LinBits 56: Weekly Linux Phone news / media roundup (week 30/31)
Table of Contents
It's Wednesday. Now what happened since last Wednesday?
Sxmo, Chatty, Megapixels and others see new releases, Phosh & co move to GNOME GitLab, and more! Commentary in italics.
Software Releases
- Megapixels 1.2.0 has been released. Autofocus is now no longer blocking!
- Chatty 0.3.4 is out, bringing a number of bug fixes and enhancements.
- Sxmo 1.5.0 has been released. Make sure to read Brad's post about it!
- OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for the PinePhone has also made some progress!
Worth noting
- Phosh has moved to GNOME's GitLab, so have Squeekboard and phoc.
- Notifications are coming to Phosh's lockscreen!
- @powen00hsiao managed to get checkra1n running on PinePhone.
- There's a thread on the Purism forums that you actually may want to read before ordering.
Worth Reading
Expensive Unboxings
- Amos B. Batto: Unboxing the Librem 5 USA. A good, long read!
Alternatives to the Duopoly
- The Reboot: Cracking Open the Android/iOS Grip on Smartphones and the Mobile Internet. Rather boring.
Software Progress
- Claudio Cambra: Meeting with your mates — Kalendar week 8 (GSoC 2021).
- Volker Krause: June/July in KDE Itinerary. Great progress, health certificate support really matters these days!
- Martín Abente Lahaye: Portfolio 0.9.11. Another update to my favourite mobile file management application!
- Philippe Normand: Introducing the GNOME Web Canary flavor. Not too mobile specific, but given the fact that I recently made GNOME Web my default web browser on Phosh, I am adding this so I don't forget to try it out eventually.
- manugen: A quick update on libadwaita’s animation API.
- NxOS: Maui Report 14. The 2.0 releases of the convergent Maui apps are going to be awesome!
- Linux Smartphones: Sxmo 1.5.0 released with networking, screen lock, and UI improvements. Brad wrote down the hightlights of the new Sxmo release. Well done!
Documentation
- halting problem: Documenting GNOME for developers. I really like that new website!
Worth Listening
- postmarketOS Cast: #7 v21.06, A-GPS, Megapixels, Bluetooth, gPodder, iPhone 7. Another great episode! And thanks for the kind words about PineTalk!
Worth Watching
Software progress
- Martijn Braam: postmarketOS tweaks and Megapixels update. Nice updates!
- Jozef Mlich: Nemomobile on PinePhone July 2021. Nice video about what happens in Nemo Mobile. Also I must say that I am totally envious of that Nokia N950 lying there.
Ubuntu Touch corner
- UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 105. This time, Dalton and Alfred discuss the changes of the past two weeks together, including, but not limited to: the updated Porting documentation, Waydroid and what it means, 5.13 kernel merged for PinePhone and PineTab, impressive Focal news. They ask for help with Pull Requests, as there are a 170 open PRs needing review.
- Digital Wandering: 6 Reasons to Use Ubuntu Touch.
Usability reviews
- Arbitrary Tech: Pinephone Usability Review 2021
Software comparisons
- PizzaLovingNerd: Phosh vs Plasma Mobile (Side by Side Comparison). I always wanted to do a similar video, but given the differences between my PinePhones, I never did.
Tutorials
- kdlk.de: tech: PinePhone Development: How to Cross Compile to ARM - Setup #gtk #rust #AppDevelopment #Arch. All these difficulties make more happy with my bad habit of compiling on device.
- kdlk.de: tech: PinePhone Essentials: #Phosh Screenshots on the PinePhone #grim #scrot.
Unboxing
- Amos Batto: Unboxing the Librem 5 USA. Make sure to read the video's description, it's quite verbose.
Getting started and experimenting
- Jacob David Cunningham: My Pinephone experience. Technically it's not an unboxing, but it starts second after that, continuing much farther though.
JingOS
- TechHut: This Linux tablet runs Android Apps!... kinda. Android apps on JingOS!
Stuff I did
Content
I finally made another a video this week. It's called "PinePhone Software Progress: Phosh's App Drawer, Video Acceleration, Kasts and more". Go watch it on DevTube, Odysee or YouTube.
Random
Before writing this, I made some progress with regard to getting the prototype of LinuxPhoneApps.org ready for takeoff. I hope to get it online before the next update.
LINMOBapps
I have started to review app entries from the top onwards. Also, these apps were added in the past week, upping the App count to 306:
- foKus, a To-do application, designed for Plasma Mobile using Kirigami framework,
- tvtoday, an application to inspect the television program of today, made for the PinePhone,
- LaTre, an assistant tool for GNOME Contacts, that does import contacts from VCard files,
- modRana, a flexible GPS navigation system for mobile devices. Great app, it really should be packaged in more distributions. To help with this, I created a PKGBUILD script that builds the current state from git.
- Satellite, which displays navigation satellite (GPS) information from ModemManager enabled devices (thanks to tpikonen for creating and adding this one!),
- Kalendar, a WIP calendar application using Akonadi to sync with external services (NextCloud, GMail, ...).
The easy backlog is now almost done, but I have also added more apps that need to be tested and then added..