Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (09, 10/2025): Too much to put in a title
Table of Contents
Two weeks full of exciting progress in the mobile Linux ecosystem!
- The FLX1 phone gets display-out capability with full GNOME shell support, promising a superior desktop experience when connected to external displays,
- more examples of Camera support on the OnePlus 6(T),
- Ubuntu Touch celebrates its OTA-8 Focal release with much-needed WPA3 support,
- Sailfish OS 5.0 Tampella officially launches alongside the Jolla C2 MWC debut (+ more Community News),
- postmarketOS share the progress they've made in February,
- the Mecha Comet goes +1 (and thus better, but later),
- and way, way more! Enjoy!
Commentary in italics. Find Week 9 below.
Worth Reading
- Sam Thursfield: Media playback tablet running GNOME and postmarketOS
- Ploum: 20 years of Linux on the Desktop (part 3)
- fossphones.com: Linux Phone News - March 4, 2025
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch OTA-8 Focal Release. WPA3 alone makes this one important!
- postmarketOS Blog: postmarketOS in 2025-02: MSM89x7 Audio, Modern Xiaomis in Community, New Name Foreshadowing. My highlight are the devices moved to Community and the pmbootstrap improvmeents!
- FuriLabs: Docker on your FLX1
- FuriLabs: Batch #2 Update
Worth Watching
- UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 160
- FuriLabs: FuriPhone FLX1 Docker Tutorial
- Mecha: Mecha Comet Announcements - Mar 8, 2025
- David Hamner: Linux Phone Upgrade | Comet +1
- David Hamner: Maemo Leste SystemV Hackjob #music Just some AI generated song-thing.
- PC-FREEDOM＠なんちゃってエンジニアリング: 今日は Ubuntu Touch と カスタム ROM の話をしよう。
- Lup Yuen Lee: #SDWire MicroSD Multiplexer + #PinePhone ... On #Pine64 Avaota-A1 SBC and Apache #NuttX RTOS
- Jozef Mlich: nemomobile - glacier-settings + lipstick
- MN Entertainment: Furilabs Review | Is Furilabs.com a Scam or Legit Website?
Worth Noting
- spacekookie: "The problem isn’t that the fediverse isn’t viable. The problem isn’t that it’s “too complicated.” The problem is that the giants of Silicon Valley have spent 20 years convincing us that anything outside their control isn’t worth our time. I have been saying this for at least a decade and I shall scream it into the void for at least a decade to come but:the over-simplification of technical jargon, interfaces, and capabilities of end-user software and hardware have been a disaster for tech literacy of the 'general population' and have aided the creation of walled gardens more than the lack of open alternatives.(quote from https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-fediverse-isnt-the-future-its-the-present-weve-been-denied/)"
- KekunPlazas: "What I'm trying to say is: we can't accept that accessibility is just for the disabled to develop. Commons have to be developed and maintained collectively by everybody, and we should particularly develop things we don't personally need to use the commons so others can be part of them too.Yeah I once again tried text-to-speech on GNOME and my hears got quickly shredded by espeak."
- thibaultamartin: "I wrote this post about welcoming feedback a little while ago. Most of it still stands, but I have come to a realization.Friction is a friend, not an enemy.I do welcome feedback about my posts. I even actively look for it before publishing.But not all feedback is equal. A snarky comment on reddit can be cheap and demoralizing. A thoughtful email can bring me a new perspective.Friction to comment is actually a good thing.https://ergaster.org/posts/2024/03/06-welcoming-feedback/"
- @dos@librem.one: For those interested, I’ve pushed the firmware that implements the necessary alt-mode dance to get UART out of the #Librem5's USB-C port to #Debubo’s repository.It wasn’t pushed before because it was very crude and I wanted to clean it up before pushing. It still is, but I decided to actually get it out regardless rather than risk having it sit and wait for even more months 😛
- r/linux: Debian running on Android (March 2025 update)
FLX1 corner
- fakeshell: "#FuriOS update 13.0.8 for #FLX1 has been delayed by about 10 days, but you why was this?I decided to find the reason for the battery drain here is what we foundfirstly, packagekit is a battery hog, so we wrote a #GNOME software plugin for aptkit for system updates, second was related to modems mainloop being blocked (sometimes and inconsistently) and not going to sleep and last (the hardest to find) was with the WiFi driver not going to sleep correctly.All fixed up and landing this month!"
