Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (11/2026): Input, Budgets and Widgets
Table of Contents
This past week: postmarketOS publishes 2025 financial report and 2026 budget, GNOME 50 approaching with libadwaita 1.9 released with new sidebar widget for adaptive apps, Stevia speech input prototype via vosk-server - talk to Phosh, Plasma Keyboard improvements and way more. Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- dcz: Wayland input method project post-mortem
- sunweaver: Debian Lomiri Tablets 2025-2027 - Project Report (Q4/2025)
- postmarketOS Blog: Financial update: 2025 financial report and new budget
- LINux on MOBile: MCF19: Going Vertical
Worth Watching
- Continuum Gaming: Code Breaker and Media coverage of the J2 (MWC 2026)! (Continuum Gaming E512)
- AP Archive: Finnish phone maker Jolla launches privacy-focused handset for Europeans
- VenhoAi: MWC 2026: Jolla Launches the European Phone | Behind the Scenes with Venho
- Nostalgitech: Sony Xperia 10 III with Sailfish OS 5.0 (Tampella). Another FOSDEM stand recording.
- Nostalgitech: Samsung A3 with Linux pmOS - 12 years old smartphone
- Oleksii: Power consumption/management video #PostmarketOS #Fairphone
- DHOCNET Workbench: PostmarketOS Flash via TWRP & Auto Pairing Bluetooth Keyboard Testing
- Pierre Parent: Presenting the application Maps Exporter for Ubuntu Touch (english version)
Worth Noting
- UndeadLeech: "A little preview of the multi-engine behavior in Kumo: To quickly try out a website in a different engine, you can just reload it in WebKit/Servo through the context menu. Kumo will remember which engine was last used for a domain and use that engine for all new tabs for that domain going forward. That way if you're interested in a new browser engine, you can transition one website at a time, rather than requiring a complete browser change.#linuxmobile #servo #catacomb"
- tbernard: The @solarcast podcast interview about @modal featuring yours truly is out!Thanks @zelf for the invite and for editing our sprawling conversation into something coherent 💚https://solarcast.cc/@solarcast/episodes/modal
- Lemmy.ml - linuxphones: which Linux Phone Distro should I use?
- Mobian: "If you are on forky and have an sdm845 phone (such as oneplus 6 or 6T), do NOT upgrade the kernel. There's a bug that will make it no longer boot (the kernel version affected is 6.12.76)."
Events
- Modal: Our second Reflection Developer Labs session is next Tuesday, March 17, at 15:00 UTC!If you're interested in adding local-first sync to your GTK app, this is for you :)Sign up here: https://pad.gnome.org/4uGYejbVSxO8LUPQRQZW-w#ReflectionDeveloperLabs #gnome #gtk #p2panda #localfirst
- ev: Gentle reminder: Our next #Phosh #community #gettogether is next Tuesday 19:00 CET https://ev.phosh.mobi/gettogether/ . Save the date!#LinuxMobile
- gnome: "🚨We are extending the #GUADEC 2026 Call for Participation deadline to March 27th .If you were still thinking about it, you now have a bit more time to share your ideas with the GNOME community.You can submit your proposal here: https://events.gnome.org/event/306/abstracts/#submit-abstract#GNOME #opensource"
- Modal: There's a schedule for #BoilingTheOcean 10 now 🥳 Join us on March 28 at Cultivation Space to discuss and hack on topics like mobile, local-first, GNOME app development, and more :)As usual, you can sign up and add your topic and talk ideas on the pad: https://pad.gnome.org/szr80MP4QKuT3tpNHUb1rg#berlin #localfirst #gnome #postmarketOS #linuxmobile #gtk #flatpak
- Björn: Nur noch 2,5 Wochen bis zu den Chemnitzer Linuxtagen. Der Phosh e.V. hat einen eigenen Stand und dort könnt ihr alles Rund um Linux auf mobilen Geräten erfahren. Wir haben einige Testgeräte dabei und freuen uns schon darauf mit Euch ins Gespräch zu kommen. https://ev.phosh.mobi/de/ #clt2026 #linux #chemnitz #phosh
- Phosh e.V.: 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: "It's time to register! Registrations for Linux App Summit 2026 are now open. LAS 2026 will take place from May 16–17 in Berlin, Germany.Register here: https://linuxappsummit.org/register/We're looking forward to seeing you there.#Linux #opensource #Apps #kde #gnome"
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #240 Big Reworks
- Alice Mikhaylenko: Libadwaita 1.9. Great improvements!
