Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (05/2026): Farewell, FOSDEM!
Table of Contents
This past week: A lot of FOSDEM 2026 content, Kaidan 0.15.0 adds experimental audio/video calls (Jingle, Linux-only for now, NLnet-funded); libcamera 0.7.0 released; and Phosh Contributors Meeting 2026 registration opens. Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- All-Purpose Mat: Linux? On my phone??. Great write-up!
- Phoronix: Phosh Mobile Phone UI Making Progress On GTK4 Port
Worth Watching
- Continuum Gaming: Continuum Gaming E506: SOFS – The app for FOSDEM 26
- Anino Ni Kugi: I made my own NexPhone | Fairphone 5 (Ubuntu Touch Desktop Mode)
- DotConfig: Is this the year of the Linux... Phone? - Furiphone FLX1s Review/Experience
- CHANNEL RAMBLE: Is Ubuntu Touch Worth It In 2026? (Pixel 3a)
- orailnoor: I Built a Triple-Boot Phone: Linux, Windows & Android (Before NexPhone)
- Hal bro: Comparing Mi A1 on postmarketOS and Redmi Note 4X on Ubuntu Touch!
- The Linux Experience: This new modular Linux handheld looks very nice & other Linux Weekly News
- 128bytes: Mecha Comet: A Modular Linux Handheld for Power Users
FOSDEM
- FOSDEM 2026 - "State of FOSS on mobile"
- FOSDEM 2026 - Mainline kernel for Fairphones - 2026 update
- FOSDEM 2026 - postmarketOS: Reliability in 2026
- FOSDEM 2026 - Photos and Video Recording on Mobile Phones
- FOSDEM 2026 - UnifiedPush - Push notifications. Decentralized and Open Source
- FOSDEM 2026 - Running mainline Linux on the Unisoc-based Jolla C2
- FOSDEM 2026 - Running GNOME OS on mobile phones
- FOSDEM 2026 - The Linux Phone App Ecosystem (2026)
- FOSDEM 2026 - Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mainline: From Day-1 Patches to Product Reality
Make sure to also check the rest of FOSS on Mobile track and other talks linked in my FOSDEM post during the week for more videos - over time, more recordings should show up.
Worth Noting
- valpackett: "Achievement unlocked: receive SMS on a #postmarketOS mainline Linux phone! (last year's nugget had a carrier locked modem, this one doesn't so it just works)Also the selfie camera works, thanks to a WIP driver by @z3ntu! (this moto has the same front camera as the Fairphone 3)"
- proycon: "I think I have a phone addiction. Am I constantly on my smartphonedoomscrolling news/socials? Not at all, I often leave the thing untouched for days and don't have traditional social media. Am I constantly chattering on various calls racking up the phone bill? Nope, 5 minutes calltime a month is probably already a gross overestimate. Glued to my phone in public transport? No, I look out the window. Then what is the problem? I keep buying second hand phones to try #postmarketos and #sxmo on !!"
- ybon: My "Linux on a #dumbphone " journey continues: minimal T9 like typing on the Nokia 8110 4G running @postmarketOS(WIP) Code of the fcitx5 addon: https://codeberg.org/ybon/fcitx5-t9 See you at FOSDEM?
- dos: The first step forward 👀#librem5 #mobilelinux #linuxmobile #lin/ux #shotonlibrem5
- Drew Nailor: I think the Minimum Mass Viability Metric (MMVM) for Linux on the desktop is games, while for Linux on phones it's phone calls and text messages. This doesn't mean either of them aren't viable for some groups if those needs aren't met (I used Linux on my desktop in 2014, for example), it just means that's what a mass audience would need for it to be viable in general.1/2#Linux #LinuxMobile #MobileLinux
Hardware
- Lemmy.ml - linuxphones: What are peoples thoughts on the Mecha Comet?
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Pi Compute Module Powers Fully Open Smartphone
- @FuriLabs: Our NEW Convergence Hub is now available. https://furilabs.com/shop/convergence-hub/ #Convergence #furilabs #FLX1 #FLX1S #linuxonmobile #furiOS
FOSDEM in Rearview Mirror
Show content
- LINux on MOBile: FOSDEM 2026 Recommendations
- FuriLabs: FOSDEM 2026
- mechasystems: #FOSDEM was absolutely AMAZING!We appreciate all of you for giving us your time at our impromptu booth and testing out the new Comet units; we have a ton of updates enroute!
