Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (04/2025): Nexx[sic!]-gen hardware by Liberux
Table of Contents
This week: A new piece of Mobile Linux Hardware gets attention early, a Sailfish OS Community News collection (Jolla C2 available again), a Ubuntu Touch Q&A, LinuxPhoneApps.org share their progress of the last quarter of 2024, Nemo Mobile getting a redesign, a bunch of Linux kernel news, and more!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- David Hamner: Linux Phone Takeover | When AI Writes Our Apps
- CNX Software: Linux 6.13 Release - Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: New Listings of Q4/2024: Adding 32 Apps, Three Games and other improvements.
- strits: Is Manjaro ARM dead?. According to PINE64.com, PinePhones are still being shipped with Manjaro ARM. So sad.
- FuriLabs: 2024 in Retrospect
- FuriLabs: FOSDEM 25
- zerwuerfnis.org: No more Linux Mobile
- Martijn Braam: BodgeOS pt.4: A working browser.
- Drew DeVaults blog: Join us to discuss transparency and governance at FOSDEM '25
Hardware
- liberux.net: The Linux Phone You've Been Waiting For
- liliputing.com: Liberux NEXX is a Linux smartphone with a RK3588S chip, 32GB RAM, and a 5G modem (crowdfunding)
- BUF0: "@linmob @awai WOW, I think our little secret has been revealed, we hope that in a short time you will be able to see the first functional prototypes. We are working very hard on it, by the way, all our designs, both hardware and software, will be free. At the moment the web is a first version, some things will be modified.".
- BUF0: "One more small leak, this is the development board we have been working on. We hope to show videos soon working on it.😋". Overall: The Liberux Nexx looks really promising, but it is early days. One important challenge, aside from battery life, to properly solve will be the thermal design. As the PinePhone Pro and Librem 5 show, SoC speed is only worth something, if the device does not thermally throttle to soon - both are so much more useful especially in a convergent setting if you cool them down.
- c/LinuxPhones: "Liberux NEXX is a Linux smartphone with a RK3588S chip, 32GB RAM, and a 5G modem (crowdfunding)"
- Bobby Borisov: Liberux NEXX Is a New (Still in Development) Linux Phone
- David Hamner: Battle of the Linux Phones In 2025
Worth Watching
- Continuum Gaming: Continuum Gaming E452: SFOS – Sailcord
- UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 157. Repackaging Ubuntu Touch Apps as Snaps becoming easy, App Updates, and a hackathon (hoping this is the correct link).
- orailnoor: How to Install Native Linux on Phone | PostmarketOS Installation Guide
- mikehenson5: Pine64 PinePhonePro Screen Replacement
- David Hamner: Linux Phone Takeover | When AI Writes Our Apps
- David Hamner: Next Gen Linux Phones
- Om Narayan Singh: Official Linux Support for Android is Here • Google's New Year Gift for Linux Lovers
- soulscircuit: Pilet: The Portable Open-Source Mini-Computer
- Jolla: Jolla C2: Next batch now available
Worth Noting
- fakeshell: "Initially the plan for bootman was to make it split a partition from LVM and reuse that for dual boot, but then @doggestman brought up sd card for installation storage which sounded good, so i decided to make it work. now, it can now boot from that too.This will also allow for installation of other operating systems such as SailfishOS or Ubuntu Touch when they get ported over to the device, so its not limited to FuriOS only.#flx1 #furios #furilabs #FuriPhoneFLX1 #LinuxOnMobile #LinuxMobile"
- tuxdevices: "Just a FYI, #Lomiri (Unity 8) being merged in #postmarketOS is a massive achievement.Essentially, this tightens the gap between pmOS and the near-Android Ubuntu Touch UI that lots of people liked. Thanks @justsoup!https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merge_requests/4496"
- thanos: "I've set up offpunk on my @PINE64 #pinephone pro, and started downloading sizeable portions of the gemini network. it's working reallllly well so far. I also have found the kennedy search engine, and a gemini frontend to wikipedia. loving all of this :3"
- okias: "Mon 3rd Feb, just a day after the #FOSDEM we'll have small HackDay in Brussels — hopefully making more cameras run well on #Linux, #embedded, #postmarketOS & #Mobian If you're interested to help with hacking around #LinuxKernel CCS, #libcamera or #Qualcomm CAMSS (not limited to) ping us on #qcom-camss OFTC IRC channel or here."
