Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (09/2026): Sovereign Stacks
Table of Contents
This past week: Modal Collective publishes vision for "Sovereign Mobile Stack", postmarketOS February 2026 update introduces generic kernel packages (and other things), Phosh shows off Chinese Pinyin and Japanese Anthy input methods becoming part of the Stevia keyboard, Phosh.mobi e.V. celebrates first anniversary, 10000 Jolla Phones sold, and Catacomb UI updates. Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Modal Collective: Towards a Sovereign Mobile Stack. Great!
- schmiddionmobile: Happy Birthday, Pipeline!
- Liliputing: Fedora Pocketblue Remix is an atomic Linux distro for mobile devices (phones and tablets)
- postmarketOS Blog: postmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: postmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels
Worth Watching
- Continuum Gaming: Continuum Gaming E510: Sailfish OS – How to use the GUI & LAST CHANCE for pre-order the J2!
- Actualia tech: "Fedora on smartphones, the Pocketblue community project!"
- CodeInc: Ubuntu Touch OTA-1.2 & OTA-12 Updates — What’s New and Why You Should Upgrade
- Florian´s Chaos Club: "Finally, an update on the Jolla Phone 2 - the European Apple and Android killer?"
Worth Noting
- felicitas.pojtinger.com: "People need banking and payment apps to work on Linux mobile for it to work. Obviously to only real "fix" for this is a regulatory one that declares SafetyNet a monopolistic control mechanism, which it is."
- ev: "Time flies 🚀: Exactly one year ago we had our association's founding meeting 🥳.Looking forward to the next year of developing and promoting #Phosh and the #LinuxMobile ecosystem, working towards user friendly #DigitalFreedom and #DigitalIndependence (nowadays often called #DigitalSovereignity) for the devices we carry in our pockets very day 📱.Our next booth will be at #CLT2026 in Chemnitz, meet us there."
- furilabs: "Big news — the Convergence Hub (FLH1) is on its way to us for final testing and QA!Once we give it the green light, shipping begins immediately from our warehouse. We've been looking forward to this one - true convergence for your FLX1 and FLX1S.Stay tuned for the final approval update.Get yours: https://furilabs.com/shop/FLH1/#FuriLabs #FuriOS #LinuxPhone #Convergence #FLH1 #PrivacyFirst"
- edri: "1/ Some of our German-speaking readers will know this… Today, like every first Sunday of the month, we celebrate Digital Independence Day! 🎉 EDRi supports this monthly celebration in the liberation of digital lives from #BigTech. We look forward to sharing practical tips & support people and communities who build apps & tools that respect people, #democracy, and the planet.Read more about #DiDay from EDRi member @CCC ⤵️ https://edri.org/our-work/didit-edri-members-spark-movement-for-alternatives-to-big-tech/"
- jmlich: "Recently, I decided to spend the money you donated to buy a Bangle.js ⌚️.Since then, I’ve improved feature support in #Amazfish — it now synchronizes steps, activities, and alarms.I have to say that #BangleJS is an awesome, hackable smartwatch. It’s something I would definitely recommend to anyone who wants to write some code and learn something new."
- pavel: "Autofocus with #libcamera is fun. You are attempting to tune AF to do something, and while doing that you realize that a) AE does not really work, and b) there's memory leak of GPU memory or something, so if you keep playing with focus for too long, system is hosed in a way application restart does not cure. #librem5 "
- r/MobileLinux: Latest stable Linux kernel + Arch Linux + KDE
- r/MobileLinux: Fedora and Arch on POCO F3
- backtoanalog: This is my review of the FLX1 phone from @FuriLabs. I've been using this phone for about 3 years as a daily driver. I am very happy with it! My banking app works, which is great, Android apps work very well in general. Plenty of settings and updates are monthly. There are glitches: flickering of the screen that I can't stop unless I remove the battery, that happens when I press power button twice; and artifacts being left back when uninstalling Android apps.#FLX1 #FuriLabs #LinuxMobile
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #238 Navigating Months
- Matthias Clasen: An update on SVG in GTK
- pojntfx: #puregotk has moved to #Codeberg! I've just opened the first PR to it: https://codeberg.org/puregotk/puregotk/pulls/42Gosh it is nice to have a usable signal/noise ratio on a forge again ...
