LINux on MOBile

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

New releases of Phosh and Portfolio, Element video chat on Fedora on PinePhone and more! Commentary in italics.

Software development and releases

• Portfolio 0.9.10 has been announced. This file manager gets better and better!
• Phosh 0.9.0 has been released. It now supports GNOME's OSD DBus protocol, indicates microphone hardware kill switch state, read the full release notes for more.

Worth noting

• @calebccff: Quick video of Phosh running on the OnePlus 6 with Linux 5.11 and postmarketOS!.
• Purism have made some progress with hardware enablement of the Librem 5 back camera.

Worth reading

• Plasma Mobile: Plasma Mobile February Update. Impressive progress.
  • Linux Smartphones: Plasma Mobile updates make the user interface more customizable (and a bit more Android-like). Brad's take!
• NXos.org: Maui Apps 1.2.1 released, and more!. I really need to check whether all of these apps are already listed on LINMOBapps.
• Purism: Charging the Librem 5. Note how the current numbers are somewhat spun into a success.
• Purism: My First Week of Librem 5 Convergence. I have not used the Librem 5 in convergence mode a lot yet, but this does not match my experience. I mean, yes, you can definitely use it as a convergent device and there's a definite advantage to having one device and not having to sync data all the time, but 3GBs of RAM are just seriously limiting compared to a somewhat current laptop when it comes to web browsing alone. It's doable, but it definitely requires behavorial adjustments to make it work.
• Purism: Librem 5 News Summary: February 2021. A small update without too much new information.
• Purism: Disassemble Librem 5. Nicely done!
• Linux Smartphones: Now you can make video calls on a PinePhone (but it’s very much a work in progress). I doubt that running your own webserver is necessary. The new kernel, the env variables in the launcher are likely the key to getting this working. I'll spend some time on this next week.
• Spaetzblog: Customizing the Librem5 ringtone (works for Mobian too). If you want to change your ringtone on a Phosh distro, read this.

Worth watching

• Kevin Veroneau: Stock Mobian on PinePhone experience. A demo of wf-recorder recording the onboarding process on Mobian.
• Kevin Veroneau: Running virt-manager on the PinePhone. The PinePhone as a sys admin tool. Nice!
• iMakeFOSS: Interview with @imakefoss curator Carl Schwan. Carl writes a lot of software for the PinePhone.

Unboxing corner

• AnotherKiwiGuy: PinePhone Unboxing & First Impressions. Nice first impression video!
  • AnotherKiwiGuy: PinePhone Convergence Testing. A short follow-up video demoing convergence.
• Marcus Adams: Pinephone Mobian Community Edition Unboxing.
• Niccolò Ve: KDE Community Edition PinePhone Unboxing and First Try!. Nice unboxing! While you're at it, check out Niccolo's Kirigami tutorial, too.
• Misc: Purism Librem 5 Evergreen Unboxing in Deutsch #1. German Unboxing video on the Librem 5, that does a great job at explaining the project and includes some light disassembly. Use automatic translated subtitles.

Tutorial corner

• TechHut: Distro-Hopping a Linux Phone! - How to Flash an OS on the PinePhone.. I guess I finally need to cut my old live stream so that we finally have a flashing howto showcasing GNOME Disks!
• Privacy & Tech Tips: Howto: SDR/GQRX On Pinetab/Pinephone, Listen To Voice Transmissions (Filtering, Modes, Gain/Squelch). Great SDR how to!
• Privacy & Tech Tips: Howto: Open Pinetab Cover (Safely) + Adding SDR Antenna Port + LoRa Radio Tests (GQRX Linux). Great PineTab and SDR how to!
• Caleb Connolly: Guide: How to build and install postmarketOS on your OnePlus 6/6T. Great tutorial by Caleb!

Stuff I did

Content

I published one video and one blog post this week. The video is called "Sailfish OS 4.0.1.48 on the PinePhone", and it's just about that. Watch it on DevTube, Odysee or YouTube.

Please make sure to carefully read the description, as this release of SailfishOS is not yet available as an image and you need to upgrade manually.

LINMOBapps

I also wrote a blog post about the progress with LINMOBapps in January and February and about what's to come in the future. That aside, I did not add any apps, just added something to the task list. I was very happy to see a merge request that added a couple postmarketOS packages — thanks Alexander! A little more maintenance happened. I also added some more PKGBUILDs. Please do contribute!