- postmarketOS: "We had a great FOSDEM yet again, thanks everybody for stopping by! It was fun hearing appreciation of our project by existing users, but also to explain our project to people that have never heard of us.We can't wait to be back next year!Our hackathon is starting now and we'll report about what happened there later this week."
- piggz: "Some pics from the #fosdem @jolla #sailfishos stand and meetup. Visible a @pine64 PPP and keyboard, a @volla tablet, and the J2 models"
- postmarketOS: "We're ready at #FOSDEM2026! Come visit us at UD2 and we'll tell you about all the awesome things we do and what happened since last year.We're showing off Fairphone as a desktop setup, our brand-new hardware CI, our work-in-progress immutable edition and more!Also, we have some limited amount of t-shirts to sell, so come by before they run out!"
- rainemak: "Jolla is at FOSDEM! Welcome to meet the team, try the new Jolla Phone appearance model at your own hand 👋 and see the latest Sailfish OS community ports ❤️For limited time you can apply a discount code FOSDEM2026 at the Jolla Shop and you’ll get a free Jolla pipo.https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-preorder#FOSDEM2026 @jolla"
- modal: @adz is talking about the Walkaway stack!#fosdem #p2panda #localfirst
- #MobileLinux: Skyler Grey of @CollaboraOffice presenting #CollaboraOfficeDesktop running on #MobileLinux at #FOSDEM #FOSSonMobile track
- pak0st: The 4k video playback on the #PineTab2 is really impressive!The @pine64 stall at #FOSDEM was great 💯💯
- devrtz: "If you're at #FOSDEM you have a couple of hours left to grab some stickers, play with phones, chat with us or grab one of two very exclusive #Phosh T-Shirts (sizes M & L)!#Phosh #LinuxMobile #MobileLinux #ShotOnLibrem5"
- nlnet: "We had a great time at #FOSDEM, as always. It is such a treasure to gather with so many fantastic people from the #FOSS community. This is all thanks to the @fosdem volunteers who make this great happening possible. A very big thank you to everyone who contributed. It had such as positive impact that it brought an early spring to Brussels."
- libcamera: Learn about camera tuning possibilities and plans with the new GPU ISP tomorrow at @fosdem in UD 2.120 at 13:30 https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/BQJPUP-libcamera-tuning/
- #sailfishOS: What a great Sailfish OS meetup we had yesterday after a busy FOSDEM day #1! Thank you Sailfish Community!https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/fosdem-2026-sailfish-os-meetup-and-bof/26813/27Please join to Sailfish OS BoF (Birds of Feather) starting 12:00 local time at H.3242 if you happen to be around.https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/BJSXH9-sailfish-bof/#sailfishos #jolla #fosdem2026
- danctnix: Check out the PINE64 booth at #fosdem2026 on Sunday for these cool #PineTab2 demos!(video decoding demo is hevc/h265)#fosdem
- DanctNIX (Mastodon): the mentioned "suspicious pacman icon" demo can be found on pouet: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=55991
- DanctNIX (Mastodon): Have you tapped on the suspicious pacman icon (or "a fun demo :D") on the #pinetab2 desktop at #fosdem2026 ?If you did not attend FOSDEM or never visited the stand, don't vote or vote "I want the results"#fosdem #pine64Yes :)No :(I want the results
- okias: Want a premium Linux shirt that actually looks good? 🐧📱Our well-designed shirt (penguin holding a phone) is 100% cotton with a stitched penguin logo.Available this weekend at the #FOSDEM #LinuxOnMobile stand.Location: Building U, entrance UD2 — grab your size before they’re gone!Model: @Standara3217 #FOSDEM2026 #MobileLinux #LinuxMobile #sdm845 #Mobian #Phosh #Linux
Personal note: This FOSDEM was, once again, a blast. I want to thank everyone for the nice interactions (especially Chris, Guillaume, Jesus, Norman, Ollie and Pablo), with special thanks to flypig for inviting me to the stand and helping with my talk and Timo from AsteroidOS for the nice 3D printed phone stands!
If somehow possible, I'll try and return next year (without a talk though 😉)._
More Software News
Distributions
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): Day 2 of #FOSDEM2026 and we're back ready to show our project! If you still want a t-shirt come by quick as they're running out fast!
