LINux on MOBile

The third one of the year: A new release of pmbootstrap (postmarketOS's swiss army knife), KVM on the FuriLabs FLX1, improvements for etnaviv, PureOS Crimson ready for brave people to try out, Flathub now lists mobile-friendly in a new "on the go" segment and more! Enjoy!

Commentary in italics.

Worth Reading

• Purism: PureOS Crimson Development Report: December 2024. If you're brave enough (or have a spare L5), you can now try it!
• feaneron: Flatpak 1.16 is out!
• GitHub Changelog: Linux arm64 hosted runners now available for free in public repositories (Public Preview). I really hope this helps with more apps being built (and available) for aarch64 Linux (especially Flutter apps)!

Hardware

• liliputing: This DIY PDA has an E Ink display, ESP32 processor, and a thumb keyboard

Worth Watching

• TechHut: MODULAR Linux Handheld running Debian - mecha Comet
• Continuum Gaming: Continuum Gaming E452: SFOS – Sailcord
• PlumCasualties: The Pinephone - 5 Years Later
• Siva Bharani Udaya Selvan: Ubuntu Touch in Poco X3 series by UBports - Linux na chumma vaaa #SBUS
• CodingBite: "PostmarketOS 24.12 Released: New Features, Device Support, and Performance Boosts!"
• Bohdan HI-TECH: Jolla С2 / Jolla Phone 2 review: a giant Linux phone

Worth Noting

• Shatur: There is now an 'on the go' section in Flathub to promote mobile apps. You can find it when scrolling through flathub.org, and then go to https://flathub.org/apps/collection/mobile/1. Want your app listed there? See MetaInfo guidelines | Flathub Documentation and Update AppStream metadata with Flathub device support (#34).
• NekoCWD: "Poco F1 with @postmarketOS image postprocessing […] awesome work, magdesign #mobilelinux #photography #postprocessing"
• austriancoder: 🚀 Mesa 24.03 + etnaviv = Multiple Render Targets (MRTs)!The latest release of Mesa 24.03 brings exciting news for the etnaviv GPU driver: support for Multiple Render Targets (MRTs)!Learn how @igalia made it happen: https://christian-gmeiner.info/2025-01-16-mrt/#etnaviv #mesa. Context: Both the Librem 5 and the upcoming mecha Comet use a Vivante GPU - and thus the etnaviv.
• fakeshell: "someone in the chat asked if the flx1 can run a KVM machine and my initial thought process was well, probably not out of the box since during the boot process EL2 is locked and even if kernel has KVM, it will never initialize correctly.so today after finishing my daily tasks i decided to take a stab at our bootloader, preloader and trustzone's source code. Lo and behold, turns out i did indeed cook. Docker support will land in the next release too!"
  • doggestman: "@fakeshell Absolutely nutty phone, was privileged enough to try this out for myself and I managed to get Manjaro arm to boot. You won't be running steam on this yet but the potential is massive. I don't think a pocketable kvm capable device has even existed till now!"
• emersion: Support for the new Wayland screen capture protocol has been merged in wlroots! Next step: implement individual window capture https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots/-/merge_requests/4545
• Purism community: Optimizing Battery Management on Linux Phones: A Dive into PinePhone and Librem 5
• #MobileLinux: Man i wish the #pinetab2 was faster. This rk3566 seems to be too slow for everyday use.#mobilelinux
• r/linux: Linux on A7-A8X
• r/linux: "Is it just me, or is the gnome ecosystem as a whole suddenly moblie viable?"
• r/linux: "I have been daily driving a Linux smartphone for 18 months, AMA"
• thibaultamartin: "TIL about the HardBreak Wiki, a collection of resources to understand and hack hardware. https://www.hardbreak.wiki/ #hacking #hardware #wiki"
• @linmob@fosstodon.org: #LinuxMobile at #FOSDEM2025: To hopefully help with #FOSDEM planning, here's another event page on linmob.net: https://linmob.net/fosdem2025/

Events

• tbernard: "We're starting off the new year with an exciting new edition of Unboiling The Ocean! Join us for a discussion about peer-to-peer UX and threat models. […] Join us on Monday January 27 at 19:00 at @offline in Neukölln! #p2panda #aardvark #gnome #berlin"
• Drew DeVaults blog: No billionaires at FOSDEM
  • FOSDEM 2025: Statement on planned protests during the upcoming FOSDEM 2025
  • craftyguy: Don't quiet quit #fosdem because they decided to platform a sleezy billionaire tech bro.Show up and let them know you're disappointed 🥳. I agree with this. Don't skip FOSDEM for Jack.

