I just read about the Librem 5 smartphone.

I read that debian is used as a base, which prevents me from using it since it is using systemd. I can explain this in
more detail as to why I consider systemd non-free due to its invasive nature, but I think this would lead to a very
long debate that can not be resolved. I can not buy a product containing systemd so this renders the smartphone
useless to me. In fairness, I am not entirely sure that I want to buy any new smartphone altogether but I'd like
to clear up secondary issues, such as this one here, beforehand anyway.

So instead, I would like to go over towards my question:

- Are there free alternatives to systemd-driven distributions available for the Librem smartphone, such as devuan,
voidlinux, gentoo, slackware or similar? One additional reason why I ask is because I have little practical experience
with the software that is run on a smartphone "under the hood". Most of my friends tend to use win-related
smartphones or the google variant and I'd love to avoid all of these.

The Librem 5 is as far as I am aware open to every linux distribution.
If they make sure the drivers are taken upstream or are at least open source it should be no problem for the distro makers who offer ARM packages to offer something for the Librem 5.

Also notice that Debian can run without systemd aswell. It is still possible to remove systemd and switch back to sysvinit if wanted.

All in all it is still way to early to give a definite answer to this. We have to wait and see.