LINux on MOBile

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

Phosh and Squeekboard, Manjaro, DanctNIX and OpenSUSE see new releases, PINE64 show more PinePhone accessories and more! Commentary in italics.

Software development and releases

• phosh 0.10.1 has been released: Bug fixes auto rotation and more! Make sure to read the full release notes.
• The GNOME on Mobile virtual keyboard, Squeekboard, have announced a new release, 1.13.0. New features include Caps Lock, locale-flavoured terminal layouts and more. Read the full release notes.
• Arch Linux ARM/DanctNIX Mobile has also seen a new release, shipping, among other things, the new releases mentioned above.
• Manjaro have released new beta images for the PinePhone: Phosh beta 8 and Plasma Mobile beta 4.
• Manjaro have also brought their package manager Pamac to the PinePhone by using libhandy.
• OpenSUSE have silently published new PinePhone images with Phosh and Plasma Mobile.
• Biktor has a released a new version of his alternative, FOSS PinePhone Modem firmware. Make sure to also read the section on the Modem in PINE64's community update.

Hardware:

• TuxPhones: The RUHAcam is an open-source, 3D-printed Linux camera based on Raspberry Pi. Not a phone, but still interesting!
• Andrew M. designed a weighted PinePhone stand. Nice!

Worth noting

• An effort for a new Signal client for Linux Phones based on the Rust library libsignal-client was announced on the forums and on Reddit, then started as a Plasma Mobile app but eventually becoming a Kirigami adaption of Whisperfish, the Signal client for SailfishOS.
• If you are a fan of both, RetroArch and postmarketOS, rejoice!

Worth reading

• twongkee: Pinephone Megapixels vs cli ffmpeg. ffmpeg experiments are always fun.
• Gamey: My Pinephone daily driver setup!. Nice setup!
• Bhushan Shah: Walled Gardens. A few good thoughts on the new Signal effort above.
• FOSS2go: Manjaro ARM 21.04 released: new application for flashing images.
• Purism: App Showcase: Drawing. Nice app!
• Han Young: Season of KDE 2021 Status Report. Great!
• FOSS2go: TELEports for Pinephone has been fixed. Great to see improvements here!
• Qt Dev Loop: Introducing Qt Quick 3D Particles. Something to look forward to in Qt 6.
• PINE64: April Update: New Developments. Another big update. Sticking to PinePhone, there's news on the Beta Edition (on schedule), and it's accessories: The keyboard and fingerprint reader/Qi charging back cover are getting closer to release.
• Linux Smartphones: Ubuntu Touch for the PinePhone is moving to a new kernel for better hardware support. Brad highlights an important aspect of PINE64's community update here.
• UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 98 blog post. The written and audio release of last weeks Q&A.

Worth watching

• PINE64: April Update: New Developments. Once again, a great video by PizzaLovingNerd!
• Privacy & Tech Tips: Pine64 LoRa Radio Texting Long Range Using Low Power: Linux Gateway + Modules Including On Pinephone. A first look at PINE64's new LoRa products!
• Martijn Braam: Glacier WIP for postmarketOS Note that a few bugs have already been fixed since. I recently tried the "official" Manjaro based-devel image and had a slightly better, overall similar experience.
• Sk4zZi0uS: PinePhone Challenge 2 week update (Moving to Manjaro Phosh) - 2021-04-08 Nice ramblings, looking forward to his experience with Manjaro Phosh!
• E. Matt Armstrong: PinePhone Arch Distro Spin Part 5 More Apps. Nice continuation of a series.
• Hammad Farooq: Signal-Desktop-5.0.0 running on Pinephone. Running yes, working no. Make sure to read a related Reddit thread.

Stuff I did

Content

None, sorry. But there's hope for next week!

Random

• I tried to do something with the PineCube PINE64 sent me. And I am going to use it as a camera in my next live stream.
• Work on this blog's Zola migration continues: There are still years of posts to be looked at and frontmatter editing, the theme needs work (and a few decisions on features and questions like modern vs. minimal), and... and... But: I managed to get Zola running on my current hoster by compiling it in a CentOS 7 virtual machine and most importantly, I am still on schedule.

LINMOBapps

I added three apps to LINMOBapps, so that we have a total of 252 apps right now: Pamac (see above); Telegrand, a WIP GTK4/libadwaita Telegram client written in Rust; and Lith, a WeeChat client. I also a removed few things from the LINMOBapps repository and put them in their own repositories: APKBUILDs, PKGBUILDs and tweaks. See here what (else) happened. Please do contribute!