More Software News

Distributions

• Mobian (Mastodon): Mobian now officially supports the original PineTab (again, support was removed a few years ago)!Installation instructions (for those of you who still have an original PineTab) can be found here: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/PINE64/PineTab
• Mobian Wiki: Mobian
• postmarketOS: "pmbootstrap 3.2.0 has been tagged! :terminal: * Supports building pmOS + systemd packages and images (now that it has been merged into pmOS edge!)* pmb "flasher boot" now works for fastboot-bootpart* Fixes for Android recovery zip, the aportgen feature and various smaller fixes* A LOT of code quality improvements that will make future maintenance easierThanks a lot to everybody who has contributed to this release! 💚https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/-/tags/3.2.0"
• cas: "yet again feeling the urge to build pmOS "flavours" for specific usecases…"

Apps

• postmarketOS: Apps by Category: Newbyte: /* Public transportation */ Fix Alpine package name for Railway
• anderslund: #pumoku progress:* Lots of UI polishing* finishing screen improvements* hints and stats seems to appear at some point :p* Progress indication, in digit keys and global* Landscape orientation support (in progress)* Nice icon* ... and morePumoku is a #plasmamobile #sudoku app, for #linuxphones (and other mobile devices), not yet released but maybe in a not so distant future?
• zerodogg: Weekend project: adding medication time tracking to Migraine Log. "Also made a Linux port of it. It's a bit rough right now, but it works. Makes development easier, and I want to get it on @linmob platforms in time."
• jane: "#PolyculeClient is getting more and more an enterprise-grade application: a new release is out (0.0.4) […] Actual release notes: https://gitlab.com/polycule_client/polycule/-/tags/v0.0.4 made possible by @braid"
• afranke: And the award for the most recent release goes to… #Fractal 10.rc! https://discourse.gnome.org/t/fractal-10-rc-released/26254#GNOME #Matrix
• nekohayo: Can anyone running #GNOMECalendar on @postmarketOS / #LinuxMobile find a way to trigger this #CalDAV synchronization backend heisenbug reliably enough to provide the requested debug logs or some proof of what is actually going on? Otherwise, our hands are tied: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-calendar/-/issues/929#note_2318261 #PostMarketOS
• QuadRadical: :D just published my first flathub package https://flathub.org/apps/io.github.mimoguz.TriPeaks-GDX#flatpak #flathub #linMob #linuxMobile

Gnome Ecosystem

• This Week in GNOME: #183 Updated Flatpak
• flyingpimonster: "Blueprint 0.16.0 is available! This release works with newer versions of PyGObject, adds a bunch of features and QoL improvements to the language server, and includes a bunch of bug fixes.Full changelog on the release page: https://gitlab.gnome.org/jwestman/blueprint-compiler/-/releases/v0.16.0#gnome #GTK"

Phosh

• Phosh.mobi: Phosh 0.44.1
• agx: A while back Adam (@CalcProgrammer1) built a #phosh plugin that adds a quick setting allowing to switch output resolutions (https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Phosh/phosh/-/merge_requests/1601). I cleaned that up a little to avoid shelling out (so phosh can have an idea what's going on) and added a status page and we were just be able to land that on main:#LinuxMobile #gtk
• #phosh: Having run #phosh 0.44.1 for testing just made me realize the small improvements we have already queued up for 0.45, like: why didn't this close automatically, where's that quick setting? Moving back to next
• #phosh: ولی از نظر کاربری یک سر و گردن بالاتر از میزکارهای موبایل است؛ البته من فقط تجربهٔ #phosh را دارم ولی حدس میزنم #پلاسما موبایل و … هم همینطور باشند.#اندروید #گنو #لینوکس #لینوکس_موبایل

Plasma Ecosystem

• Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: Getting Plasma 6.3 in Great Shape
• Carl Schwan et al.: This Week in KDE Apps: Usability, accessibility, and supercharging the Fediverse
• KDE Mentorship: Season Of KDE 2025 Projects
• Volker Krause: Going to FOSDEM 2025
• Carl Schwan: Kirigami Addons 1.7.0

