Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (12/2025): GNOME 48 and other goodies
Table of Contents
Another week, another roundup: GNOME goes 48, more on the Mecha Comet improvements/delay, some Firefox things, a Ubuntu Touch Q&A, SailfishOS Community News, UT and SFOS coming to the FuriLabs FLX1, an update on postmarketOS finances and more!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Gabriel Simmer: Recyling a OnePlus 6T into a Kubernetes Node
- Liliputing: Mecha Comet modular Linux handheld gets pre-launch upgrade, coming to Kickstarter in Q4, 2025. Later, but better!
- Android Authority: Google says its new Linux Terminal feature isn't a replacement for Android's desktop mode
- OMG! Ubuntu: Firefox is Finally (Re)Adding Support for Web Apps
- LINux on MOBile: MCF17: Getting back into userChrome
- Marius Welt: Pinephone: Megapixels starten auf Fedora 42. German post. An alternate solution (with hardware acceleration) would be using this flatpak, which just uses older GTK (GNOME 46 runtime, sadly (soon?) EOL).
- nlnet: 56 Projects Receive Grants for Improving Core Technological Building Blocks
- Drew DeVaults blog: Please stop externalizing your costs directly into my face
Worth Watching
- UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 161
- Anino Ni Kugi: Work and Play in Ubuntu Touch | Lomiri Plus (Air Mouse)
- Ram Ram Android: Ubuntu Touch
- Efstathios Iosifidis: Ubuntu Touch for Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 | Ubuntu Touch Review (GR)
- CapBoyan RUS [Boyan Mobile]: NFS Undercover на Nokia N900. webOS-версия
- veggero: The Next-Gen Browsers: Comparing Performance, Budget, and Development Pace
- veggero: Open Source Infrastructure has an AI problem
- David Heidelberg at InstallFest: Linux na telefonu v roce 2025. Czech, with automatically generated english subtitles. The title translates to "Linux on Mobile in 2025" (Source).
- Jozef Mlich at InstallFest: Poslední míle mezi uživateli a linuxovými telefony. Czech, with automatically generated english subtitles. The title translates to "Last Mile Between Users and Mobile Linux" (Source).
Worth Noting
- joelselvaraj: "Got the focus lens actuator (bu64748) of Poco F1 rear main camera (imx363) working in mainline linux! 🙂 Yet to be released. Thanks to @NekoCWD's camerctrl (https://gitlab.com/NekoCWD/cameractrl), we got a nice overlay to manually adjust the focus! I m using a custom gnome snapshot build that supports 1440p resolution from here: https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/merge_requests/79523"
- fakeshell: "welp thats two for two. hopefully we can have #sailfishos with VoLTE on release too very soon… ah yes i should add, if anyone is interested in bringing their distro feel free to contact us through our contact form (https://furilabs.com/contact/), and we will be happy to consider all requests if they help grow the ecosystem with more mobile linux options #ubports #ubuntutouch #flx1 #furilabs #LinuxOnMobile #LinuxMobile #furiphoneflx1" Nice!
- PINE64: Updated PineTab-V devices have just made their way to the PineStore as of yesterday! There have been some notable hardware improvements to the device since the last batch.* An accelerometer was added to the device* Resolved slow charging while the device is turned off* An LED status indicator light has been added to the device (similar to the PinePhone) * Added a proper ID for the PineTab-V in the EEPROMDefault OS was developed by @starfivetech (thanks!) and is based on Debian. Some additional PineTab-V OS information because I ran out of characters. Both cameras and hardware acceleration work out of the box with this default OS*. *HEVC and MJPEG hardware decoding does not currently work in Firefox.
- Luigi311: didn't realize that @Liberux posted the modem they are going to use. Is anyone on #linuxmobile familiar with the Snapdragon X62 and how well its supported on mainline? Looking at the specs its really new and modern so performance and efficiency should hopefully be amazing. That of course does depend on if power saving modes can even be activated. What are everyone's thoughts/experience on it? Also wonder if its hooked up via usb similar to #librem5 #mobilelinux #linuxonmobile #liberux #linux
- carbonatedcaffeine: "https://files.hrdl.eu/pn_2025-03-20_sway_hints.mp4 Reposting this video here from community member Hrdl. This video demos the improved display controller driver for the #pine64 #PineNote, which means goodbye to artifacting and welcome to automatic redrawing on a per pixel basis. As seen in the video, the display runs at a higher (and stable) 84Hz refresh rate than the stock 80Hz thanks to some tuning.You can find the work Hrdl has been doing here: https://git.sr.ht/~hrdl/linux"
Events
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #192 Forty-eight!
- Michael Catanzaro: GNOME 48 Core Apps Update
- GNOME Foundation: Introducing GNOME 48
- monster: Cleaner Code With GObject
- feborg.es: Flock to Fedora is coming to Prague!
- GNOME Foundation: Linux App Summit 2025 – Registrations are now open!