- fakeshell: another update on this the battery has now dropped by 30% in 85 hours.at this rate it the estimated 100 to 0 is roughly around 12.5 days. of course there is still room for optimizations so we can easily get it to 14 days of idle time, but i think this will do for this month.#flx1 #furios #furilabs #FuriPhoneFLX1 #LinuxOnMobile #LinuxMobile
- r/linux: FLX1 Linux Phone Display Out!
- fakeshell: "so yes the rumors are correct (this was leaked on reddit a few days ago, oh well)the #FLX1 will be getting support for hooking up to external displays. the difference here compared to other approaches is that it will be running full #GNOME shell instead of #Phosh desktop mode (with some integration). as much as we love Phosh, GNOME shell simply provides a superior experience on a large display (and our community members voted for this too)#furilabs #FuriPhoneFLX1 #LinuxOnMobile #LinuxMobile"
- Sturmflut: Apparently the #Furilabs #FLX1 actually did have the hardware to drive an external display over USB-C and it's now being made usable. That changes the value proposition of the device a lot!#linuxmobile #linuxphone #linuxphones
Camera corner
- adrianyyy: Welcome to Mobile Linux in 2025! Generic device packages and U-Boot :), "Shot on OnePlus 6T running SXMO, now with camera support . #postmarketos #linuxphone #oneplus #linux". This is so impressive. Also, manual focus control sounds worse than it is; the slider implementation is really good. All you need is enough light, and you will have nice photos. So many thanks to everyone involved!
- CalcProgrammer1: Got the camera actuator on my #OnePlus 6T to focus with the help of @NekoCWD and poking i2c registers with i2cset. It looks like the actuator on my camera needs an enable register set.This is at focus 1700:#postmarketOS
- pocketvj: @CalcProgrammer1 you can create fast #gmic pipeline to do this corrections for you....i am experimenting with stable-diffusion.cpp to enhance the image quality, but after 30min waiting (#pocof1), the quality stays the same while the content changes 😂#linuxmobile
Events
Watch stuff
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #190 Cross Platform
- ADETOYE ANOINTING: More Than Code: Outreachy Gnome Experience
- Phoronix: GTK On Android & macOS Seeing Improvements
- Phoronix: GNOME 48 Release Candidate Brings Late Mutter Features & Other Changes
Phosh
- agx: The initial draft MR to put a wallpaper on #phosh's lockscreen is now >1.5y old but it's not draft any longer 🎉 (I'll spare you the details why this took so long).#LinuxMobile
- agx: Ever since adding the
HapticAPI to #feedbackd for games I wanted to make theVibraPatternavailable to feedback themes as well as this allows for more nuanced feedback. This allows us to e.g. use more subtle feedback for OSK button presses than for 📢 of incoming SMS. Opened MRs to make that possible andwhile at that I made the maximum strength for all events confiurable too. It's a bit hard to 👂 in the 📽️ but it's there. Hopefully this makes it into #phosh 0.46:#LinuxMobile - #phosh: @thejackimonster Oh, and regarding the calendar's notification not doing any buzzing: just assign any feedback to the
notification-new-generic, event in the feedback theme.We don't do that atm when a notification doesn't set a category to not make people go crazy. Now with more nuanced haptic we might emit s.th. by default though, so I've opened https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/feedbackd/-/merge_requests/160 but this is already configurable in current releases, just need to add an event to the theme.#phosh #feedbackd - agx: "@benedikt reported some issues with #xwaylandvideobridge and #phosh and it turned out it uses _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY which was proposed > 2️⃣ 0️⃣ years ago to be added to the wm-spec (https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2003-December/001413.html) but never landed although Qt, GTK and others use (or used) it.That just changed (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/merge_requests/97) and we also already have #wlroots support now too so phosh can happily use it too. But maybe I'm the only person that finds this kind of archeology exciting 🙃 ."
