
mastrsushi
I don't know exactly what you mean by slowing down, but I'm going to assume
you mean innovation, like you say later. There I agree because not much has
changed. There was a funny phone commercial a few months back where they
pretty much admitted nothings changed since 2007.

It makes sense that stagnant progress leads to open solutions because as
hardware advances, alternative technologies become less challenging to
implement. I'm sure as you know, there was a time when running a real time OS
like Unix on a personal computer was impossible, now it's on our routers.

Back to this Librem Phone, it seems the only selling point for it's massive
price tag is being libre, and non-surveillance. But for a modern smartphone to
be functional it's gotta be connected to a cellular tower which is definitely
using some type of monitoring system.

What exactly do you mean by Linux is ahead of its competition?

~~~
emilsedgh
_I don 't know exactly what you mean by slowing down_

Like the PC and Laptop landscape. There isn't money poured into new series and
advertisement and hype generated like crazy. Market moves forward at a slower
rate.

 _But for a modern smartphone to be functional..._

Obviously this isn't a replacement for your iphone or nexus. This is a
enthusiast's toy who want to support the libre movement and possibly
contribute to it.

 _What exactly do you mean by Linux is ahead of its competition?_

I think Linux on the desktop is an amazing platform. There are several
different high quality user interfaces and window managers and each one have
their strong points.

I personally cannot _stand_ windows on the desktop for 10 minutes.

------
dgregd
As far I know Gnome 4 constraint-based layout [1] is still in planning phase.
So how devs are going to build responsive UIs for different screen sizes? PS.
I work on a Ubuntu laptop.

[1]
[https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GTK/Roadmap/GTK4](https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GTK/Roadmap/GTK4)

------
Ericson2314
I wish they just focused solely on the hardware, then used the die-hard fan's
money to develop the software. I'm going to run NixOS on this phone (maybe
with an entirely CloudABI userland), and it's going to be better than their
distro. Yeah their apps will be useful in that context, but I would be OK with
rewriting them too.

------
Animats
This is just a Linux distro, right? Not a new operating system.

~~~
rkangel
Yes, but you can get a long way tailoring a Linux distro in a particular way.
In an extreme example, Android is a Linux distro.

This is closer to conventional in that it's still Debian and Gnome, but if
they are putting development work into making that a cross-platform system
then everyone benefits.

------
ryanmarsh
Slightly off-topic, is anyone using Librem laptops? What has your experience
been? They look nice.

I've always wanted a nice secure Linux laptop to work on but I'm not eager to
waste hours upon hours getting the drivers to behave (my experience with Linux
on the desktop is a bit dated).

~~~
gcbw2
your experience is more than 20yrs out of date. And i am not even
exaggerating.

Drivers in linux normally gives you _less_ problems than OSX or Windows
(latest graphic cards model excluded)

~~~
pjmlp
My less than 5 years experience is still waiting for the beautiful AMD open
source drivers to give me back the video acceleration and OpenGL Features from
fxglr.

One of these days, the laptop will just get back W10 with its DirectX 11
drivers.

------
billfruit
I remember windows phones around Windows Mobile 5.x/ 6.x era: the executable
programs that run on the phone, if the exes were to be copied onto a windows
PC, the exes ran the same like native PC exes. I do not know if that is still
the case with windows mobile.

~~~
pjmlp
The only thing in common is Windows in the name.

Kernel is unrelated, .NET version are unrelated, there is a sandbox in place,
COM has been redone, only a Win32 subset is supported.

~~~
fxfan
I thought win10 shared kernel between mobile and computer?

------
bibyte
It seems really familiar to the decision of going with many repos vs a mono
repo.

Slightly OT but I hope PureOS doesn't lock down root access like Android does.
Or at least release an official way to root their devices.

