LinBits 47: Weekly Linux Phone news / media roundup (week 21/22)
Table of Contents
It's Wednesday. Now what happened since last Wednesday?
New Crust, Phosh and Jumpdrive releases, Volla Community days and more! Commentary in italics.
Software development and releases
- Crust, the low-level power-saving firmware, has seen its 0.4 relaese.
- Kaidan 0.8 has been released, featuring typing notifications & message synchronization.
- Neochat 1.2 has been released, featuring bubbles, better text editing and more! Make sure to watch the video, since it's not demoing how it works on smaller screens, I did not add it below.
- Phosh 0.11.0 has been released. Changes include Wifi/WWAN/BT quick settings now toggle on/off, long press opens Settings, initial support for
gnome-session --systemdand a torch brightness slider. Make sure to read the full release notes! - Jumpdrive 0.8 has been released, now supporting a few Snapdragon 845 devices.
- JingOS 0.9 has been released for x86 tablets.
Worth reading
Software development news
- Janet's Shenanigans: A Switchy Week In Tok. Tok is a Kirigami Telegram client.
- Volker Krause: April/May in KDE Itinerary. Progress on Itinerary, which is great and our best chance for public transport fares on Linux Phones.
- Visvesh's blog: A Brief about my GSoC project. This will be work on Health.
What is a PinePhone?
- Tedium: A Home for Mobile Linux. A really nice review! It highlights what makes the PinePhone so important.
Getting started with things
- Jozef Mlich: Developing Nemomobile with PinePhone. If you want to help with Nemo Mobile development, read this post!
- FOSSingularity: Installing Manjaro Phosh Beta 10 on The Pinephone. This is simpler. Note to self: I really need to hightlight Etcher alternatives more!
PinePhone Keyboard corner
- xnux log: PinePhone keyboard. Very technical, but worth it!
- xnux log: PinePhone keyboard – more observations
Hardware corner
- TuxPhones: Volla expands line-up, teases new "Phone X" model with Android and Linux. Volla's 2nd phone is going to be quite similar, but rugged.
- Purism: Purism Launches a Privacy-first, Made in USA Smartphone: Librem 5 USA, as an Alternative to Big Tech Offerings. Just a press release.
- Purism: Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the United States of America. This one is actually an interesting read in comparison.
Cooperation corner
- KDE.news: PINE64 becomes a KDE Patron.
- PINE64: We are KDE patrons.
Worth watching
PinePhone Software intersection
- Avisando: PinePhone - How to install Android 11. Of course, Avisando did a better job at this than I did.
- Privacy & Tech Tips: Shortwave Has 25,500 Radio Stations: Check It Out! (Pinephone/Linux). Great app!
Hardware corner
- Glenn Hancock: Pinephone Motherboard Replacement.
- mutantC: Rebooted mutantC v3 and all works. This is an interesting little DIY handheld computer, make sure to watch the video!
Volla Community days
- Manjaro: Manjaro took part of Volla Community Days 2021
- More recordings of this event can be found on Volla's channel, which currently is only useful if you cross-reference it with their schedule. There's a lot in here, about Ubuntu Touch, Droidian, Nemo Mobile and more projects.
Stuff I did
Content
I made one video about the PinePhone in the past week:
I also published a silly blog post about howto paste into kgx, the Phosh terminal app.
LINMOBapps
LINMOBapps got some love this week, too. I have added a few apps:
- Tokodon, a work-in-progress Mastodon client for Plasma Desktop and Mobile,
- Almond, a virtual assistant developed by Stanford,
- Pyrocast, a work-in-progress GTK/libhandy podcast client written in Rust,
- pods, another podcast client written in Rust,
- GNOME Weather, the GNOME Weather app that is mobile friendly since it's 40 release,
- SBB, a simple GTK+ app written in Rust to get timetable information for swiss public transport, and
- Scrum Poker, also created with GTK+ and Rust.