Hacker News Reader

Every time I hear about the Librem 5, I get excited about the idea that I could run Debian, or Arch, or another open source OS on a phone. But I can find scant details about how this would be implemented.

View on HN

Not sure what you mean? It gets implemented by using a touch-friendly Window Manager, touch-friendly apps, with apps for all the phone features you'd expect?

It's all open source BTW. Look at https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Purism

Yup, it's roughly the same idea as building a touch friendly website.

Don't you consider e.g. LineageOS open source OS?

Most LineageOS distributions aren't exactly "open source" due to hardware driver blobs. Check out Replicant.

Debian or Arch aren't too, in fact. https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.en.html

So why the difference?

In Debian or Arch it's very easy not to install them and still have everything functioning properly. It's not the case with LineageOS, where Replicant needed significant effort to work and its hardware compatibility is still poor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com