- Sebastian Wick: Redefining Content Updates in Wayland
- Lucas Baudin: Improving Signatures in Papers: Malika's Outreachy Internship
- GNOME: 🚨 #GNOME 50 will be released on March 18! 😍 Star or/and boost this post if you're excited! With 5 more days to go we just asked our developers to drop their final GNOME 50 release of their projects.#Linux #Opensource
- Phoronix: GNOME OS Switches To KMSCON Enabled By Default
Phosh
- agx: Speech input is one of the missing features in #Phosh's stevia. I had looked at several possible solutions but didn't want to pull in a ton more dependencies into stevia itself. While looking for something completely different I stumbled onto #vosk-server which runs fully locally but can be talked to via websocket and so I could punch that into the prototype I had already alying around (video has audio):#LinuxMobile. Impressive!
- Phosh (gotosocial): Another #cellbroadcast test that went smoothly on #phosh (and the receive wasn't even aware that this one was scheduled🙃)
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: Press-and-Hold for Alternative Characters
- Carl Schwan et al.: This Week in KDE Apps
- KDE Announcements: KDE Ships Frameworks 6.24.0
- KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.5.6, Bugfix Release for March
- Nate Graham: This month in KDE Linux
- Merritt Codes: Plasma Keyboard: FLOSS/Fund, diacritics, and more
- qt.io: What's new in QML tooling in Qt 6.11, part 2: new qmllint warnings
- Phoronix: KDE Plasma 6.6.3 Fixing Direct Scan-Out When Using Fractional Scaling
Sailfish OS
- Announcements - Sailfish OS Forum: Community meeting on 26th March 2026
- Announcements - Sailfish OS Forum: [Release notes] Tampella 5.0.0.76 - Early Access
- frankps: This is going great! The September batch on Jolla J2 Community Phone is already a 101% booked with preorders! https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-sept-26 @jolla #SailfishOS #NextGenJollaPhone #LinuxMobile #Linux
- piggz: "I set up a liberapay account. If you appreciate my work on #SailfishOS ports for @volla or @pine64 devices, or like my applications then feel free to use it. :) https://liberapay.com/adampigg"
- nieldk: SailShark for #SailfishOS!A native Silica frontend for tshark — because why should desktop users have all the fun?✅ Live packet capture✅ Protocol colour coding✅ Choose your interface✅ Capture filters✅ Save to .pcapng✅ Hex + ASCII dump per packetStill rough around the edges but fully usable. Built with Qt/QML on top of Wireshark 3.6.24.Source dropping soon. Feedback welcome! 🐾#Wireshark #NetworkAnalysis #Linux #MobileLinux #OpenSource #Qt
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 185
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 184
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 183
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 182
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 181
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 185 Blog and Audio available now.
- UBports - Development - Issues: Page header incorrectly hides when switching between tabs and won't come back
- Phoronix: Ubuntu's AppArmor Hit By Several Security Issues - Can Yield Local Privilege Escalation
Distributions
Mobian
- Mobian: "If you are on forky and have an sdm845 phone (such as oneplus 6 or 6T), do NOT upgrade the kernel. There's a bug that will make it no longer boot (the kernel version affected is 6.12.76)."
