Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (10/2026): Slow Spring
Table of Contents
This past week: Jolla at Mobile World Congress, GTK 4.22 released with improved SVG support and reduced motion option, some Phosh and Ubuntu Touch news and more. Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Liliputing: The new Jolla Phone with Sailfish OS is on track to start shipping in the first half of 2026
- WIRED: The ‘European’ Jolla Phone Is an Anti-Big-Tech Smartphone
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: The ‘European’ Jolla Phone Is an Anti-Big-Tech Smartphone
- foss2go.com: Motorola and GrapheneOS partnership announced
Worth Watching
- Continuum Gaming: Sailfish OS & Proton Mail – New native bridge app available! (Continuum Gaming E511)
- Sucharek: How to install postmarketOS on Poco F3 (Linux on a Smartphone)
- Actualia tech: "Fedora on smartphones, the Pocketblue community project!"
- SAMTIME: I Bought a Linux Phone in 2026
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: I Bought a Linux Phone in 2026 - YouTube
- UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 185
- RTP Tech Tips: Age Verification Required In Linux 2027
Worth Noting
- UndeadLeech: "Catacomb's latest 1.3.0 release fixes an interesting issue: Apparently on the PinePhone (Pro) when disabling
eg25-manager, libinput generates a bunch ofXF86WakeUppress/release events, ultimately ending up with the key permanently pressed. Since Catacomb supports multi-key bindings, it wouldn't trigger bindings anymore, since it only looked at the ones withXF86WakeUpactive.https://github.com/catacombing/catacomb/releases/tag/v1.3.0#linuxmobile #catacomb #pinephone" - UndeadLeech: "It seems like many things have improved in #servo since I've last checked it out. Performance isn't perfect, but it does still manage to reach 60-70 FPS while screen recording on a Fairphone 5 (~90 without).Plenty of work left to do before I can ship it as an alternative engine, but I think this time it might make it upstream rather than sitting in a branch for another year.#linuxmobile #catacomb"
- allpurposemat: "My Fairphone 5 running #postmarketOS re-gained audio support today, with bonus working mic as well!!Seems like the ALSA configs use a device identifier that only matches if you don't use U-Boot, as it sets a different name, and thus ALSA doesn't find it. Temp solved via
sudo ln -s /usr/share/alsa/ucm2/conf.d/qcm6490/{Fairphone\ 5.conf,fairphone-Fairphone5-.conf}Many thanks to @bshah and @aelin for looking into it and spending time helping." - erebion: Monthly XMPP Newsletter from the @xmpp Foundationhttps://xmpp.org/2026/03/the-xmpp-newsletter-february-2026/Things that happened in February (awesome things)#XMPP #Messenger #DIDay #didit #LinuxOnMobile
- gnulinux: "Alte Technik, neue Freude Oder wie es mir gelungen ist, einem alten Linux-Smartphone neues Leben einzuhauchen. #PinePhone #linuxmobile #catacomb #Alarm #Arch_Linux_ARM #Linux https://gnulinux.ch/alte-technik-neue-freude"
- system76: "“In the case of Colorado’s and California’s bills, effectiveness is lost. In the case of New York’s bill, liberty is lost.”Carl Richell, System76 Founder and CEO, urges New York to reject S8102A OS-level age verification.Read his full statement: https://s76.co/m-S8102A"
- modal: "If you missed yesterday's Reflection Developer Labs session but are curious how it went, you're in luck!The recording is available here now: https://bbb3.gnome.org/playback/presentation/2.3/cd84e4cf96be207333ac00baae24fd0630fa28ac-1772549208221"
- robn: "Including community managers and technical writers is a MASSIVE step in the right direction.It may be hard as a programmer to get stable funding for open source work, but its even harder for not-programmer roles, and those are every bit as important for long term sustainability of our work.Pass this on to the community managers and technical writers in your life :)re https://mastodon.social/@sovtechfund/116165875657309832"
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: NLnet grant: Dual SIM for Mobile Linux
Events
- modal: "Spring is approaching, and so is the next #BoilingTheOcean 🌿When? Saturday, March 28Where? Cultivation Space (Berlin)It will be a single-day hacking event, focused on all the usual topics: mobile, local-first, platform, UX, and more. There will also be lightning talk slots in the evening.More details and link to signup pad to follow!#berlin #gnome #linuxmobile #postmarketOS #localfirst #gtk" I won't be able to make it, sadly.