Sxmo

• fdlamotte: "Here are the main menus for the sxmo_gshock.py script I'm using on my phone running #sxmo This script evolved a lot since the last time I wrote about it, I can now get reminders or setup alarms from my calendar using khal and change timezone using #mepo I'd like to keep it simple, so it should not evolve much from now"
• fdlamotte: "I was quite pleased with my worldtime menu for sxmo_gshock so I extracted it as a standalone script for #sxmo https://git.sr.ht/~fdlamotte/sxmo_wtIt just launches a clock for the selected timezone, but its quite handy to be able to pick it from the map thanks to #mepo"

Sailfish OS

• flypig: "If you're heading to #FOSDEM with a #SailfishOS phone there's a new FOSDEM25 app for this year with: 1. Improved higher-res map of ULB. 2. Improved guestbook. Grab it from OpenRepos or (hopefully, eventually) Chum:https://openrepos.net/content/flypig/fosdem25" Now also on Chum (thanks @piggz!)https://build.sailfishos.org/package/show/sailfishos:chum/harbour-fosdem25
• pi_crew: 💬 @signalapp client #whisperfish for #sailfishos seemed not to be able to send or receive messages anymore in the evening of jan 15.Thanks to @rubdos for hotfixing. The new version Whisperfish 0.6.0.beta_.33-1 comes with some other improvements for more stable connectivity with automatic reconnect and a new button "reconnect" in dropdown menu for less manual app restarts while it should be needed less from now on.The API change has also impact for mollysocket @mollyim https://github.com/whisperfish/libsignal-service-rs/pull/351
• adampigg: Guide to installing the current development builds of #SailfishOS on the @volla Quintus https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/the-volla-quintus-algiz-thread/21633
• explit: "#Jolla #SailfishOS 5 brings new package for Ethernet. Now you could could use your USB C Ethernet Dongle with your phone, and it works!"
• piggz: The @PINE64 #Pinetab2 #Linux #tablet running #SailfishOS with the new Gecko 91 based browser worked on by @flypig

Ubuntu Touch

• UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 154
• Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 155 available now.
• UBports - Development - Issues: Port to mir2
• fredldotme: I went ahead and turned the previous git-confined into a new git-scm Snap package for providing the regular CLI Git tool to users of Ubuntu Core & Ubuntu Touch.This should provide a full-fledged Git experience from the CLI like any other way of obtaining it. Have fun!https://snapcraft.io/git-scm
• #UbuntuTouch: A smaller #UbuntuTouch device of course will do as well 😊#linux #bq #AquarisE45 #isodrive #manjaro #hp #compaq
• #UbuntuTouch: I really like #isodrive on my #UbuntuTouch #tablet 🥰#linux #bq #LinuxMint #manjaro #nixos #mxlinux #hp #compaq
• #UbuntuTouch: Snap support had already landed on #utnext by @UBports.And today a fix has landed that restores functionality of the #tailscale snap (among others).24.04 based #UbuntuTouch is going from strength to strength!

Maemo Leste

• #MaemoLeste: This week's donation went to a software developer that goes by "parazyd". They contribute to Devuan, darkrenaissance, and Maemo Leste among other projects.They have a personal website here: https://www.parazyd.org/They have a profile at Github:https://github.com/parazydIf you wish to help them financially they accept donations through Github as well as a variety of crypto options on their personal site.#github #devuan #maemoleste #darkrenaissance #foss

Nemo Mobile

• #NemoMobile: @martijnbraam this is the boring part. Question is how many failed builds you get in the end and how to fix them. After that comes fixing of errors in runtime. Still a huge amount of work. Try to add #nemomobile (-;

Kernel

• phone-devel: [PATCH v14 0/4] Initial Marvell PXA1908 support
• Phoronix: The Most Exciting Kernel Optimizations, New Hardware Support & Other Linux 6.13 Features

Stack

• Tow-Boot: 2023.07-007 again, but with PINE64 PineTab (A64)
• Phoronix: GNU Coreutils 9.6 Released With Changes For POSIX 2024, More AVX2 & AVX-512 Use

Matrix

• Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-01-17

Thanks

Huge thanks to Plata for the nifty set of Python scripts that speed up collecting links from feeds by a lot.

Something missing? Want to contribute?

If your project's cool story (or your awesome video or nifty blog post or ...) is missing and you don't want that to happen again, please just put it into the hedgedoc pad for the next one! Since I am collecting many things there, this get's you early access if you will ;-) If you just stumble on a thing, please put it in there too - all help is appreciated!