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): Great news from @lynxis in OpenIMSD:"I've written a profile manager for the QCOM baseband which talks to the PDC service.The PDC is the persistent device configuration. It controls similar settings as the carrier configuration on Android, such as the APN, SMSC, the IMS functionality, the 5G functionality, ... But the PDC profiles have more control over the baseband than the Android carrier configuration does."Full blog post:https://www.openimsd.com/09-qcom-baseband-profile-manager.htmlSource code:https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/modem/openimsd/qcom-baseband-profile-manager#openimsd #linuxmobile
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): As we've posted in our monthly blog posts before we're working hard on hardware CI to automatically run a bunch of tests on various phones for changes in the software we ship.To accomplish this some of our team members have created PCB's to connect the phones to so we have full control over them, and after some iterations the first batch of the production units have just arrived!We'll start setting them up in the hackathon we're doing after #FOSDEM and we'll soon share the initial results!
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: device-sqfmi-beepy: update module building again
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: Draft: libcamera: add camshark-setup subpackage
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: Draft: Fairphone 5: add support for microphone
- Phoronix: GNU Hurd Is "Almost There" With x86_64, SMP & ~75% Of Debian Packages Building
- Update 14.0.1 - FuriPhone FLX1s Linux Phone
Apps
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Musicfetch
- #LinuxMobile: Could not be at #fosdem to show our very early Web based user agent running on @mobian unfortunately 😞 Check it at https://tangled.org/me.webbeef.org/browser.html/#mobilelinux #linuxmobile #web. Using Servo, awesome!
- #LinuxMobile: Could not be at #fosdem to show our very early Web based user agent running on @mobian unfortunately 😞 Check it at https://tangled.org/me.webbeef.org/browser.html/#mobilelinux #linuxmobile #web
- alaraajavamma: "I looked how to make Calls, Chatty and Contacts better but soon find out that my brains are limited because I got nowhere, sorry. There are some things what I need daily what are missing. But I can do workarounds. This is not 1., 2. or even 3. time for this workaround 😆 . It started like that but after lot of mentoring it might someday be actual app. For now this is "do not look at it but it just works" contacts, calls, sms, mms app for FLX1 and FLX1s#Phosh #furilabs #linuxmobile #flx1s #flx1"
- mobilni_linux_cs_sk: Fruits of our hackday are here! CoMaps for Linux (including phones) is now on Flathub.Huge thanks to Radek (riadok)!https://github.com/flathub/flathub/pull/6792#CoMaps #MobileLinux #LinuxMobile #FlatHub
- Kaidan.im: Kaidan 0.15.0: Audio/Video Calls and Integrated Search Field
- valpackett: It runs #Xonotic! well, runs. Walks? xD actually "playable" at 720p but for fullscreen i only get portrait resolutions in #phosh even if i'm in landscape (maybe just needed to relaunch but oh well)#postmarketOS #sdm632
- Lemmy.ml - linuxphones: ProcessOne (ejabberd) just released a new XMPP client - it works on mobile!
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #234 Annotated Documents
- Planet GNOME: Asman Malika: Mid-Point Project Progress: What I’ve Learned So Far
- Planet GNOME: Lucas Baudin: Drawing and Writing on PDFs in Papers (and new blog)
- Phoronix: Phosh Mobile Phone UI Making Progress On GTK4 Port
- Phoronix: GNOME 50 Is No Longer Treating Variable Rate Refresh "VRR" As Experimental
- Phoronix: GTK Developers Plot Improvements To Tackle This Year - Possible Opt-In Unstable API
Phosh
- Phosh.mobi e.V. News: Join the Phosh Contributors Meeting 2026
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Phosh Mobile Phone UI Making Progress On GTK4 Port
- phoronix: "Phosh Mobile Phone UI Making Progress On GTK4 Port Evangelos Ribeiro Tzaras presented today at FOSDEM on the latest work around Phosh, the mobile phone user interface / Wayland shell project for mobile Linux environments. Phosh has been making steady progress and has more features out on the horizon...https://www.phoronix.com/news/Phosh-GTK4-Progress"
- Phosh (gotosocial): Nice, hopefully some of these improvements make it back into calls/chatty/contacts https://fosstodon.org/@alaraajavamma/1159...
- Phosh (gotosocial): We've just merged some code to automatically scale up the on screen keyboard in landscape on larger screens like tablets also...
- Phosh (gotosocial): One thing bothering us when playing videos with our little, mobile friendly video player #livi was that playing from video si...