- ev: "Gentle reminder: If you intend to attend the Phosh Contributors Meeting 2026 in May, please apply! See https://ev.phosh.mobi/pcm/pcm-2026/ for details.We're also happy about donations to reach our funding goal for the event.#pcm2026 #phosh #LinuxMobile"
- LAS: "Our CfP is open, one of the things we've been focused on is gaming? Are you a #game dev? Always dreamed of writing a game on #Linux? Submit a talk around your experience around gaming in #Linux? Let us know what we need to address gaming on Linux. https://linuxappsummit.org/cfp"
- katzenmann: Because @cccac is a bit far away from me but I still want to do some Linux Mobile hacking, and others may want to do the same, I started the Linux Mobile Hacking Evening in the @c3d2 in Dresden.The first one will be in 2 weeks on the 17th.https://c3d2.de/news/linux-phone-hacking-0326.html#linuxmobile #postmarketOS
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #239 Accessibility Contributions
- Matthew Garrett: To update blobs or not to update blobs
- Martín Abente Lahaye: [Call for Applicants] Flatseal at Igalia’s Coding Experience 2026
- Allan Day: GNOME Foundation Update, 2026-03-06
- Phoronix: GTK 4.22 Released With Improved SVG Support, Reduced Motion Option
- Phoronix: GNOME 50 Release Candidate Brings Last Minute Changes
Phosh
- Phosh.mobi Blog: Development News February 2026
- Phosh (gotosocial): Looking forward to work with #modemmanager upstream on improving dual SIM support in our #LinuxMobile stack: https://nlnet.nl...
- phosh: This will also help #LinuxMobile. There are rumors that this might get integrated into #stevia 🎹 (as you might have heard at our last community get together): https://mstdn.social/@theeclecticdyslexic/116169411669556587 . See also.
- phosh: "Tip: if your phone doesn't have a notification LED, it is broken or not yet supported by the kernel you can use the camera flash 📸 :Video on #peertube: https://peertube.debian.social/w/h6sSCuAZDfSQHuBJfaceCG Video on #youtube: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6IbIR2jw6-4 #LinuxMobile #phosh #feedbackd"
- opensourceopenmind: @joe9nf Yeah, but for nontechy folk who need a good OotB experience right now, even that's a great step up the #freedomladder, especially as the #phosh UI on it looks almost the same as on mainline projects using it. So when/if they decide to step up the ladder to a mainline project like #postmarketOS, #PureOS or #Mobian, the migration will be easier compared to migrating from iOS/Android because of same UI/DE, flatpaks, waydroid, etc. Personally, I'm using postmarketOS on a #Librem5 and almost everything important works, but I'm not sure I'd recommend to someone who is not already comfortable with #desktopLinux and a #FOSS-only ecosystem.
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: Polish and Stability
- Carl Schwan et al.: This Month in KDE Apps
- KDE Announcements: KDE Gear 25.12.3
- KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.6.2, Bugfix Release for March
- KDE e.V. News: Rocky Linux becomes KDE's newest Patron
- tsdgeos: KDE Gear 26.04 branches created
- akselmo: What even are Breeze, QtQuick, QtWidget, Union..?
