Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (07/2024): Good news from Megi and a new release model for Ubuntu Touch 20.04
Table of Contents
Another week, another weekly update - this time collected and edited on another continent: Ubuntu Touch 20.04 comes with a new release model (and keeps pumping out Q&A videos), improvements coming to Phosh and to PinePhone Pro with a huge update to rk2aw and u-boot, a FOSDEM special episode of the postmarketOS podcast, a great video about Genode on PinePhone, and more!
Addition: Also, a new release of LuneOS, the continuation of webOS!
Commentary in italics.
Software
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #135 Experimental Maps
- Marcus Lundblad: The FOSDEM trip 2024
- jangernert: Newsflash 3.1
- Phoronix: GNOME 46 Beta Released - Mutter Supporting Direct Scanout For Cropped/Scaled Surfaces
- Phoronix: New GNOME Mutter Code Prepares Fractional Scaling For XWayland
Phosh
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This week in KDE: longstanding issues crushed
- KDE Announcements: KDE Gear 23.08.5
Sailfish OS
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 159
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 158
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 157
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 156
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 155
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 154
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports News: Announcement of release model changes. This sounds good! I like it, alone for the reaseon that there won't be another OTA counter.
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 133
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: UT Tweak Tool available on Focal
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 134 Sat Feb 17th at 19:00 UTC Find the video below.
Lune OS
- pivotCE: LuneOS February Stable release: Eiskaffee. Long awaited new official release of LuneOS is out named Eiskaffee, fully based on Qt6, using Yocto Kirkstone release and is based on webOS OSE 2.23 release, Pine64 devices (PinePhone(Pro) and PineTab2 support added. (Thanks, Padraic!)
Distributions
- postmarketOS Blog: FOSDEM 2024 + Hackathon
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: Non-free firmware is installed by default
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: dnsmasq upgrade breaks DNS resolution
- postmarketOS pmaports issues: Bluetooth Missing from Librem 5 on Edge 20240208-0205
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: Draft: add flatpak options for pmb_recommends
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: linux-postmarketos-qcom-sdm845: upgrade to 6.7.4
Apps
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Time Cop
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Kana
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Done
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Paper Clip
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Simple Wireplumber GUI
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Polypass
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Ticket Booth
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: GNOME Network Displays
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Chance
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Currency Converter
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Daikhan (Early Access)
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Forge Sparks
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Door Knocker In case you're wondering why so many apps where added in a week: I really needed to reinstall my OnePlus 6 and figured I should add everything I had installed on it that somewhat worked well enough.
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH] arm64: dts: qcom: sm6350: Add interconnect for MDSS
- phone-devel: [PATCH v3 0/4] Add display support for Fairphone 4
- phone-devel: [PATCH v6 0/4] Add samsung-matisselte and common matisse dtsi
- Phoronix: "SandBox Mode" Proposed For The Linux Kernel To Improve Memory Safety
Stack
- Phoronix: GhostBSD 24.01.1 Released: Based On FreeBSD 14, Many Improvements
- Phoronix: Mesa 24.0.1 Released With Various Graphics Driver Fixes
- Phoronix: System76's COSMIC Desktop Nearing Alpha Release
- Phoronix: Iced Toolkit For Rust GUIs Reaches v0.12 With New Features
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2024-02-16
Worth Noting
- @bragefuglseth: Great news: Thanks to recent @flathub changes, adaptive Flathub apps are now actually shown as that in GNOME Software! Previously they were all marked as desktop-only. You'll start seeing this more and more as apps update 😁️#Flathub #Flatpak #GNOME #LinuxMobile
- @cas: well stayed up way too late working on this but it was totally worth it! The OnePlus 8T seems like it'll be fun to mainline, and now I don't have to worry about Android boot image shenanigans, or figuring out how to get kernel logs without UART. U-Boot can directly read pstore logs and we can just do EFI all the way :D#LinuxMobile #uboot #Linux
- @dos@librem.one: POV: a few years ago you uploaded a bunch of games into Google Play that:- are fully Free Software- don't gather any user data- are fully local, no ads- are complete and finished- don't really need updating.One of the games was removed because of "missing privacy policy". Others - I don't even know, they didn't bother to tell me 😜 Seems like the idea that some apps may simply respect the user and not exist to mine for data is unfathomable to Google.#googleplay #google #android
- Lemmy - linuxphones: Current mainline device options
- Purism (Reddit): Purism Alternatives?
- Phones (Librem 5),- Purism community: Bluetooth audio after install of purism sparklan wnfb upgrade
- Jozef Mlich on Fosstodon: Recordings of my #FOSDEM talk PineTime: A Programmer's Toy and Beyond was released.I will be happy for feedback.https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3319-pinetime-a-programmer-s-toy-and-beyond/You can read also my FOSDEM notes in my bloghttps://blog.mlich.cz/2024/02/fosdem-2024/
- If you're at @cactuscon and always wanted to try a #Librem5 phone running stock #pureOS or a #pinephone pro running @postmarketOS #PlasmaMobile, hit me up! I should be onsite and mostly in the Career Village or one of the social areas from 2:30pm onwards, but am more than happy to dash about give folk a taste of #LinuxMobileI don't work for Purism, Pine64, nor postmarketOS, I just noticed there's maybe an unmet demo interest and happen to have the HW while I'm at this hacker con Nice effort!
- #MobileLinux: Got #Droidian running on my #Pixel6. No calls or SMS, but quite impressed with a lot of the other functionality. Looking forward to playing with it and learning more. Thanks to everyone who has developed #MobileLinux and all the other bits that make it work.I'm particularly interested as a parent with kids who will likely be getting phones in the next few years. I need to daily drive to convince myself it's the right option for them 👍 @linmob @droidian
Worth Reading
- Norman Feske: FOSDEM 2024 aftermath
- megis PinePhone Development Log: Small tidbits and magnetometer driver upstreaming
- megis PinePhone Development Log: New U-Boot build for Pinephone Pro )
- Purism: Purism Differentiator Series, Part 5: Privacy
- Purism: Purism Differentiator Series, Part 4: Hardware
Worth Listening
- postmarketOS Podcast: #38 FOSDEM 2024 Special
Worth Watching
- UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 134
- Norman Feske: FOSDEM 2024 aftermath
- Towards a bright future with Mobian? | FOSDEM 2024
- Mainline Linux on Fairphone? Yes, please!
- Why not run OpenCL-accelerated LLM on your phone? | FOSDEM 2024
- PostmarketOS v23.12 Boot Time on Xiaomi WT88047 | Redmi 2 Prime
- FOSDEM 2024 - PineTime: A Programmer's Toy and Beyond
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!