LINux on MOBile

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

A new postmarketOS Tweak tool, Shortwave 2.0, JingOS on Smartphones and more! Commentary in italics.

Software development and releases

• postmarketOS Tweaks has been unveiled, a GNOME Tweaks like app for postmarketOS. This is great, and I hope that other distributions follow and add a few more features like e.g. scaling.
• Felix Häcker: New Shortwave release. I already updated the LINMOBapps listing.

Worth noting

• FOSS2go: LG will open the source code of their phones? [Petition]. LG have announced that they will be leaving the smartphone market, this petition asks them to not turn their phones into e-waste.

Worth reading

• Mobian blog: The road to the Mobian Community Edition (part 1). Looking forward to part 2!
• Linux Smartphones: Video: Linux-based tablet operating system JingOS is coming to phones. This is, as JingOS in general, quite interesting. It's still early days, no portrait mode yet. If you're interested in more on JingOS, make sure to watch this great video.
  • OMG!Ubuntu: Is a JingOS Linux Phone Coming? This Video Hints at the Possibility. Joey's take.
• Purism: Librem 5 News Summary: March 2021. A lot of progress. Sadly nothing definitive on future deliveries, yet.
• Gamey: 5 amazing PINEPHONE& Librem5 Apps [DanctNIX Arch ARM]. Nice post about 5 actually great apps!

Worth listening

• PineTalk 006: Pine for You Ezra and I made another one of these. I hope listening is as much fun as is making it. And please ask a few questions or give us other food for thought we can discuss!

Worth watching

• Purism: The Simplicity of Making Librem 5 Apps. This is why I am so excited for Linux phones.
• Martijn Braam: postmarketOS tweaks GTK app. Nifty app!
• Calling All Platforms Tech: PinePhone Review. Nice review.
• Privacy & Tech Tips: Pinephone/Linux Security: Create A Hidden Encrypted Volume Inside A Video File Using ZuluCrypt. Nice idea! Now the PinePhone only needs proper video recording, so that this is more plausible. ;-)
• Privacy & Tech Tips: Linux Lesson: Bash Scripting: Taking Input/Output, Variables, Pipes, Background + Automatic Upgrades. Not super phone related, but totally warranted and a great resource.
• E. Matt Armstrong: PinePhone Arch Distro Spin Part 2 Apps and Usage, Part 3 yay the AUR helper, Part 4 Installing from the AUR. Great to see old tutorial posts being used!
• Sk4zZi0uS: PinePhone Challenge 1 week update (software I use, tricks and fanboying) - 2021-04-08. I did not manage to watch the entirety of this, but I must say that it's brave to choose Plasma Mobile at this point in my most honest opinion. I guess I need to go back to it and see how it is these days.
• JingOS: Developer Update | JingOS v0.6 first boot demo on a smartphone, Developer Update | First Multimedia demo on JingOS ARM smartphone. That device reminds me a lot of the Gigaset GS290 I have, but I've seen plenty other devices using similar looking screens. Most likely they are using a Unisoc SoC here, too, which likely is a clear hint at a vendor kernel/libhybris based stack.
• UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 98. Another Q&A, I bet it's interesting—sadly I did not manage to watch it yet.

Stuff I did

Content

None, sorry.

Random

• I switched back to DanctNIX, this time full disk encrypted, after managing to blow up my pmOS distribution on an upgrade.
• I've played with Librem 5 convergence running PureOS Byzantium, and had to fool around with Plasma.
• I've also started working on migrating this blog over to Zola, another static site generator. I hope to be done with that before May.

LINMOBapps

I added three apps to LINMOBapps, so that we have a total of 249 apps right now: postmarketOS Tweaks (see above); Public Transport, a public transport companion for Germany; and Simple Diary, a markdown-supporting diary app. See here what (else) happened. Please do contribute!