- cas: daaaamn wine 10.0 lets you run x86 windows software on ARM64 platforms and only the windows software itself is emulated (through e.g. FEX) that's frickin dope
- Logical_Error: Lifesaving Feature there’s one lifesaving feature that i really like on ios: pressing the power button 5 times in quick succession immediately calls emergency servicesim not sure if this is exists for #MobileLinux users (phosh, kde plasma, etc.) but it’s probably something that should be copied and maybe even expanded on (etc. running a shell script that texts mom). Agreed. (Although, on a second thought, Sxmo may already have a hook for this ;-) .)
- r/linux: Linux on mobile?
- r/linux: I want a decent GNU/Linux phone
- Purism community: Crimson backports unofficial
- Purism community: Mobile-config-thunderbird is pretty good
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #184 Upcoming Freeze
- Planet GNOME: JJ-FZF 0.25.0: Major New Features
- feborg.es: Time to write proposals for GSoC 2025 with GNOME!
- jrb: Crosswords 0.3.14
- Phoronix: GNOME Triple Buffering Now Works With Direct Scanout & VRR
- Phoronix: GNOME Showtime Video Player Won't Be Ready Until GNOME 49
Phosh
- #phosh: We had a discussion in matrix (kicked off by @fizzo) if we could make telegram-desktop's notification adhere to #phosh's full/quiet/silent profile. Turns out (https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/28895) that the app detects the notifications servers sound capability already so with https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Phosh/phosh/-/merge_requests/1618 and the corresponding #feedbackd MR this should work. As I'm not a #telegram user, testing feedback would be welcome.
- #phosh: anybody know why the #phosh app grid in the overview is vertically centered now? if you don't have enough apps to fill the screen, it looks a bit janky
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: Fancy Time Zone Picker
- Carl Schwan et al.: This Week in KDE Apps
- KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.3 Beta Release
- KDE Mentorship: Season Of KDE 2025 Projects
- Qt blog: Qt Quick Style Generator: Automating Qt Quick Styling with Figma
- Qt blog: Qt Creator 15.0.1 released
- Qt blog: Top Contributors of 2024
- Konqi: Hello everybody! I have not seen this video before, this is Pilet mini computer, to use it as you see fit. The device looks awesome, and runs Plasma Mobile! How about that! 📱💻🖥️ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe-sZGGoloA #OpenSource #FOSS #PlasmaMobile @kde #KonqueringTheWorld. Video linked above.
- camiloh: "With the new control Notification, it is much simpler and easier to dispatch notifications with MauiKit. To find more about MauiKit controls check out the documentation and examples. @mauiproject https://api.kde.org/mauikit/mauikit/html/index.html"
Sxmo
- #sxmo: Figured out subscribing to subscribe to rss feeds in #offpunk. Gonna use this to get news. Also adding a #sxmo hook on the #pinephonepro to automatically sync offpunk the second a network connection goes up.
- #sxmo: 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
- Community News - Sailfish OS Forum: Sailfish Community News, 23rd January 2025 - Jolla C2 next batch available
- jolla: "Jolla C2: Next batch now available Exciting news for the Sailfish OS community and all Linux enthusiasts: a fresh batch of Jolla C2 smartphones is now available for order at https://shop.jolla.com/. Shipments start in February.Don’t wait too long – these devices are in high demand, and availability is limited. Secure your Jolla C2 from this new batch today and join the movement to reclaim control over your smartphone and apps.Experience the power of a true Linux phone with Sailfish OS, opt-in to Android apps if you wish or even run solutions like microG, all in your full freedom and utmost control.Ready to reclaim control of your own phone? Order your Jolla C2 now and get it in February!"
- adampigg: Kernel 6.13 is available in #SailfishOS for both the @PINE64 PP and PPP ... for PP, please try the new rtw88 wlan driver. I get similar speeds on fast.com on both the PP and PPP side by side.