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: A Very Fixy Week
- KDE Announcements: KDE Gear 24.12.3
- Volker Krause: KDE Android News (March 2025)
- Planet KDE: KDE Gear 25.04 branches created
- Planet KDE: Controls for OpenType
- Planet KDE: cursor-shape-v1 support landed in GTK3
- Planet KDE: 3D Rendering Solutions in Qt – an Overview
- Phoronix: KDE This Week Took Care Of "A Very Large Number Of Bugs"
Sxmo
- #sxmo: @nima because you never tried #sxmo 😉
- @pocketvj@fosstodon.org: maybe we should consider some sort of algo to enhance image quality on #linuxmobile #pmos phones:https://people.ee.ethz.ch/~ihnatova/https://github.com/HuiZeng/Image-Adaptive-3DLUTI am aware that there is a lot to gain with first fixing the camera drivers to take a correct photo. also working from the other direction as well makes sense to combine both techniques at some point ...experimenting with stable-diffusion.cpp on my #pocof1 (i miss pytorch support on alpine..), its soo slow 😂
Sailfish OS
- Community News - Sailfish OS Forum: Sailfish Community News, 6th March 2025 - MWC 2025
- #sailfishOS: @Some_Emo_Chick I would love to see #SailfishOS as an alternative to Android and iOS.Its entry threshold is higher than the ones of Android-based offers like #GrapheneOS or #LineageOS but on the plus side it's as Google-free as it gets because it's not based on Google's Android and can run Android apps nevertheless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS #Jolla #unplugTrump
- #sailfishOS: #SFOS users, we have a Tidal client in #Chum now. I am told it works well. #SailfishOs #Tidal
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch OTA-8 Focal Release
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 160 Call for Questions
- UBports - Development - Issues: Expose more features through Wayland or other Linux-standard ways
- UBports - Development - Issues: Tracking issue for minor release: 20.04 OTA-8
- #UbuntuTouch: DeltaTouch 1.12.0 is out, highlights:🔹 Sync deletion of messages and chats across devices🔸 Page sized text editor for longer messages🔹 Webxdc: Notifications (and more)🔸 Improved integration into UT (ContentHub import/share)Also included: Preparation for the long-awaited feature teased by @delta 😇 https://chaos.social/@delta/114126529706721026 Full changelog: https://codeberg.org/lk108/deltatouch/src/branch/xenial/CHANGELOG Webxdc support in DeltaTouch is generously funded by @nlnet / @NGIZero, thanks!#DeltaTouch #DeltaChat #Webxdc #UbuntuTouch
- #UbuntuTouch: I rebooted my Pixel 3a running #ubuntuTouch to package my web app #disco2very for it:https://open-store.io/app/disco2very.flaburganI have to say that I still find the OS lovely. If Signal was working there and if more services were available as websites instead of apps, I would definitely switch back to it as my primary phone OS.
- #UbuntuTouch: Ubuntu Touch in 2025: Is It a Viable Mobile OS Alternative? https://techrefreshing.com/ubuntu-touch-in-2025/ #UbuntuTouch #LinuxMobile #PrivacyFirst #OpenSource #UBports #UbuntuTouch2025 #MobileOS #TechNews #Waydroid #FOSS #AndroidAlternative
- #UbuntuTouch: It's well known we fully support #UBports and #UbuntuTouch. Following is a nice, actual article about the developments. May the #foss be with you. #floss #opensource https://www.howtogeek.com/ubuntu-touch-ota-8-update/
Distributions
Mobian
- Mobian mobian-recipes Merge Requests: rockchip: add dkms and gcc for installing PineTab2 Wi-Fi driver
- Mobian mobian-recipes Issues: phrog not coming up on the screen
postmarketOS
- postmarketOS Blog: postmarketOS in 2025-02: MSM89x7 Audio, Modern Xiaomis in Community, New Name Foreshadowing
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: Add a generic qcom-sm7150 device package
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Generic SM7150 (qcom-sm7150)
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Mediaberry
- mistersixt: "In case you are running #postmarketos with #phosh : with the latest packages (pmo 24.12.) the GUI was no longer starting up on my librem5, ending up with the login prompt on the console. The reason is that "phoc" does not know the parameter -v , and removing that entry in /usr/bin/phosh-session brings back the GUI upon a reboot:exec $SYSTEMD_CAT "${COMPOSITOR}" -v -S -C "${PHOC_INI}" -E "bash -lc 'exec ${GNOME_SESSION} --disable-acceleration-check --session=phosh'""
Apps
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Clapgrep
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Quick Web Apps
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Countdown
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: CoBang
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Tally
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Spotube
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Tagger
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Sly
- camiloh: Pix upcoming version is coming with image text identification to copy the text contained in images quickly.@mauiproject @Nitrux_NX#mauikit
Kernel
- NekoCWD: "I sent my OnePlus 6 focus driver upstream 🐱 📬.https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-media/cover/20250304-media-i2c-lc898217xc-initial-driver-v1-0-e2ffd2b2fd5e@mainlining.org/And some random cat came to pay his respects, I guess. Photo taken on a OnePlus 6 running @postmarketOS#linuxonmobile #mobilelinux #CatsOfMastodon #photography"
- mntmn: "awesome, the device tree for the RK3588 version of classic MNT Reform is upstreamed to Linux thanks to @bluerise https://lore.kernel.org/linux-rockchip/174126874161.670332.12638948694058332407.b4-ty@sntech.de/T/#t"
- phone-devel: [PATCH v4 0/2] Add Goodix Berlin-A series support
- phone-devel: [PATCH RESEND 0/4] media: i2c: imx214: Add support for 23.88MHz clock
- phone-devel: [PATCH v3 0/7] Subject: [PATCH v3 0/7] Input: synaptics-rmi4: add quirks for third party touchscreen controllers
- phone-devel: Re: [PATCH 0/3] Fixes for IPA v4.7
- Phoronix: More Apple Silicon Updates For Linux 6.15 Help M1/M2 Plus iPad / iPod / iPhone
Non-Linux
- lupyuen: #PinePhone connected to #SDWire MicroSD Multiplexer ... Moment of truth 😬Article: https://lupyuen.org/articles/testbot2.html#real-hardware-arm-and-esp32 Maybe interesting for others looking into automated testing, too!
