LINux on MOBile

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

A new postmarketOS beta release, great DanctNIX changes, GTK4, Sxmo and Phosh releases and Nemo Mobile progress! Commentary in italics.

Software development and releases

• Arch Linux ARM has seen another release. Since then, they've added another important change and now use eg25-manager as the modem driver, which makes the phone part better and more reliable. Also, siglo, the InfiniTime companion, has been packaged.
• postmarketOS beta 21.03 has been announced and released. This beta branch based on Alpine Linux 3.13 is what was originally called stable. You don’t have the frequent updates you get with edge, but also less breakage.
• Phosh 0.10.0 has been released, full release notes. Another great release of Phosh. I had almost zero crashes since phoc 0.7.0 and Phosh now improves on many of its dialogues. Awesome progress!
• Sxmo 1.4.1 and 1.4.0 have been released, making it more user friendly. Make sure to also read Brad's post and watch Martijm's video on Sxmo that are linked below.
• Nemo Mobile have announced and released a new Manjaro based image.

Worth noting

• SIP in Calls is nigh!

April Foolery (no spoilers)

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Worth reading

• Anandtech: Arm Announces Armv9 Architecture: SVE2, Security, and the Next Decade. ARMv8 was about 64bit, ARMv9 is supposed to be about security. If you me allow me a guess, this will introduce proprietary security components FOSS-heads won't be able to trust — think Intel Management Engine, but ARM. But performance is supposed to increase notably, which is a good thing.
• Adrien Plazas: Introducing Libadwaita. Now, we had libadwaita mentioned before on LINMOBapps, but now it's officially announced. I think that this is a great idea that will benefit both, the wider GTK ecosystem and GNOME.
• GTK Development Blog: GTK 4.2.0. A new GTK release with a new renderer, see these tweets. With this, it's cross platform support and libadwaita, GTK4 will have a nice future.
• Linux Smartphones: Sxmo 1.4 released with keyboard, display, text rendering improvements for the lightweight Linux phone UI. Nice improvements. I look forward to trying it.
• TuxPhones: Tens of Nvidia Tegra devices now run mainline Linux thanks to the "grate" project. Sustainable device lifetimes despite NVidia. Awesome!
• Linux Smartphones: Ubuntu Touch port for the Fairphone 3 running Android 10. Great to see Ubuntu Touch landing on the Fairphone 3.
• UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 97. The blog post and audio version of last weeks Q&A.
• nss.ee: This blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem. This is on the stock modem firmware of the PinePhone. Remember: The modem has it's own Cortex A7 core, which is nothing to sneeze at.
• FOSS2go: How to Add a Custom Background in Phosh?. Nice how to!
• Purism: Snitching on Phones That Snitch On You. While I wish that the Librem 5 was as good at more regular phone use cases, this is an impressive case for Linux Phones.
• Kirsle.net: VNC Server for Pinephone. Great overview and how to!

Worth listening

• postmarketOS podcast: #4 EG25-G, v21.03, Why Alpine, mobile-config-firefox. Great podcast, give it a listen!

Worth watching

• Martijn Braam: SXMO PinePhone Demo. Sxmo 1.4 demoed.
• PizzaLovingNerd: webOS Is Back! (PinePhone OSes: LuneOS). Nice video by PizzaLovingNerd.
• Newbyte: PinePhone memory clock speed comparison with postmarketOS. Interestingly, there's virtually no difference in Firefox startup speed visible between the different RAM clocks.
• E. Matt Armstrong: PinePhone PostmarketOS Part 1, 2, 3: Apps, 4: Themes. A couple videos about postmarketOS Plasma Mobile.
• E. Matt Armstrong: PinePhone Arch Distro Spin Part 1 Setup and Apps. Nice DanctNIX walkthrough.
• Sk4zZi0uS: PinePhone Challenge - One Month as a Daily Driver starting now -2021-04-01. A bit long, but I am curious how the months is going to go.
• techexplains: installing full linux on android hardware (samsung galaxy s8) (postmarket os guide). Nice tutorial of a postmarketOS installation.

Stuff I did

Content

None, sorry.

Random

I switched my install over to postmarketOS edge this week, because I finally wanted to experience that EG25-manager goodness, only to see it landing hours later on DanctNIX. I will likely go back eventually, but for now I want to play with postmarketOS a bit more.

LINMOBapps

I added four apps to LINMOBapps: Sums, a calculator; Characters, an Emoji picker; Mousai, a Shazam clone; and Tubefeeder, a GTK+Rust YouTube client. Make sure to check them all out! See here what (else) happened. Please do contribute!