Purism, which develops the Librem 5 smartphone and a series of laptops, servers and mini-PCs shipped with Linux and CoreBoot, announced the release of the PureOS 10 distribution kit, built on the Debian package base and including only free applications, including the one supplied with the GNU Linux-Libre kernel, cleared of non-free elements of binary firmware. PureOS is recognized by the Free Software Foundation as completely free and placed on the list of recommended distributions. The size of the installation iso image that supports booting in Live mode is 2 GB.
The distribution is sensitive to privacy, offering a number of options to protect the privacy of users. For example, a full set of tools for encrypting data on a disk is available, Tor Browser is included in the delivery, Duck Duck Go is offered as a search engine, Privacy Badger is preinstalled to protect against tracking user actions on the Web, and HTTPS Everywhere is preinstalled for automatic forwarding to HTTPS. The default browser is PureBrowser (a rebuild of Firefox). The desktop is based on GNOME 3 running on top of Wayland.
The most notable innovation in the new version is the support for the "Convergence" mode, which offers an adaptive user environment for mobile and desktop devices. A key development goal is to provide the ability to work with the same GNOME applications both on the touch screen of a smartphone and on large screens of laptops and PCs in combination with a keyboard and mouse. The application interface dynamically changes depending on the screen size and available input devices. For example, when using PureOS on a smartphone, connecting the device to a monitor can turn the smartphone into a portable workstation.
The new release is slated to ship on a variety of Purism products, including the Librem 5 smartphone, Librem 14 laptop, and Librem Mini miniature PC. To combine the interface for mobile and stationary screens in one application, the libhandy library is used, which allows you to adapt GTK / GNOME applications for mobile devices (a set of adaptive widgets and objects is provided).
Other improvements:
- Container images support repeatable builds to ensure that the provided binaries match their associated sources. In the future, repeatable builds are planned to be provided for full ISO images.
- The PureOS store app manager uses AppStream metadata to create a universal app catalog where apps for smartphones and large screen devices can be distributed.
- The installer has been updated to support setting up automatic login, the ability to send diagnostic information to analyze problems during installation, and the network install mode has been improved.
- The GNOME desktop has been updated to version 40. The capabilities of the libhandy library have been expanded, many GNOME programs can now adapt the interface for different types of screens without making changes.
- Added VPN Wireguard.
- Added Pass password manager using gpg2 and git to store passwords in the ~/.password-store directory.
- Added Librem EC ACPI DKMS driver for Librem EC firmware, allowing user-space control of LEDs, keyboard backlight and WiFi/BT indicators, as well as getting battery level data.
Basic requirements for completely free distributions:
- Inclusion in the distribution kit of software with FSF-approved licenses;
- Inadmissibility of supplying binary firmware (firmware) and any binary components of drivers;
- Not accepting immutable functional components, but the possibility of including non-functional ones, subject to permission to copy and distribute them for commercial and non-commercial purposes (for example, CC BY-ND maps for a GPL game);
- The inadmissibility of using trademarks, the terms of use of which prevent the free copying and distribution of the entire distribution kit or part of it;
- Compliance with the purity of the licensed documentation, the inadmissibility of documentation that recommends the installation of proprietary software to solve certain problems.
The following projects are currently included in the list of completely free GNU/Linux distributions:
- gNewSense - based on the Debian GNU / Linux package base and developed by the Free Software Foundation with the personal participation of Richard Stallman;
- Dragora is an independent distribution that promotes the idea of maximum simplification;
- ProteanOS is a standalone distribution that is evolving towards being as compact as possible;
- Dynebolic - a specialized distribution for processing video and audio data;
- Hyperbola is based on stabilized slices of the Arch Linux package base with some patches ported from Debian to improve stability and security. The project is developed in accordance with the principle of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) and is aimed at providing users with a simple, lightweight, stable and secure environment.
- Parabola GNU/Linux is a distribution based on the work of the Arch Linux project;
- PureOS - based on the Debian package base and developed by Purism, which develops the Librem 5 smartphone and releases laptops that come with this distribution and CoreBoot-based firmware;
- Musix GNU+Linux is a Knoppix-based distribution for creating and processing sound;
- Trisquel is an Ubuntu-based custom distribution for small businesses, home users, and educational institutions;
- Ututo is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Gentoo.
- libreCMC (libre Concurrent Machine Cluster), a specialized distribution designed for use in embedded devices such as wireless routers.
- Guix is based on the Guix package manager and the GNU Shepherd (previously known as GNU dmd) init system written in the Guile language (an implementation of the Scheme language), which is also used to define service start parameters.
Source: opennet.ru