>For me the librem 5 is to android what GNU Hurd is to linux I'm assuming you're talking about pureos, the default OS shipped with librem 5 They're not reinven

>For me the librem 5 is to android what GNU Hurd is to linux I'm assuming you're talking about pureos, the default OS shipped with librem 5 They're not reinventing the wheel, it's a debian-based distro that has existed for quite some time and that is endorsed by the FSF If I'm not mistaken, purism made the OS specifically for their laptop lineup >Why don't they do something more similar to what linux-libre is to linux to replace android This project already exists, it is called Replicant[0] >AFAIK, android is open source, so why don't they just build on top of it There are many, many custom ROMs that do exactly that. But this doesn't hide the fact that android has severe problems like requiring huge system resources to build it (>100GB of disk space, 16GB of RAM etc.) Besides Google is working on another OS called fuchsia that's supposedly going to replace both android and chromeOS and it's not based on the Linux kernel thus it's better for the sake of choice to have some linux-based alternatives. The librem 5 isn't the first or the only effort to get non-android linux on smartphones, there's also most notably PostmarketOS[1] For more arguments on why android sucks compared to other linux-based alternatives, check out https://postmarketos.org/static/slides/2018-akademy/#18 https://postmarketos.org/static/slides/2018-akademy/#18 [0]: https://replicant.us/ https://replicant.us/ [1]: https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/