LINux on MOBile

There's some good news and some bad news. Dirty Pipe is not a fun vulnerability, and our GNU/Linux Phones have new enough kernels to be vulnerable. At least that new Spectre variant does not affect Cortex A53 phones - having in-order cores only is not always disadvantageous.

Commentary in italics.

Hardware enablement

• Danct12 has ported postmarketOS to the original Snapdragon 835 variant of the Fxtec Pro1.

Software news

Security

• ArsTechnica: Dirty Pipe - Linux has been bitten by its most high-severity vulnerability in years.

Firmware

• Tow-Boot 2021.10-004: Now more mobile has been released, supporting the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro among many other ARM devices. The great thing about Tow-Boot is that it supports EBBR, which basically means Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and thus standardized booting on your phone.

GNOME ecosystem

• Squeekboard 1.17 has been released, featuring an updated visual design among other things.
• Marcus Lundblad: Maps and GNOME 42.
• GNOME: GSoC 2022: GNOME Foundation has been accepted as a mentor organization!.
• This Week in GNOME: #34 No Backup No Mercy.

Plasma/Maui ecosystem

• KDE has been accepted into GSoC, these are potential projects.
• KDE Eco: Celebrate Energy Conservation Day With KDE Eco. Preserving energy also has benefits for resource constrained mobile devices. ;-)
• Tsdgeos: Okular: Signature support now works on Android.

Other app releases

• Nheko (Matrix client) have released 0.9.2. Message bubbles!

Distro releases

• Manjaro ARM with Plasma Mobile Beta 11 has been released.

Sailfish OS

• flypig: Sailfish Community News, 10 March, MWC Barcelona

UBports

• UBports news: Your biweekly UBports news during troubled times!. Ubuntu Touch OTA 22, JingPad images and more.

Worth noting

• If you like minimal setups, you'll like what kelbot came up with #PineDA

Worth reading

Tow-Boot

• TuxPhones: Booting ARM Linux the standard way.
• Phoronix: Tow-Boot Sees New Release As User-Friendly U-Boot Distribution.

Developer Tools

• Janet Blackquill: New tools in the QML LSP collection: qml-dap, qml-dbg, and qml-lint.

Convergence

• Kyle Rankin for Purism: My First Year of Librem 5 Convergence. Nice report! I wish Purism would enable zram by default.

Worth listening

• PineTalk: Episode 6: The Community has been ACTIVE!

Potentially Worth watching¹

PinePhone Pro Initial Impressions

• Jacob David Cunningham: Pinephone Pro Explorer Edition first couple of days.
• Bitter Epic Skits: PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition UNBOXING. I finally have it!.
• Canadian Bitcoiners: PinePhone Pro Unboxing - The Ultimate Privacy Phone Is Here?. Just a word regarding the title: It's a phone meant to run Linux, that's still in the process of hardware enablement. Yes, GNU/Linux is less spyware ridden than other operating systems, but does this make the PinePhone Pro a "privacy smartphone"? You can probably make it one, but we're not there yet.

Security Tutorial

• (RTP) Privacy Tech Tips: 🔒 Lynis Scanner: Linux Hardening

Ubuntu Touch

• CyberPunked: Ubuntu Touch Installation - OnePlus 3 - Android 9 Downgrade.

Something missing?

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