LINux on MOBile

This week in mobile Linux: Android kernels adopting a more mainline approach, Waydroid running on SailfishOS and Ubuntu Touch, libcamera, how to cross compile for Plasma Mobile (this time with a tool that should help a lot), a GTK app to browse LINMOBapps and more! Commentary in italics.

Software releases

• Manjaro Phosh beta 16 for the PinePhone has been released, delivering a few things early: MMS support, splash screens for Phosh — features that at least partly have not even been merged into their upstream projects. While it's nice to be have these things early, please don't bug upstream with bug reports concerning these unmerged features.
• Gtkeddit is now Headlines!

Worth noting

• LINMOBappsBrowser is a new project that's building a more performant, native GTK way to browse apps.csv on your Linux Phone! It's early days, but I love what Speiburger has built so far!
• Maemo Leste have made progress around email!
• Popcorn Computers (who are making the Pocket P.C. hacker terminal are collaborating with postmarketOS.
• Waydroid of the week: Sailfish OS on PinePhone now with networking.

Worth Reading

Hardware

• Liliputing: GPD Pocket 3 handheld computer will be a convertible tablet with stylus support (and a modular feature). Nice hardware!
• TuxPhones: Cadmium is a Linux distribution to liberate ARM Chromebooks. Cadmium is seriously nice, only kernel upgrades aren't fun (yet)!

Software

Software progress

• Claudio Cambra: Turbocharging Kalendar — Kalendar devlog 15.
• Alberto Mardegan: MiTubo 0.3 brings basic RSS support. MiTubo is not just for Ubuntu Touch, hint hint.
• Phoronix: Libcamera Maturing Well As Open-Source Camera Stack. I look forward to libcamera support landing for the Librem 5!
• Jolla Blog: What’s up with Sandboxing?. These plans sound promising!
• UBports Blog: Ubuntu Touch OTA-19 Release. I missed this last week, do read it!
• This Week in GNOME: #11 Forty-one!. Some nice, new apps!

Mainline all the things

• Phoronix: Google Finally Shifting To "Upstream First" Linux Kernel Approach For Android Features. Now this is going to take a while to really make an impact, but I am glad to see this happen anyway. Thanks to PizzaLovingNerd for making sure that I would not miss this!
• TuxPhones: The "10 Year Smartphone" initiative aims for a sustainable mobile ecosystem. This feels really important, although the idea is not exactly a new one. To be fair: This is a different, political approach.

Distro future

• Christian F.K. Schaller: Fedora Workstation: Our Vision for Linux Desktop. Now this is not about phones per se, but what's attractive about Silverblue or Kinoite would be great for phones, too.

Development news

• Gunibert: GNOME Builder 41 Highlights. Look at this!

Cross Compiling

• Han Young: Cross Compile to PinePhone Part Three. Awesome!

Worth Watching

Phosh

• Geotechland: Manjaro Phosh - Pinephone BETA 15. Great video! Sadly I doubt too much of an app startup time improvement is going to happen for big apps like Firefox. But, with e.g. with the splash screen feature, perceived app load time is going to be reduced. It's landed in Manjaro beta 16, BTW.

Plasma Mobile

• Nat Tuck: A Look at Plasma Mobile on the PinePhone. Great in depth video review!

GNOME

• mzeinali: PostmarketOS with Gnome desktop on Pine phone. Seems to work well!

Fun projects

• Martijn Braam: Running Octoprint on the PinePhone with camera. If the PinePhone does not work for you as a phone (or you have to many PinePhones), and you like 3D printing, here's a use case for you!

Tutorials

• (RTP) Privacy & Tech Tips: SSH Passwordless Logins & Avoid SSH MITM Attacks. Great howto by RTP!

Ubuntu Touch corner

• UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 109. Dalton is back and joined by Alfred and Marius to discuss OTA 19, current challenges around Miracast and Miroil. Also: A new stable release for the PinePhone is going to land this week, yay!
• anino207: Early Preview of Waydroid on Ubuntu Touch (Pixel 3a). Waydroid is just soo smooth, even for gaming!
• Wolf Fur Programming: Ubuntu Touch Oneplus 6.

Sailfish OS

• Adam Pigg: Pinephone /home encryption using SailfishOS. I missed this last week, but it's just to nice!

Shorts

• 5ilver: Pinephone mms via matrix. If you want to know how to do this, ask on Reddit. I guess that this uses MMMPuppet, but I am not sure.
• Sailfish official: xz2 sailfish os 4.2.0.21. Don't believe that channel name!

Stuff I did

LINMOBapps

This week I've been tackling the "overhaul" milestone, a bit more, 4 of 7 issues could be closed. Also, a few apps were added, and more are to follow shortly:

• Run Free!, a running log app built for Phosh with some basic analysis of your running schedule, submitted by its creator — thank you very much again, Hank!
• Plano, a cartesian plane calculator that uses GTK4 and libadwaita
• GNOME Software,
• GNOME Calculator and
• MiTubo, a native (QML) video player for YouTube videos.

Because of a few apps that were archived the week before (don't worry, they are going to show up on LinuxPhoneApps too), the total app count of apps.csv is now at 314.

Read here what (else) happened on LINMOBapps this week. And please do contribute!

Linux Phone Apps

Not much happened here, aside from thinking about how to implement a few things. I am hoping to make some progress with this project on the coming saturday.