Librem 5 smartphone will officially support PureOS and Ubuntu Touch

Ubuntu Touch looked so promising when Canonical debuted the mobile OS back in 2013. Linux-lovers rejoiced at what seemed poised to become a legitimate contender to the Android/iOS oligopoly that then (and now) ruled the market. Sadly, Canonical abandoned the project last year, but a small development team by the name of UBports picked it up and continued working on it. Ubuntu Touch may rise again thanks to a new collaboration between UBports and Purism that aims to make the upcoming Librem 5 smartphone a home for the mobile operating system.

Announced earlier today, Purism and UBports will be working together to ensure that the Librem 5, which smashed its crowdfunding goal last fall, will fully support Ubuntu Touch. In the same announcement, Purism stated that the Librem 5 will also support a mobile-focused flavor of the company’s own PureOS with either the (default) GNOME or KDE desktop environments.

An interesting note is that during the Librem 5’s crowdfunding campaign, Purism said that the phone would feasibly be able to support any Linux distro, including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, and others. Today’s announcement was likely made to assure backers that at least two major Linux distros (PureOS and Ubuntu) will be crafted for a mobile experience and tailored to work specifically with the device hardware.

It’s good to see that Purism is still hard at work on the Librem 5. The privacy-focused phone is still set to ship out in January of next year, which is still probable. Now consumers will have a few options as to which OS they’d like to run.

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