Stack
- Phoronix: PipeWire 1.4 Released With MIDI 2.0 Support & Other New Features
- Phoronix: Mesa's Venus Driver Adds Vulkan Ray-Tracing Support For VMs
- Phoronix: Mesa Lands A Shader Statistics Framework For More Unification Across Drivers
- Phoronix: Vulkan Video Continues Making Inroads, VP9 Decode Planned For This Year
- Phoronix: Blender's Vulkan Renderer Is Making Great Progress To Production Readiness This Year
- Phoronix: FEX 2503 Brings Fixes & Multi-Block By Default For x86_64 Linux Binaries On ARM64
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-03-07
Week 9
Late due to
- @linmob@fosstodon.org: Due to personal health issues (nothing too critical, don't worry), Peter won't be able to publish a "Weekly #MobileLinux Update" post this weekend. The current plan is to have a combined post about two weeks on the 8th of March.Sorry about that! If you're impatient you can always use the pipeline (by re-running this https://framagit.org/linmob/linmob.frama.io/-/jobs/2738005 job tomorrow 🙂 If someone wants to step up, merging a MR or applying a patch/uploading a file is something I feel able to 🙂 I can't rule out that this will not happen again. If you're up to be a "Weekly Update Stand-In", please get in touch - best by email!
Worth Reading
- FuriLabs: Community Contributions – FastFLX1
- FuriLabs: iPhone Gives Up Your Data
- Velvet Reindeer: Papr
Worth Watching
- Continuum Gaming: Continuum Gaming E458: SFOS-Update 5.0.0.61/62 for all supported smartphones (stable release)
- レトロモバイルチャンネル2: 【CyberDeck】Let's make a small computer
- OS-SCi: ubports and Ubuntu Touch
- DHOCNET Store: Cara Install VSCode Pada HaPlay GO Zero 1 | PostmarketOS v24.06 Linux | Visual Studio Code
- David Hamner: Are Linux Phones Ready in 2025?
- Bird Zhang: Running Openpilot on SailfishOS #sailfish #openpilot
- Don White: Robert Braxman - Ubports
- mic li: postmarketos ttyescape show
- Öcülü kuş kebabı: Weird postmarketOS issue
- 𝙰𝙻𝙲𝙷𝙴𝙼𝙸𝚂𝚃: Cyberdeck Game Devlog 1 - Getting started
- OS-SCi: Crowd Bounty The launch of a honest bug bounty system.
- Radio and Electronics Engineering: 3D Printed Cyberdeck Laptop using @benmakeseverythingbuild and @FrameworkComputer parts
- Benny Malik: Tema Ubuntu Touch full Transparan For Xiaomi Redmi Ubah Tampilan Xiaomi Jadi Ubuntu
- Приключения Электроника: Экспресс распаковка: Jolla C2 на Sailfish OS - долгожданная альтернатива!
- Jozef Mlich: nemomobile - glacier-settings + lipstick
Worth Noting
- pocketvj: new to #sxmo #postmarketos #linuxmobile? thanks to #friction2d i made gifs on how to use gestures 🤩 (let me know if you are motivated to create a greeter...)
- r/MobileLinux: Are Linux Phones Ready in 2025?
- Purism community: Charging with iPhone charger
- r/linux: Would you recommend the Finnish Jolla Linux phone?