- Phoronix: GNOME GitLab Redirecting Some Git Traffic To GitHub For Reducing Costs
- Phoronix: Linux 7.1 Looks To Support Extended Attributes On Sockets For New GNOME & systemd Functionality
Phosh
- Phosh.mobi Blog: Development News February 2026
- phosh: We just landed initial support for Chinese (via #pinyin) and Japanese (via #anthy / romaji) in #Phosh's on screen keyboard #stevia using #uim 🥳As our current maintainers don't speak / write these languages we appreciate testing feedback and people joining development so we can improve things further in this important area.#LinuxMobile
- Phosh (gotosocial): Didn't make it to #FOSDEM? @devrtz@fosstodon.org 's talk about #Phosh's recent developments is available online: https://vide...
- ev: "Time flies 🚀: Exactly one year ago we had our association's founding meeting 🥳.Looking forward to the next year of developing and promoting #Phosh and the #LinuxMobile ecosystem, working towards user friendly #DigitalFreedom and #DigitalIndependence (nowadays often called #DigitalSovereignity) for the devices we carry in our pockets very day 📱.Our next booth will be at #CLT2026 in Chemnitz, meet us there."
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: Vietnamese lunar calendar and rounder highlights
- KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.6.1, Bugfix Release for February
- Volker Krause: OSM Hack Weekend February 2026
- Akselmo: Breeze QtWidgets style changes to help us prepare for Union
- Qt blog: New in Qt 6.11: QRangeModel updates and QRangeModelAdapter
- tintotint: KDE Connect of the Future
- #plasmamobile: I've never appreciated web apps more than when I have been tinkering with #plasmamobile on my OnePlus 6T, since most linux apps assume they are running on a desktop.
- Phoronix: KDE Plasma 6.7 Preps Rounded Style UI Enhancement For QtWidgets-Based Apps
Sailfish OS
- Community News - Sailfish OS Forum: Calling for Spain and JollaES - quick meetup in Barcelona?
- Announcements - Sailfish OS Forum: Community meeting on 12th March 2026
- jolla: "10,000 pre-orders. Goal reached. We set a goal together. You made it happen.What started as a community wish is now a production reality. The Jolla Phone is happening, shaped by the people who will use it.Thank you. This is what community-driven development looks like. ❤️Next stop: MWC Barcelona. Come find us.#Jolla #SailfishOS #DigitalSovereignty #European #PrivacyFirst #CommunityPowered"
- frankps: Whisperfish for SailfishOS (native signal client) has been updated and one of the developers gives us a glimpse what might come in the next update - https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/whisperfish-the-unofficial-sailfishos-signal-client/3337/1595?u=frankpsA big thank You to @rubdos! #Whisperfish #SailfishOS
- frankps: The finale batch of Jolla C2 devices has landed in Tampere and is ready to be shipped to customers: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/update-on-jolla-c2-q4-25-production-batch/25420/35?u=frankpsIf you want a #SailfishOS phone there is only a few preorders left for the upcoming community phone, J2: https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-preorder#LinuxMobile @jolla
- #sailfishOS: Is this the new normal? Or was I put into some bucket of "special" users? #youtubealternatives #youtube I can't watch videos on YouTube. Tried four different ones. (I hardly ever visit YouTube unless I have to, but there were some videos about #SailfishOS I wanted to check out after several people mentioned that) #peertube
- #sailfishOS: Two days left to pre-order one of the remaining #Jolla J2 phones. 574 units left.😐#SailfishOS
- #sailfishOS: Three days to go, only 620 pre-orders left until we reach the 10,000 order mark. That would send a strong signal for independent software on phones. Get moving and place your orders!#sailfishos #jolla #did #dut #digitalindipendenceday
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports Forums OS: Microphone privacy concern
- UBports Forums OS: unstable keyboard
- #UbuntuTouch: Love that my Google Pixel 3a is still alive and running #UbuntuTouch long after Google gave up on it.
