LINux on MOBile

It's sunday. Now what happened since last sunday?

Pine64 January update, Mobian Community Edition, Librem5 shipping update and more. Commentary in italics.

Software development and releases

• FOSS2go: Portfolio 0.9.4, a simple file manager for linux phones has been released. Read the changelog for details.

Worth reading

• FOSS2go: Ubuntu Touch Release Candidate update for PinePhone and PineTab.
• LinuxSmartphones: Genode OS Framework is adding PinePhone support. This is not Linux, but that might make it even more interesting!
• Phoronix: GTK 4.0.1 Released With Many Bug Fixes, Better Media Acceleration. While this does not mean that we now get accelerated GTK4 on the PinePhone, it's nice to see progress.
• OMG!Ubuntu: First Look: Meet the New Linux Distro Inspired by the iPad. JingOS surely looks nice. It's heavily inspired by iPad OS and based on Ubuntu and (at least currently) Plasma Mobile. I just hope that they are going to be good open source citizens.

The January Update

• PINE64: January Update: Happy New Gear!. Nice update for the new year. The (IIRC) delays for some accessories are unfortunate, but Mobian is an excellent choice for the "last Community Edition". Customers are going to have a great out of the box experience! You can pre-order it now.
  • Mobian Blog: Announcing the PinePhone Mobian Community Edition. Mobian's part of the announcement. Great that they have a blog now!
  • LinuxSmartphones: PinePhone Mobian Community Edition goes up for pre-order Jan 18. Brad's take.
  • FOSS2go: Mobian will be the new OS in the PinePhone Community Edition. FOSS2go's take.

Purism corner

• Purism: Librem 5 Update: Shipping Estimates and CPU Supply Chain. I have not received an email yet, but I'll keep you posted.
• Purism: Purism and Linux 5.9 and Linux 5.10. Another update on Purism contributions to the Linux kernel, this time on more recent progress.
• Purism: App Spotlight: Dictonary. Dictionary is an old hat, but the instructions for hosting a local dictionary are helpful.

More Hardware

• LinuxSmartphones: Crowdfunded Astro Slide 5G smartphone ships in June, has a physical keyboard, and promises Linux support. A new device by Planet Computer. For their previous devices their Linux support has usually been Debian + XFCE + some dialer, which according to my sources has been a rather lackluster experience. Here's hope that they are going to do better with this new device.
• Liliputing: YARH.IO Micro 2 is an even smaller handheld Raspberry Pi PC. If you always wanted a relatively small Raspberry Pi 3B+ powered handheld, celebrate now!

Usage reports

• Crowdersoup: Mobian: One Week Of Use, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. Great series on the experience of using a BraveHeart PinePhone with Mobian.
• /u/bloggerdan: Pinephone as a daily driver? A Non-predetermined Amount of Time* with Mobian: Day 11, Day 12, Day 13, Day 14. Sad ending on Day 14.

Worth watching

• PINE64: January Update: Happy New Gear!. The excellent video version of PINE64's January update.
• muqtxdir: Portfolio: simple file manager for linux phones. A video about Portfolio.
• 太原利州: pinephone manjaro體驗. A chinese video for a change.
• Mota Khairullah: PineTab & PinePhone. Just another Unboxing.
• Daniel Rodriguez: iPhone 7 booting Ubuntu 20.04 (to GUI), iPhone 7 booting Ubuntu 20.04 (to tty/command line. This is thoroughly impressive. Go and read the reddit threads about this topic — this is a 16 year old dude that took an iPhone with broken NAND storage that went ahead and managed to boot Linux on it! He is going to use it as a webserver. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!
• Linux Lounge: A Look At Ubuntu Touch On The PinePhone. A nice look at Ubuntu Touch on the PinePhone.
• UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 92. In their first Q&A in 2021 they go into many changes that are on the roadmap. Qt 5.12 broke some tests by being a lot faster, the move to 20.04, indicator overhaul. Unfortunately, the kernelupgrade for the PinePhone is not imminent.

Stuff I did

Content

I made and uploaded two new videos:

• "Another look at Manjaro Lomiri on the PinePhone"
  • PeerTube,
  • LBRY,
  • and YouTube;
• and "Revisiting openSUSE on the PinePhone"
  • PeerTube,
  • LBRY,
  • and YouTube.

LINMOBapps

I am running a poll to get some information on what users want for the future of LINMOBapps. ¹ That aside, just a few additions and some maintenance happened. Please do contribute!

Random

I played with Plasma Mobile on Manjaro and OpenMandriva, tried to get GNOME Social to build (but it would not compile, even after I had managed to get all the dependencies in place and worked on new content that's not ready yet.