------
amdelamar
Its neat, but doesn't make sense for a majority of apps/programs. Why would I
run GIMP/Photoshop or any Graphics-heavy program on my phone? Why run any GPS-
enabled app on my Desktop?

~~~
ghostwreck
Maybe not phone yet, but tablets (running the same OS) are getting extremely
powerful and the apps are coming. [1]

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/15/17969754/adobe-
photoshop...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/15/17969754/adobe-photoshop-
apple-ipad-creative-cloud)

------
solidrake
I wish this don't turn out like the Ubuntu Phone Convergence dream.

------
gcbw2
I bought a libre13 DESPITE pureOS.

PureOS is just a distraction. instead of adding a usbC port to their already
outdated computer line, or lowering the absurd price (there is a reason their
clientele is exclusively in california and germany) they are fiddling with
linux distros like it is 1995.

This is the same old a phone-just-need-a-browser idea of 10 years ago. This
will fail, for the same reason firefoxOS failed: There is no whatsapp (or
lock-in chat app du jour) website.

------
exabrial
This is incredible. I've been waiting for a commercially supported
Unix/Hardware vendor since Apple products have tanked in Quality under the new
CEO.

------
anderspitman
I used to be really excited about the idea of convergence. I still think it's
cool, and I hope it gains more traction, but after working on more webapps
designed for desktop and mobile, there are definitely challenges. The "write
once run anywhere" pipe dream is quite elusive. I think something like React
Native's "learn once write anywhere" philosophy might be more realistic.

------
benatkin
The article started off with a wild assertion, that "Purism is beating the
duopoly to that dream". A duopoly on computing? Windows is still by far the
biggest desktop computing platform. They may have messed up mobile, but that
doesn't make them irrelevant.

~~~
jethro_tell
it does if you're talking about two platforms converging. Be hard to win that
race with one platform.

~~~
benatkin
That probably means that Android is not converging with a desktop platform
anytime soon, except for a negligable fraction of users.

Chrome OS certainly isn't a part of any duopoly. Not even close.

~~~
pjmlp
ChromeOS is not part of anything, other than US school system and Googleplex.

Contrary to what gets discussed on HN, its worldwide desktop coverage is even
lower than GNU/Linux.

------
jillesvangurp
The opportunity here is not just convergence but multi modal. We have bits and
pieces in the current world but frankly it's a big stinky mess that is poorly
integrated. Most of this stuff is just horribly limited and single vendor
walled gardens.

A good positive example or how things should work is spotify. I regularly
switch between my desktop, laptop and phone and the spotify instances seem to
be aware of each other. I accidentally started playing music at home while at
work today because my laptop spotify was still targeting my home desktop. Just
works.

What matters here is that spotify is available on multiple platforms; it moves
files around for you as you need them. All you do is sign in and it will serve
you your music, playlists, etc. In the same way I can continue reading a
e-book on my phone that I was reading earlier on my Kindle. Browser state is
replicating across platforms as well.

The logical next steps would be devices where after authentication, your apps
and data are just available and adapt to the device in a way that makes sense.
Right now setting up a new laptop is a chore. You have to worry about
installing stuff, configuring stuff. signing into stuff, backing up stuff,
etc. Ideally all that goes away and you basically just pick up a device and
start using it with zero effort. Or better even, the devices are integrated
into the environment and simply adapt to you being there. Some apps won't make
sense in all form-factors but many do.

Ever walked into a hotel room and after briefly fiddling with some alien hotel
entertainment system simply watched netflix on your laptop? I watched netflix
on a recent transatlantic flight and ignored the entertainment system 20
centimeters from my nose it's just better and I charged it using usb-c from my
laptop. So, I walked out of the plane with a fully charged phone. What if
those devices in hotels, planes, etc. would basically provide you all your
stuff after a simple signin? Walk into a hotel and all your digital stuff is
already there by the time you walk into the room?

And yes there are all sorts of concerns with privacy, security, etc. All
solvable problems.

For device manufacturers this would liberate them from selling only one or a
handful of devices per person. You could turn phones into fashion accessories.
They pretty much are already but why just have one phone when you could have
one to match each pair of shoes? Why fiddle with your phone when you step in
your car that these days might have a huge touch screen and plenty of
computing power. Convergence is much broader than just your phone + laptop.