- Phosh (gotosocial): Wow, #phosh with the large bottom bar, haven't seen that for some time. Nice! https://fosstodon.org/@martijnbraam/1159681885...
- #phosh: Installed #postmarketos again. This time the edge repo and the #Phosh GUI. Succeeded in connecting a Jabra device. Music audio works. Phone call audio not for me. A battery indicator now is shown.
- #phosh: Phosh Mobile Phone UI Making Progress On GTK4 Porthttps://www.phoronix.com/news/Phosh-GTK4-Progress #Phosh #Linux #Fosdem
- #phosh: Not all of us #phosh contributors can be at #FOSDEM26, so if you spot somewhere, we'd be excited to see a photo. Have fun everyone!
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: getting 6.6 ready for release
- KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.6 Beta Release
- Kaidan.im: Kaidan 0.15.0: Audio/Video Calls and Integrated Search Field
- Volker Krause: December/January in KDE Itinerary
- notmart: KWallet, SecretService, oo7: the story so far
- Qt blog: Call for Presentations – Qt World Summit 2026 in Berlin
- #plasmamobile: @kde Konqi is pleased with their new Mecha comet! ☄️Coming soon at #KDE stand at @fosdem 2026!#kde #plasmamobile #MechaComet
- Phoronix: Plasma 6.7 Restoring The Air Plasma Theme, Fixes KWin Issue With Intense Alt+Tab'ing
Maui Project
Sailfish OS
- adampigg: Today i will mostly be travelling to brussels for my first fosdem :)
- #sailfishOS: J2 pre-orders passed 8200 of 10000.The pace will pick up at the end. Just a reminder. 🐟 #sailfishos #jolla
- #sailfishOS: Is there a #BitWarden client for #SailfishOS? Or does the android app work?Since i think #GTK apps do not work, i am asking for alternatives?
- #sailfishOS: @arcanechat Yeah, I would move to it if there was an app for #sailfishos. As this is about DeltaChat: I suppose that DeltaTouch (for Ubuntu Touch) should be easier to port than the Electron app.
- #sailfishOS: There are so many good looking #SailfishOS apps, so I got a bit inspired.I have rewritten a few pages of Reis, my travel planner.I think I am finally using ListView correctly with search in the header of the main page. Some QoL like switching from/to in the planner.
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports - Development - Issues: Loss of OSK for the xmir-apps in 2.x
- UBports - Development - Merge Requests: Draft: Port to CMake and Qt 6
- #UbuntuTouch: I’m wondering how many folk at #fosdem are looking at how we can create a strong mobile ecosystem that’s not based around US corporations (i.e. Apple or Google). 🤔Maybe something built around #ubuntutouch? https://www.ubuntu-touch.io
- #UbuntuTouch: @flysqu @cfo Fair enough, each to their own. Main reasons I've used #UbuntuTouch for over 10 years are (1) it is a phone, with calls, camera, music etc that actually work - and well; (2) it has a good store of apps that work on handheld devices; (3) it's not Google or Apple. I have a handheld device with #PostmarketOS too, and it's nice and all that, but not yet actually a working phone. When it matches the capability of #UbuntuTouch as a daily driver I might switch, but it's not there yet. I appreciate all the work that the developers are putting in on both OSes.
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH v2] remoteproc: qcom_wcnss: Fix handling the lack of PD regulators in v3
- phone-devel: [PATCH 0/2] iio: light: Add support for Capella cm36686 and cm36672p sensors
- phone-devel: [PATCH 1/5] dt-bindings: pinctrl: qcom: Add SM6350 LPI pinctrl
- Phoronix: Linux's b4 Kernel Development Tool Now Dog-Feeding Its AI Agent Code Review Helper
- Phoronix: AI Code Review Prompts Initiative Making Progress For The Linux Kernel
- Phoronix: Linux 6.19-rc8 Released Ahead Of Linux 6.19 Stable Next Week
Releases
- libcamera: libcamera v0.7.0
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: libcamera v0.7.0 released
- @linmob@linuxmobile.social: #libcamera 0.7 really improved my camera experience on the OnePlus 6 running #postmarketOS edge. Not only do the results loo...
- AsteroidOS: Tags 2.0 · AsteroidOS/qml-asteroid · GitHub
Matrix
- Matrix.org: Matrix on Cloudflare Workers
- Phoronix: Vulkan 1.4.342 Published With Cooperative Matrix Conversion Extension
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 this 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!