- monster: Introducing Adwaita Fonts
Phosh
- Phosh (Mastodon): Dear distro maintainers and "i build my own stuff" people: In case you want to check out 0.46 relesae upfront: we've tagged the first releases candidates (0.46~rc1) of #phosh and related components today. 🎉 Release is planned 2025-03-31
- agx: "A limitation of using #phosh in docked mode (having an external 🖥️ , 🖱️ ⌨️ attached to your 📱 ) was that #phoc wouldn't support multiple workspaces. There's an MR that adds initial workspace support now (which might even land for 0.46) 🧵 :"
- Phosh (Mastodon): In preparation for the upcoming phosh release we've released new versions of #gmobile 0.2.0 and #feedbackd 0.8.0. Feedbackd is now more flexible regarding haptic feedback for events so if e.g. feedback is too intrusive (or too weak) you can consider submitting adjustment for your device to https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/feedbackd-device-themes/#phosh #LinuxMobile
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: 6.4 Improvements
- Carl Schwan et al.: This Week in KDE Apps
- Bhushan Shah: Professional update and Plasma Mobile NGI0 Core grant
- Phoronix: KDE Continues Prepping More Features For Plasma 6.4
Sxmo
Sailfish OS
- Community News - Sailfish OS Forum: Sailfish Community News, 20th March 2025 - Upgrade jenga
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 13. Refining the build automation, organising the repo, preparing for the juicy API work.https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1242&list=newpipe
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary Day 12. It's Spring! 🌷 So some spring cleaning 🧹 admin 📜 and building on a faster Xperia 10 V 📱beckon!https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1241&list=newpipe
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary Day 11. Building on phone 📱 and building using a Docker image 🐳https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1240&list=newpipe
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary Day 10. Measuring the memory usage of the build on my phone (with suitably impressive graphs courtesy of psrecord! 📈 ).https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1239&list=newpipe
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary Day 9. Moving the build from my laptop to a Sailfish OS phone 💻 → 📱 https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1238&list=newpipe
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary Day 8. Disentangling Rhinoceroses 🦏https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1237&list=newpipe
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary Day 7. Getting a native build of NewPipe Extractor using GraalVM.https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1236&list=newpipe
Ubuntu Touch
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Today is Q&A Day
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 161 Saturday 22nd March 19:00 UTC
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 161 Call for Questions
- fredldotme: Daily reminder that, if you offer your "services" for testing someone's software in the phase of actual prototyping or development, then you aren't helping.
- #UbuntuTouch: DeltaTouch 1.14.0 is out, bringing the message editing, deleting and bookmarking features that were recently released for the official #DeltaChat apps 🎉 #DeltaTouch #UbuntuTouch
- #UbuntuTouch: Messing around on my #ubuntutouch device today #UBports @ubports #ubuntu #linux
- #UbuntuTouch: I just deployed a new version of https://disco2very.org which includes updated data from #ademe as well as the "Practical use cases" category.It's also packaged for #ubuntutouch by @ubports if you want: https://open-store.io/app/disco2very.flaburganI still have an issue with the drag&drop of cards which is not as smooth as it should, but once fixed we should not be too far from a 1.0 version 🙂 #climat #co2 #carbonFootprint #smartGames
Distributions
- q66: we got a gui going with @adrianyyy in chimera somehow on xiaomi mi 9t / sm7150somehow using gdm makes the screen die so this is manually launched from a tty session :) need to debug thatand half the firmware loading is broken :)we got phosh and gnome shell :3chimera mobile soon~
- @linmob@fosstodon.org: Look at that: If you dislike systemd and like debian packages, but want Phosh instead of hildon (on Maemo Leste), Movuan has you covered: https://gitlab.com/l2385/movuan/movuan-recipes Basically, that's a #devuan for your #PinePhone
- postmarketOS Blog: Financial update: first year and first budget
- Lemmy - postmarketOS: Financial update: first year and first budget
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Huawei Y3 II 4G (huawei-lua-l21)
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Newmobi Technology
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Fbkeyboard
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Working with Downstream DTBs
- Mobian mobian-recipes Issues: phrog not coming up on the screen
Apps
- alice: "Ok, so DeSmuME has added ARM Neon support so it runs noticeably faster on mobile now. So far, in fact, that some games like the one shown run at full speed for me. Others don't - the performance reminds me of my old laptop."
- NekoCWD: I just made some changes to @libcamera to export focus/brightness controls and created a PoC app to work with it via @pipewire (wireplumber gobject api) in @vala_lang because why not? 🎉 Published PipeTap with libcamera fork :patcat: Now it's time to beta test! PipeTap is an application that control @libcamera driven camera through @pipewire. Test device on video: OnePlus 6 with @postmarketOS PipeTap: https://gitlab.com/NekoCWD/pipetap Libcamera fork: https://gitlab.com/NekoCWD/libcamera#photography #linuxonmobile #mobilelinux #ShotOnOnePlus #ShotOnMainline
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Frigoligo
- Marius Welt: Pinephone: Telefonieren mit Twinkle
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH v2] power: supply: bq27xxx: do not report incorrect zero values
- phone-devel: [PATCH 0/3] Add video clock controller for SM6350
- phone-devel: [PATCH] arm64: dts: qcom: sm6350: add APR and some audio-related services
- phone-devel: [PATCH] ath10k: snoc: fix unbalanced IRQ enable in crash recovery
- Phoronix: Linux 6.15 Plans To Drop Support For A Useless CRC-32 Checksum In The Kernel Image
- Phoronix: Google Developing "Live Update Orchestrator" As New Means Of Live Linux Kernel Updates
- Phoronix: Code Submitted Ahead Of Linux 6.15 For Enabling Block Sizes Greater Than Page Size
- Phoronix: Linux 6.14 Sees Last Minute Fix For A Two Year Old Regression Causing A 30% Performance Drop
- Phoronix: Arm Bringing Up Support For Newer Mali GPUs With The Open-Source Panthor Driver
- Phoronix: Qualcomm Iris Video Decode Driver & DesignWare HDMI Input Support Ready For Linux 6.15
Stack
- Phoronix: FreeDesktop.org GitLab Transitions To New Server Infrastructure
- Phoronix: Vulkan 1.4.311 Released With New Extension For BFloat16
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-03-21
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!
If you can imagine to put this collection together (it's mostly deleting irrelevant stuff, after scripts have collected it), please get in touch! I (Peter) am struggling with stress-related health issues currently, and it would really put me at ease to have someone to just do this from time to time!