KDE has announced today that it will be partnering with Purism, an organisation which is known for manufacturing high-quality, privacy focused laptops, to work on what would appear to be the world’s first truly free smartphone device powered by Linux.
KDE develops Plasma Mobile environment for tablets and smartphones, besides the Plasma desktop environment which is installed on standard personal computers.
Purism recently launched a crowdfunding campaign for a new Linux smartphone that they call Librem 5, and it looks like they'll be working with the KDE team to build the first fully free and open source smartphone using Plasma Mobile.
"Building a Free Software and privacy-focused smartphone has been a dream of the KDE community for a long time. We created Plasma to not just run on desktops and laptops, but for the whole spectrum of devices," says Lydia Pintscher, President of KDE e.V.
"Partnering with Purism will allow us to ready Plasma Mobile for the real world and integrate it seamlessly with a commercial device for the first time. The Librem 5 will make Plasma Mobile shine the way it deserves."
KDE has stated that the partnership is slated to bring full, unrestricted access to Purism’s hardware platform, allowing them to integrate the Plasma Mobile graphical environment for mobile devices for the first time on a commercial device.
The market has already seen a lot of Android devices, which are also powered by Linux, as well as the iPhone, which is very popular in many parts of the world. So here is the big question you should ask yourselves, “why would I buy the Librem 5 smartphone?”