------
cridenour
I'm really excited about the software side of Purism but I can't justify
buying a 2 year old processor on the laptop at a price still more expensive
than alternatives, especially since that refresh happened in the last few
months.

~~~
AsyncAwait
The CPU choice is restricted by their ability to disable Intel ME. If you
don't care about that, you probably don't care about what Purism is trying to
achieve, so it's not for you.

~~~
gcbw2
If that was true, they would be using AMD or ARM. Seems to be a matter or
price/stock only.

~~~
AsyncAwait
AMD also has this feature, (AMD Platform Security Processor), but unlike Intel
ME, there's no way to disable it at all, currently.

As for ARM, they have it too, (TrustZone), the performance is nowhere near
what x86 gives you and arguably even less free/open than x86 and developers
aren't really focused on it.

------
gcbw2
Everyone in this thread complaining about phones without keyboard and
Blackberry had a keyboard android phone flagship for a decade but nobody
cared.

You all deserve crappy media-consumer-only phones. :(

~~~
amiga-workbench
That thing had a locked bootloader, no matter how nice the hardware I am not
buying a device with a 2-3 year lifespan.

------
api
Lots of haters here. This company is trying to build a real alternative to the
Apple/Google/MS oligopoly based on open source and respect for privacy. I'm
really really tempted.

~~~
krageon
At this exact moment there's three comments including yours. What are you
referring to, exactly?

~~~
asdkhadsj
Priming the tribalism lines, I'd guess.

We seem to yearn for our turf wars to the degree that we help them along. Not
sure why.

------
ktpsns
Don't the screenshot just show the GNOME desktop environment?

~~~
detaro
The blog post is about improvements to GNOME and GNOME apps, not that
surprising that the screenshots are of GNOME then?

------
JohnFen
Convergence is not something of great value to me, but I don't object -- as
long as mobile and desktop versions don't have to have the same user
interface.

------
dschuetz
Those are pretty expensive, but the idea to have fully supported Linux phone
and 15" laptop is great! I'd very much like to own those.

------
samirm
>If you’ve ever had an app on your phone that you wanted on your laptop,
you’ve wanted convergence.

Isn't that just called portability?

------
meh206
I just hope that better touchscreen / tablet support is realized from the
efforts put forth in this project!

------
sciurus
Here's a report of the effort involved with making the Subsurface dive log
desktop application run on mobile as well. The tl;dr seems to be that

1) it was a _lot_ of work

2) users don't like the result very much

[https://lwn.net/Articles/780031/](https://lwn.net/Articles/780031/)

There's a huge mismatch between how users want to interact with desktop and
mobile applications that makes convergence really hard to do effectively in a
single codebase.

~~~
magissima
A lot of the issues mentioned there stem from platform differences though. The
packaging hurdles and out-of-place UI style wouldn't be an issue on a
convergent platform, though the difficulty and slight ugliness of QML/Kirigami
wouldn't change.

------
presscast
What's the state of running linux natively on Mac these days?

~~~
rinchik
linux natively on Mac? Why? whats the point?? the experience will be just
horrible and 60% of the hardware will be idle, unused or just incompatible.
You'll get an overpriced Thinkpad wrapped in gorgeous Mac's case.

The amount of details, little "sprinkles" that average Mac and MacOS users
take for granted is greatly underrated.

When you look at the stats from all native available hardware, sensors etc, it
really feels that Macs are comparable to space shuttles, not a single OS can
come even close to support all this (or will be allowed to)

~~~
bildung
> _The amount of details, little "sprinkles" that average Mac and MacOS users
> take for granted is greatly underrated._

Especially those sprinkles that get stuck under the keys ;)

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
> _Especially those sprinkles that get stuck under the keys ;)_

Excuse me, wouldn't the sprinkles be the things that PC users take for
granted?

------
tempodox
Looks like somebody found a new buzzword.

------
codinger
I want my desktop OS to act like a proper desktop workstation and my phone to
act like a typical smartphone. Don't force Windows 8 like experience onto me.