Sailfish OS
- Community News - Sailfish OS Forum: Sailfish Community News, 5th March 2026 - MWC Barcelona 2026
- Community News - Sailfish OS Forum: Greetings from MWC Barcelona 26
- MarkDW: have just fired up my new sailfish os phone and.... it's pretty cool :)First impressions:#jolla #sailfishos #ungoogled https://devenirgris.com/2026/03/07/chapter-10-picking-up-the-ungoogled-thread-again-with-sailfish-os/
- leanderlindahl: @wavesblog our hope lies with European phone OS #SailfishOS, #postMarketOS and their peers combined with legislation requiring digital IDs and banking to have defined APIs so that we can build our own ecosystem. Relying on foreign data harvesters with an opaque agenda won't cut it.https://sailfishos.org/#DigitalSovereignty
- frankps: A fantastic Immich client has been released in its first version for SailfishOS today! https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/immich-a-native-immich-application-for-sailfish-os/28066/2#SailfishOS #Immich #Privacy #OpenSource #LinuxMobile #Photography
- kokorins: Working on my Mobile Speeder app. The Sailfish OS version is available on Harbor and OpenRepos. Planning to release an Android version soon, but I need at least 12 reviewers. If you’re interested, please send me a direct message. #sailfishos #android #speedreader
Ubuntu Touch
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 185 Call For Questions.
- UBports - Development - Issues: Install isn't compatible with non-Debian systems
- Tekchip: I've seen next to no talk around this thing. It looks good on paper. Ubuntu Touch officially supported. https://braxtech.net/brax3 Anybody get one from the early run? How is it? #android #privacy #ubports #ubuntutouch
- ancientsounds: @retrimental @Lioh Yes and no. #ubports #ubuntutouch is not the same as desktop #ubuntu: it's an immutable OS and the apps are tailored for small screen devices. You can run arbitrary Linux programs, but only in the Libertine container, which is a bit of a fiddle but does work especially in full-screen mode. Beaming to a full-size screen has some lag though; a wired connection is better but only some devices support that. It's great to experiment with but not yet full convergence, and I wouldn't ditch the desktop/laptop yet!
Apps
- Mathias Bonn: Mahjongg: Second Year in Review
- pi_crew: "Took the work of @nielsdg on #Gnome mail client #Geary GTK4 port, essential for usage on #LinuxMobile, and created a rebased pull request 🚀 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/geary/-/merge_requests/892"
- a23: "Today Planify reached 5,000 stars on GitHub ⭐When I started this project, I simply wanted to build a beautiful and powerful task manager for Linux. Seeing thousands of people interested in it, using it, and contributing ideas is incredibly motivating.Open source is amazing because it shows what can happen when people from all over the world support and improve a project together.Thank you to everyone who uses Planify, reports issues, contributes ideas, and supports the project."
- jmlich: "I’ve been working on a new feature for #Amazfish. A new pull request adds support for uploading workouts to @FitTrackee, a FOSS alternative to Strava. The integration is simple for now — just basic uploads, no advanced features yet.I’m looking forward to your feedback!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwylMDM8J5g"
- Carl Schwan et al.: This Month in KDE Apps
Distributions
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH v4 0/3] Add wiko-chuppito devictree
- phone-devel: Re: [PATCH 1/4] dt-bindings: pinctrl: qcom: Add Milos LPI pinctrl
- Phoronix: Linux 7.0 Slab Fix On The Way For A "Severe Performance Regression"
- Phoronix: Linux 7.0 File-System Benchmarks With XFS Leading The Way
Stack
- Phoronix: New Maui.Gtk Project Provides A GTK4 Backend For Microsoft's .NET MAUI
- Phoronix: Wine 11.4 Released With More Improvements
- Phoronix: Vulkan 1.4.345 Released With New ARM Shader Instrumentation Extension
- Phoronix: Wayland 1.25 RC1 Released With Improved Documentation, Minor Changes
- Phoronix: Rust 1.94 Released With Stable Support For AVX-512 FP16 Intrinsics, Array Windows
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2026-03-06
- Matrix.org: Senior Developer Relationship Engineer
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!