- #UbuntuTouch: Outdoor-Smartphone Volla Phone Plinius https://linuxnews.de/outdoor-smartphone-volla-phone-plinius/ #volla #smartphone #vollaos #ubuntutouch #linuxnews
Distributions
- postmarketOS Blog: postmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels
- postmarketOS: We have updated our AI policy to explicitly forbid generative AI. This and more in our latest monthly blog post "postmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels" https://postmarketos.org/blog/2026/02/26/pmOS-update-2026-02/#linuxmobile #postmarketos
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: postmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: msm-modem package temporarily removed
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: linux-postmarketos-qcom-laptop: backport DMA range fix for >32GB snapdragon x devices
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: FuriLabs FuriPhone FLX1 (furilabs-krypton)
- foss2go.com: Fedora Pocketblue: Immutable Fedora for Mobile Devices
Other UIs
Apps
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Recall
- UndeadLeech: Groundbreaking changes in the latest release of Aevum (Catacomb's alarm app): There's now a stopwatch. #linuxmobile #catacomb
- UndeadLeech: "Just added compass support to Charon, which was surprisingly easy thanks to iio-sensor-proxy. #linuxmobile #catacomb"
- pastelsolitude: Oh, yeah, btw the bnuuy mobile Linux game source code is now on Codeberg 🎉.I have no idea what I'm doing.Also binaries exceed Codeberg's size limit so I will most likely have to find a different place for hosting releases. (I'm open for recommendations)https://codeberg.org/pastelsolitude/mobilelinuxgametest#mobilelinux #linux #godot #codeberg
- hugoposnic: Coulr is now working well on #linuxmobile (before latest version, it had a fixed non-resizable window). Post written with Tuba in #postmarketos on my all new OP6t (and first linux phone) 😀️https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.github.huluti.Coulr
- dillo: "Just fixed a big blocker for FLTK >= 1.4.Blurry fonts were caused by a half pixel misalignment bug in FLTK which broke the font hinting leading to poor readability. Should be fixed in next FLTK 1.4.5 release.I was not expecting to having to follow this whole font rendering pipeline rabbit hole. I'm surprised how little information there is on the Web about this topic, maybe I write more details later."
- hugoposnic: Any idea how an app can be marked as "Desktop only" and be in the "Mobile" section of bazaar? Colorway is not the only app impacted#mobilelinux #flathub
- Oleksii: Today is my first time when I've managed easily connect to the Wifi via qr code.https://flathub.org/en/apps/org.kde.qrca is a great app.#linuxmobile
Kernel
- phone-devel: Re: [PATCH v3 2/8] media: qcom: camss: csiphy-3ph: Use odd bits for configuring C-PHY lanes
- phone-devel: [PATCH v2 5/6] arm64: dts: qcom: sm6115: Add missing MDSS core reset
- cnxsoft: "Rockchip RK3588 and RK3576 H.264 and H.265 video decoders gain mainline Linux supportVDPU381 and VDPU383 video decoders are found in Rockchip RK3588 and RK3576 SoCs and variants like the RK3588S and RK3576J. So far, we had to rely on the Rockchip BSP to support hardware video decoding, but Collabora has just announced upstream/mainline Linux support for H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC) video decoding for RK3588 and RK3576 SoCs. Highlights of H.265/H.264 video decoder impl…https://www.cnx-software.com/2026/02/27/rockchip-rk3588-rk3576-h-264-and-h-265-video-decoders-mainline-linux/"
Non-Linux
Stack
- Phoronix: Mesa Developers Trying To Reach A Consensus On AI Policy
- Phoronix: NXP Posts New Linux Accelerator Driver For Their Neutron NPU
- Phoronix: Fwupd 2.0.20 Brings New Hardware Support
- Phoronix: GStreamer 1.28.1 Adds Whisper-Based Speech-To-Text, AV1 Stateful V4L2 Decoder Support
- Phoronix: Servo Browser Engine Starts 2026 With Many Notable Improvements
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2026-02-27
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 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!