------
At1C
My hats off to purism for putting in the effort to free people from stinking
thinking. Proprietary walled garden surveillance capitalism is not smart
choice for people, your kids will be owned and controlled by the goolag. Stop
deferring choices to terms and agreements for momentary fomo. If you live
without GYTFA Gee-Your-Twit-Face-Azhole you can start to make the world a
better place. Unless your paycheque depends on them keep prostituting your
life and feeling useless.

------
dcdevito
This is nice, but what problem does it solve? Mobile and Desktop operating
systems solve different issues on their own.

Ubuntu tried this - how'd that go?

Second issue is: how do I use it? How can I install it on MY devices?

I'm all for privacy and I want to is it, just seems like a dream and it will
never come to fruition

~~~
joekrill
> This is nice, but what problem does it solve?

It solves a _development_ problem, in that it reduces the amount of work
needed to allow an application to reach a larger number of devices. Basically
the same reason for things like React Native and PWAs.

> Ubuntu tried this - how'd that go?

So because someone else failed at solving a particular problem in a particular
way previously, we should simply give up on it?

~~~
masklinn
> It solves a _development_ problem, in that it reduces the amount of work
> needed to allow an application to reach a larger number of devices.

Sounds like a repeat of the Java strategy: you can run garbage nobody wants
anywhere nobody wants to run it.

> So because someone else failed at solving a particular problem in a
> particular way previously

Microsoft also attempted it, and also failed quite miserably.

> we should simply give up on it?

Not necessarily, but at the very least you could avoid lying by omission
(mentioning Google and Apple which don't exactly attempt convergence and
pointedly ignoring every pre-existing attempt at the concept) and maybe
consider humility and avoid overblown claims given you're not the first to
attempt it, nobody's succeeded, there's no evidence available that you are
succeeding, and you've really not shown anything which would made anyone think
"this is going to succeed where everybody else failed".

~~~
joekrill
Microsoft failed in a completely different way: their entire mobile platform
failed. I'm not sure it had anything to with UWP specifically, and as far as
we know that had little to do with it. But regardless of the reason, I still
don't think that should prevent others from trying to solve the problem in
different ways.

~~~
toast0
I think the failure of Windows Mobile 10 could be attributed to UWP in that
Microsoft applied it internally, there was no separate Mobile team like with
the previous releases of Windows Phone, and as a result, the released OS did
not run well on mobile devices until about a year after release. That's what
experience has taught me to expect from write once, run everywhere.

------
reddotX
remember Ubuntu Touch?

~~~
amiga-workbench
What about it? UBports is still under development, Canonical just bailed out
because they wanted to cut their losses and jump for an IPO.

------
mdgrech23
I've got to switch to your laptop and your phone to get the benefit of being
in sync? No thanks. Not worth it to me.

~~~
meruru
No, you switch to their products because you agree with their goals and want
to support the cause. The benefits are a bonus.

~~~
sebastos
To each their own and all that, but this method of driving adoption never
works. Virtually nobody makes decisions that way when they're shopping for a
product that is important to their everyday life.

This was Tesla's big insight in the car market. Pre-Tesla electric cars were
all ugly, terrible vehicles that apologized for their own existence. They
wanted to sell themselves based on the fact that they were good for the
environment, while never compromising those ideals to make them, you know,
actually nice to drive. But that was never going to catch on, because very few
people are so idealistic that they will suffer an annoyingly bad product in
exchange for virtue. People will do that all the time with little stuff, but
not with big ticket items that they use a lot. So the designers of early
electric cars ironically cemented their negligible impact on the environment
by refusing to compromise their ideals, because the cars never became popular.

Tesla came along and realized that what they had to do was make electric cars
something you _wanted_ to drive. Because they were luxurious, and fast, and
sexy looking. The fact that they were virtuous was just gravy.

So if your statement is a good summary of their strategy, then they've got it
backwards. You never win adopters by making crappy things that support a good
cause. You win adopters by making things that do their job well, and support a
good cause as a bonus. And presumably even idealists want adopters, so they
should revisit that :)