Ubuntu Touch
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 157 call for questions
- fredldotme: "Little fact on the side: The resulting .snap file is mere 32KB small, since everything else is mostly residing in lomiri-ui-toolkit-core24."
- fredldotme: "I've invested some time in making Ubuntu Touch apps available on more targets through an example Snapcraft project, starting right from the default C++ Clickable project and extending it by Snap Packaging.This also allowed for the lomiri-ui-toolkit-core24 to grow, both in capabilities and correctness for a Snap environment.If you also want to see more of your favorite Ubuntu Touch apps on the Ubuntu Desktop then go ahead and look at this example right here: https://gitlab.com/fredldotme/snap-packaged-ubuntu-touch-example-app/-/tree/main?ref_type=heads"
Nemo Mobile
- Nemo Mobile UX team: Nemo redesign part 1. Nice to see some more activity on the Nemo Mobile side!
Distributions
- strits: Is Manjaro ARM dead?
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): pmbootstrap 3.2.0 has been tagged! * 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
- postmarketOS pmaports issues: pmaport for ubports-installer
- postmarketOS pmaports issues: Blockers for systemd in v25.06
- Mobian Wiki: Mobian
Apps
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: New Listings of Q4/2024: Adding 32 Apps, Three Games and other improvements.
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Timer
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Haguichi
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Chronograph
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Games: TriPeaks
- postmarketOS: Apps by Category: Clygro: update dillo information
- agx: I've tagged version 0.3.1 of #livi (a little video player targeting #LinuxMobile): https://gitlab.gnome.org/guidog/livi/-/tags/v0.3.1It mostly happened because I forgot to update the metainfo for 0.3.0 (which makes us look outdated on #flathub) 🤦♂️ . But there's one change still: livi now supports surface suspend so saves CPU cycles when the window is occluded (if the Wayland compositor supports it (#phosh will support that from 0.45. onwards).#gtk #gstreamer
- anderslund: […] I have had time and energy for taking a look at #pumoku this weekend. The initial interface for the qqwing sudoku generator/solver is functional, so that pumoku can generate puzzles and check/solve userprovided ones. Qqwing has a rather rough grader, with only four levels of which the hardest may provide games with no singles to start with and up to pure guessing, so I have started fine-graining that a bit, and looking at adding some more details to the solver at some point. It feels good though, it worked about as I thought it would, and I'm slowly remembering how to write C++ without too much (static_cast) grief :p#sudoku #pumoku #plasmamobile #kirigami #linuxphone #fossphone
- pi_crew: This is going to be an impressive Gnome mail app - Envelope by @felinira https://gitlab.gnome.org/felinira/envelope Just going to package it for #NixOS and hopefully soon @postmarketOS 🤗
- firefoxnightly: [Nightly Blog] New Year New Tab – These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 175 https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2025/01/24/new-year-new-tab-these-weeks-in-firefox-issue-175/
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH v2 0/9] Modem support for MSM8226
- phone-devel: Re: SPI regression seen on ARM am335x in kernel 6.12.8 and 6.6.71
- CNX Software: Linux 6.13 Release - Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures
- Phoronix: Linux 6.14 To Switch From SHA1 To SHA512 For Module Signing By Default
- Phoronix: ISD: A New Interactive Way For systemd Management
- Phoronix: Much Faster Suspend & Resume For Some Systems With Linux 6.14
- Phoronix: Linux 6.14 Adds Support For Blaize BLZP1600, SpacemiT K1 & Snapdragon 8 Elite SoCs
- Phoronix: Several Linux DRM Drivers Orphaned Due To Developer Health
- Phoronix: Reduced SquashFS Memory Use With The Linux 6.14 Kernel, More NILFS2 Fixes
- Phoronix: New Sound Hardware Supported By The Linux 6.14 Kernel
Non-Linux
Stack
- Phoronix: Mesa 25.0 Gets A New Vulkan Layer For Limiting The Amount Of Reported vRAM
- hughsie: fwupd 2.0.4 and DBXUpdate-20241101
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-01-27
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!