- Mobian mobian-recipes Issues: firefox-esr-mobile-config removed fromm testing
- Phoronix: Debian 13.4 Released With Dozens Of Fixes
NixOS
postmarketOS
- postmarketOS Blog: Financial update: 2025 financial report and new budget
- Lemmy - postmarketOS: Financial update: 2025 financial report and new budget
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Financial update: 2025 financial report and new budget
- News for developers of postmarketOS: pmbootstrap: aportupgrade and lint subcommands removed
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: pmaports and pmbootstrap default branch changed
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: New postmarketOS installations for the PinePhone use the wrong UCM configs
- postmarketOS pmaports issues: ALSA looks for wrong device name when using U-Boot
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Rebase a close-to-mainline kernel
- Lemmy - postmarketOS: Just installed PostmarketOS
Apps
- schmiddionmobile: "In the last few weeks I have spent some time improving Flare, releasing versions 0.19.0 and 0.20.0 (as well as hotfix releases 0.18.5--0.18.8 and 0.19.1). The new versions for example add an indicator if a channel has new messages, and activating the channel now directly jumps to the latest unread message. It also improves on the UI of Flare, e.g. making reactions to look nicer. There have also been lots of other minor improvements and bug fixes, check out the changelog for more details."
- pi_crew: This is crazy 🤯 Told claude code to write me a #LinuxMobile #Rust GTK4 app for #Nextbike bike rental service (based upon nextcompanion fdroid app). Took about 15 minutes and it works on the first try 😮
- wrenix: @pi_crew @nielsdgi make the dev branch of #geary now testable on @postmarketOS (on #LinuxMobile ) and #Alpine with "mrtest add 98744 -a"
- mlundblad: "Rolled the releases for GNOME 50 today (a bit early, but I'll be busy all day tomorrow):Maps 50.0libshumate 1.6.0and also a (small) bugfix 49.5 on the (old) stable branch.Didn't yet do a write-up about the new stuff, guess that'll have to be done sometime soonish, too… 😎#gnome #gnomemaps #mapstodon #gnome50 #libshumate"
- VolkerKrause: In preparation for the #OpenTransport2026 conference #KDE's travel apps Itinerary and KTrip will support the Swiss OpenJourneyPlanner 2.0 and train formations APIs in the upcoming 26.04 release.
- UndeadLeech: "A little preview of the multi-engine behavior in Kumo: To quickly try out a website in a different engine, you can just reload it in WebKit/Servo through the context menu. Kumo will remember which engine was last used for a domain and use that engine for all new tabs for that domain going forward. That way if you're interested in a new browser engine, you can transition one website at a time, rather than requiring a complete browser change.#linuxmobile #servo #catacomb"
- deobald: "my monthly donation just went through to @kolunmi for their work on bazaar, the flatpak app store for linux: https://github.com/kolunmi/bazaarthere's no corporate sponsor or grants yet, so your monthly donation (i recommend github sponsors) makes a huge difference to the project."
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Telepipe
- Phoronix: Google To Finally Provide Chrome ARM64 Binaries For Linux
mobile-config-firefox
- LINux on MOBile: MCF19: Going Vertical
- @linmob@linuxmobile.social: Firefox 149 split tabs on mobile
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): The mobile-config-firefox documentation has been split up into multiple pages (from mostly a single README.md file), was updated, and is now available at https://docs.postmarketos.org/mobile-config-firefox/ for comfortable reading. For example… with Firefox on your Linux Mobile phone! 😉The ✏️ icon will get you directly to the markdown file in the git repository. Contributions welcome!#mobileconfigfirefox #linuxmobile #postmarketos
Kernel
- z3ntu: "Front camera enablement for Fairphone 5: sent upstream ✅ https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-msm/20260313-fp5-s5kjn1-v1-0-fa4f1c727318@fairphone.com/Vladimir Zapolskiy developed and submitted the actual S5KJN1 driver upstream (for a different device), so just some dts additions were left for me :)#LinuxMobile #MobileLinux #Fairphone"
- Phoronix: Google Now Using AutoFDO To Enhance Android's Linux Kernel Performance
- Phoronix: Linux Kernel API Specification Framework Advances Past RFC Stage
Stack
- Phoronix: Mesa's LLVMpipe Now Exposes Mesh Shader Support
- Phoronix: Vulkan 1.4.346 Released With Notable VK_KHR_device_address_commands
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2026-03-13
- Matrix.org: Announcing Our First Trademark Policy
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!