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #189 Global Shortcuts
- Aryan Kaushik: GNOME in GSoC 2025
- hansdegoede: ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 camera support and other IPU6 camera work
- who-t: libinput and 3-finger dragging
- who-t: GNOME 48 and a changed tap-and-drag drag lock behaviour
- Phoronix: GNOME's Mutter Now Supports The Wayland Cursor Shape Protocol
Phosh
- agx: Ever since adding the
HapticAPI to #feedbackd for games I wanted to make theVibraPatternavailable to feedback themes as well as this allows for more nuanced feedback. This allows us to e.g. use more subtle feedback for OSK button presses than for 📢 of incoming SMS. Opened MRs to make that possible andwhile at that I made the maximum strength for all events confiurable too. It's a bit hard to 👂 in the 📽️ but it's there. Hopefully this makes it into #phosh 0.46:#LinuxMobile - agx: Status Update for February 25: https://honk.sigxcpu.org/con/Free_Software_Activities_February_2025.html 🐛, 📱 and mostly maintenance#phosh #LinuxMobile #Debian
- agx: Successfully tested receiving #cellbroadcast messages on the #PinePhone as well:# _build/test/mmcbmmonitor[/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/CBM/0] new cbm: received 4371: Hallo, this is a CBS test messageSo hopefully all devices supporting
+CSCBon an AT port should now be able to show these messages in @phosh (if the MR makes it into the next #ModemManager release).The #osmocom stack is such a great help for testing these things.Thanks to @NGIZero for supporting this.#LinuxMobile
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: Great Stuff for 6.4
- Carl Schwan et al.: This Week in KDE Apps
- KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.3.2, Bugfix Release for February
- KDE e.V. News: KDE e.V. is looking for a Plasma software engineer
- Qt blog: Qt Creator 16 RC released
Sxmo
- #sxmo: Exploring ways to improve my #sxmo use cases https://floss.social/@dimitrisk/112864085895621222 I tried the #textualize demo on my #LinuxMobile device. It seems quite interesting.Is there any RSS reader, Podcasts or Web radio textualize application?#askFedi
- #sxmo: @proycon @maia perfect, thanks.... so here are two more:#sxmo #postmarketos
- @pocketvj@fosstodon.org: @NekoCWD I have no idea in which coding language (and how) one would build such a thing....hacked something ugly looking but somehow working in python....I know its missing a degree display, the whole #Kalman filter stuff, and the reset after ssccli crashes, but hei, its something... #linuxmobile
Sailfish OS
- Jolla Blog: Sailfish OS 5.0 Tampella is here!
- #sailfishOS: Has someone running #SFOS / #SailfishOS on a #PPP / #PinephonePro without issues? I've installed it on Friday and can't get mobile data working while phone calls are working great. Would be nice to know where to start troubleshooting.#mobileLinux
- #sailfishOS: @flypig How cool is that your name is in the release 5.X release message?!I red you blog about the gecko engine updates. Damm, nice work!! And thanks for doing it!#sailfishos #mobile #Sailfish
- #sailfishOS: Sailfish OS 5.0 is out and the true Jolla C2 launch!#sailfishos #jolla#jc2https://jolla-devices.com/news/early-2025-sailfish-os-5-0-is-out-and-the-jc2-true-launch/
Ubuntu Touch
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: OTA8 Release Delay
- UBports - Development - Issues: screenshot from readme in mobile
Nemo Mobile
Distributions
- Mobian mobian-recipes Merge Requests: rockchip: add dkms and gcc for installing PineTab2 Wi-Fi driver
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: main/postmarketos-ui-plasma-mobile: switch to Dolphin from Index
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Office hours
- Lemmy - postmarketOS: How are mimetypes defined?
- postmarketOS pmbootstrap tags: 3.3.1
- postmarketOS pmbootstrap tags: 3.3.0
Apps
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH 0/3] Fixes for IPA v4.7
- phone-devel: [PATCH 0/3] Fairphone 5 DisplayPort over USB-C support
- Phoronix: ARM Linux Kernel May Shift To Generic Entry Code: Less Assembly But Lower Performance
Stack
- Phoronix: Linux 6.14-rc5 Released: "Nothing Strange Stands Out"
- Phoronix: TurnkeyML 6.0 Released With OpenAI-Compatible Server, Other Changes
- Phoronix: SDL 3.2.6 Released With HiDPI Icons & Color Management On Wayland
- Phoronix: GCC 15.1 Compiler Nears Release As Bugs Whittled Away
- Phoronix: Linux's New Way Of Informing User-Space Over Hung GPUs May Become More Useful
- Phoronix: FreeDesktop.org Devises New Hosting Plan For GitLab Infrastructure
- Phoronix: NetworkManager 1.52 Brings IPVLAN Interface Support, Ethtool FEC Mode
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-02-28
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!