We know the culprit now. As expected, it's in udev: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=872598

Beautiful! Well done @mak ! :)

So feel free to close this one here as it will come in from Debian soon :)

Hm, weird bug - can you reproduce it?

This is resolved with xdg-user-dirs 0.15-3, which should be available in PureOS in a few hours as well.

Fix released to Debian as version 0.9.7-3: https://tracker.debian.org/news/863564

I've sent a patch upstream, and will apply a fix in the Debian (and thereby PureOS package) after some brief discussion with the GNOME team, since the patch we mean we need to change the startup method away from Xsession.d startup entirely, and I am not sure if that breaks anything (I would say no, but there might be some weird corner case or DE I don't know).

Okay, the initial Debian bug that KiBi fixed was not the one we had in PureOS, but the exact same bug is affecting Debian now.
This issue is highly unstable in when it shows, but is at least reproducible with the same configuration of packages. Cyril is trying for find the cause of the problem by bisecting with Debian snapshots, and I am more randomly poking it to maybe find the cause of this issue.

This is this bug: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20882
Should be fixed soonish in Debian and PureOS.

I updated my system today, and Thunderbird now works normally.

Yes, GNOME Software requires an internet connection on its first run, and display a "please wait" message while it is refreshing. If none is there, I don't know exactly what happens, but I guess the SC being empty is the result.
There is no need to run apt update manually.

With the 2017-08-03 snapshot ISO it appears this is not the case. Perhaps one should first connect to the internet before starting Software center for the first time?

Please, remove any wallpaper with a rectangle so we avoid any feedback from the FSF. The Purism rectangle is the logo they don't want to see in the OS. I plan to do a proper logo for PureOS and have a few wallpapers based on this logo for future builds.

I removed a couple of branded wallpapers, some which contain abstract rectangles still remain. https://github.com/purism/pureos-artwork/commit/6ac75ec8ab5b9c019ed414cfc5607f917d2057f7

Hmm, xdg-user-dirs is present and therefore this should work.
I'll need to look at what the shell does here when I'm back home.

Can the pictures with just rectangles stay?

When running the live usb key, the directories are not present neither. It is maybe related?
I think that they should be present in order to show the user who is testing the OS before installing that those essential directories exist in the distro.

Weird... Could be a GNOME bug. So far, I haven't managed to reproduce this, but this bug is currently blocked on the OEM installer freeze issue.

Requires direct patches in live-build, which is a bit more involved (I'll do it when there is time).

This is related to the keyboard-not-working issue, which is incredibly persistent. We tracked it down to the expat package in Debian, but there seem to be more components involved, making it hard to pin down the issue.

This particular bug should be resolved now - please verify!

This is somehow related to systemd: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/6483
It does work occasionally on Debian though, so it appears like I need to put some further work into debugging this issue.
Meanwhile, I could patch the systemd package in order to disable the service that causes trouble for us by default (which is not a proper fix though).
I'll do some further experiments.

Can you please try again with a more recent image? There have been multiple kernel updates meanwhile.

I reproduced this installing PureOS via Calamares on a Librem 15v3.

@mak , the Purism branded wallpapers are still present in the 08/03 ISO and they should be removed.

After trying on a new install on a Librem 13 v2, the dirs are not present even after a system upgrade.

While it was DDG before, in the meantime somehow that became a *not* true statement.
https://tracker.pureos.net/T156