Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (18/2025): Mobile Overlord adds Desktop Mode
Table of Contents
phosh-osk-stub emoji support improvements, KDE developers sprint in Graz for Plasma Mobile, Ubuntu Touch Q&A 164, and Google leaks a desktop mode coming to Pixel phones, and more!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Neilzone: Installing postmarketOS with full disk encryption on a OnePlus 6
- fossphones.com: Linux Phone News - April 29, 2025. Great summary!
- Phoronix: OSU Open Source Lab At Risk Of Closure This Year Due To Lack Of Funding
Worth Watching
- UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 164. Contribute to Ubuntu TOuch and join the foundation, Snaps on UT working with the on-screen keyboard, and more progress!
- Continuum Gaming: Continuum Gaming E467: SFOS & F-Droid – Broccoli
- orailnoor: Running Native Linux KDE Plasma on Android Phone | Mobian OS Installation | Debian OS for Phone
- Domótica En Casa: Vistazo al FuriLabs FLX1 - Un teléfono Linux con compatibilidad Android - Domoticaencasa.es
- Tech Jarves: Install Ubuntu on Android Phone | Ubuntu touch installation 2025
- Linux App Summit: postmarketOS: the opportunities and challenges | Pablo Correa Gomez @ LAS 2025 Great talk, once again! Thanks to Brage Fuglseth there's more in this playlist.
- devrtz: A look at Mobian Trixie, talk page Great talk!
Worth Noting
- bradlinder: "First look at the "desktop experience" coming to Google Pixel phones (most likely sometime after Android 16). It includes a taskbar, status bar, app launcher button, and the ability to run multiple apps in resizable windows. #Android #Google #DesktopMode #Convergence https://www.androidauthority.com/android-desktop-mode-leak-3550321/"
- s4lm6n: GJS-OSK An alternative OSK for GNOME.
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #198 Two More Weeks...
- Andy Holmes: Opaque Governance
- Steven: The Everyone Environment
- Michael Catanzaro: WebKitGTK API Versions Demystified
- Phoronix: GNOME's Blueprint Markup Language Making Progress For GTK4 UIs
Phosh
- agx: #phosh-osk-stub has an #emoji layout since some time but that takes some tapping and scrolling to find an emoji. So I added emojis to the completion bar which makes them easier to select (and the MR also adds some infra to add more "supplementary" results to completions in the future):#LinuxMobile #gtk
- agx: In case you're using a @frameworkcomputer 13 Laptop and want to use the power LED as status LED for #feedbackd (to be notified aboutnotifications in #phosh, etc) you can use this #udev rule: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/agx/feedbackd/-/merge_requests/176/diffs?commit_id=c2e1817012df6ed7ea85b84680e4bac3b9fcae48There's a warning as the LED claims to be multicolor but it's not. That warning will go away with the next #feedbackd release.
- agx: @theDarky @praveen pointed out https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1104029 so maybe give that at try (in case you ended up wanting to try this due to #gtk 4.18 dropping support for older GLES?)
- agx: Free Software Activities April 2025. Impressive!
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: move by default when dragging-and-dropping
- KDE Mentorship: Season Of KDE 2025 Conclusion
- Devin Lin: A Plasma (Mobile) Sprint in Graz
- Volker Krause: Plasma (Mobile) Sprint and Grazer Linuxtage 2025
- lprod.dev: Plasma Sprint and more
- Aleix Pol: Flathub, Plasma and sprinting
- David Redondo: Plasma Sprint 2025 in Graz plus Grazer Linuxtage
- Phoronix: KDE Plasma 6.4 Tackles An 18 Year Old Feature Request, More Wayland Protocols Added
- zahntron: "Hey #plasmamobile users, what role is it playing in your life? Is it a on a secondary device? Are you daily driving it? Is it something you simply want to support in the hope it will one day be the only thing in your pocket? What distro are you using?@plasmamobile #foss #floss #opensource #phone #phones #smartphone #tech #linux #fedora #kde #ubuntu #plasma #desktop #mobile #waydroid #arm"
Sxmo
Sailfish OS
- Community News - Sailfish OS Forum: Sailfish Community News, 1st May 2025 - May Day
- adampigg: Now have service parsing, and realtime steps support for ZeppOS devices in #Amazfish cc/ @gadgetbridge
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 55
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 54
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 53
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 52
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 51
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 50
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 49
- #sailfishOS: Just ordered my first #linuxphone from #jolla with #sailfishos as it’s OS! Excited to play around with it and put it to a test, but my main hope is that it can fully replace my iPhone as main driver phone (either right away or at a later point).Been using iPhone for around 15 years, but not happy with the walled garden, privacy issues nor price levels - and want to actively promote #FOSS so that it can also become a robust alternative for mobile.Let’s see how it lives up to my expectations and hope once it arrives!Anyone else that have a #jolla - or thinking of getting one? What are your experiences with it?
- #sailfishOS: It has taken a wee while to get used to Sailfish, and the different way the ecosystem works.For example:Sailfish has a compatibility mode for using Android apps, called Android AppSupport. AppSupport works very well (in my experience, so far). It works by creating an virtual environment in the home directory called "android_storage". The Android apps then expect, e.g., images, to reside in this environment, not in the usual home directory one level up.#SailfishOS #Android
- jolla: "Jolla C2 just got a deep dive review from LinuxEasy. They looked past the specs and into what really matters: why this is a true community phone, and how that shows up in daily use.Read the full review:https://www.linuxeasy.org/jolla-c2-community-phone/#JollaC2 #SailfishOS"
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 163
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 162
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Today is Q&A Day
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Q&A 163 Blog and Audio available now
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 164 Saturday 3rd May at 19:00 UTC
- UBports - Development - Issues: Add an info for MMS download specifying that cellular data is needed and wifi must be off
Distributions
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): We are looking into moving our Mastodon account to another instance within the next week or so.
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: Adding new device
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: linux-postmarketos-amlogic: upgrade to 6.12.23
- Mobian mobian-recipes Issues: zram images fail to boot fully
- Phoronix: Debian Developers Pursuing A General Resolution Around AI Models
Apps
- afranke: "Eleven. Eleven! ELEVEN! No, I’m not talking to an elevator, I’m announcing 📢 the new version of your favourite #Matrix client for #GNOME, #Fractal 11.https://discourse.gnome.org/t/fractal-11-released/28663"
- TheEvilSkeleton: "Since Upscaler has just reached 150,000 installs on Flathub, I'm releasing Upscaler 1.5.0!"
- postmarketOS: Apps by Category: FerassElHafidi: /* IRC */
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH v2 0/5] Enable USB audio offloading on Fairphone 4 smartphone
- phone-devel: [PATCH v3 0/2] BOE TD4320 panel
Stack
- Flathub blog: Vorarbeiter is here
- Phoronix: Labwc 0.8.4 Ships More Usability Improvements For This Wayland Compositor
- Phoronix: Mesa 25.1-rc3 & Mesa 25.0.5 Deliver More Graphics Driver Fixes
- Phoronix: FreeBSD 14.3 Beta Released Ahead Of FreeBSD 15.0 Later This Year
- Phoronix: MoltenVK 1.3 Released For Vulkan 1.3 Support On Apple Devices
- Phoronix: OpenZFS 2.3.2 Released With Linux 6.14 Compatibility
- Phoronix: Redis 8.0 Released: Now Tri-Licensed With AGPLv3
- Phoronix: DragonFlyBSD 6.4.1 Released With Many Bug Fixes
Non-Linux
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-05-02
- Matrix.org: Announcing the 2025 Governing Board elections
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!