Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (23/2025): Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA 9 and a crowdfunder
Table of Contents
Liberux have launched the crowdfunder for their 'Nexx' phone, Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA 9 released, postmarketOS report on the progress made in April and May (and switch Phosh to a sweet OSK), Nemo Mobile share another design update, and more!
Also, [linmob.net's fediverse presence is now at @linmob@linuxmobile.social :-)
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Liliputing: Liberux NEXX Linux phone with RK3588S and 32GB RAM hits Indiegogo. Crossing fingers! (Stay tuned for a proper opinion on this, I need more time, sorry.)
- CNX Software: Liberux NEXX is a Linux smartphone with Rockchip RK3588S, 32GB RAM, 6.34-inch OLED (Crowdfunding)
- Liberux (Mastodon): 📢 Good news, community!Your response to the new Liberux NEXX model has been amazing 🙌So we’re making it real:🗓️ This Monday, June 9 at 15:00 UTC+0, the new entry-level version will go live.🔧 LTE · 128 GB eMMC · 16 GB RAM💶 Price: €890It will be available on the crowdfunding page, alongside the current version:👉 https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/liberux-nexx--3Thank you for helping us build meaningful open hardware.See you on Monday! 💬#LinuxPhones #LiberuxNEXX #liberux #nexx
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Liberux Nexx GNU/Linux smartphone adds cheaper entry model, Liberux NEXX is now live on crowdfunding!, Liberux Nexx GNU/Linux smartphone starts crowdfunding!
- postmarketOS Blog: postmarketOS in 2025-05: Continuous testing, downstream split, niri, os-installer. Amazing progress, once more.
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch OTA-9 Focal Release
- 9to5 Linux: Ubuntu Touch OTA-9 Released with VoLTE and Waydroid Improvements - 9to5Linux
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Ubuntu Touch OTA-9 Released with VoLTE and Waydroid Improvements
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Ubuntu Touch OTA-9 Focal Release
- Purism: Fortune.com Features Purism and the Made in America Liberty Phone
Worth Watching
- Luca Weiss: Linaro Connect 2025 - Making Android phones Last
- Samsung PortRoms: 🚀 Ubuntu Touch & Droidian Linux on Redmi Note 8 | Full Installation & Setup Guide (2025). That Droidian install looks quite dated, that's Phosh from when Grandpa was a young lad.
- Sankara Narayana Murthy: Ubuntu Touch 20.04 Stable | Redmi Note 7S (lavender)
- CodingBite: Ubuntu Touch OTA-9 Released: Improved VoLTE Support & Waydroid Android 13 Integration
- Liberux: Liberux NEXX - THE LINUX PHONE YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR.
- FLAME130: I Tried the Clockwork Pi PicoCalc… and It Surprised Me! Can't run Linux, but seems fun.
Worth Noting
- Luigi311: Working through updating the #FLX1 review i wrote up a while ago and my god hopefully future phones I test both do and dont have similar battery life. I want to have full battery life numbers instead of just estimations so from 100% to the phone is off. Standby test without a sim and wifi on the entire time has been going 164 hours and still has another 16% to go. No deep sleep. Luckily the last battery test i need. Im also updating the review structure a bit to show more info.#mobilelinux
- dawndrums: Watch Divine D. making a test call on Phosh. This was only to try the call application, power consumption and connectivity. There are many other scenarios for such a test, such as during low-power modes, running performance applications, audio quality, audio routing, bluetooth HFP mode.. We will be covering those as the hardware revisions and software improve.https://youtube.com/shorts/iT9Pq75SxFU?si=XVX86ioH9gYVYpfT#Linuxmobile #open-source #privacy #dawndrums #divined #dawnos. Looking good!
Events
More Software News
Releases
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #203 Infinitely Proud
- Steven Deobald: 2025-06-06 Foundation Report
- Ignacy Kuchciński: Using Portals with unsandboxed apps
- Tobias Bernard: Summer of GNOME OS
- Steven Deobald: Pride At GNOME
- Phoronix: Linux Mint Continues Working On Its libAdwaita Fork, Fingerprint Authentication
Phosh
- agx: One thing that bothered me since some time is that for switching between different 🎶 players required to🔓 the 📱 .So e.g. pausing #gnome podcasts to listen to music via #gapless needed ever so many steps. I've thus added a lockscreen plugin to #phosh that tracks all currently running media players that use #mpris and allows to interact with them. This is all pretty rough still but I can hopefully brush it up for 0.48 (https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Phosh/phosh/-/merge_requests/1729).#LinuxMobile This is exciting!
- agx: If you ever wanted to write a #QuickSetting or #LockScreen plugin for #phosh but didn't fancy #GObject C: Here's an example in #vala: https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Phosh/phosh/-/merge_requests/1727 #ValaLanguage
- agx: Debian's experimental distribution now has #ModemManager / #libqmi snapshots to test this more easily. These versions also include support for qmi based modems as found in the #OP6, #Pixel3a and similar devices Upstream snapshots announced here: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/modemmanager-devel/2025-June/010050.html #phosh #LinuxMobile
- postmarketOS: Default keyboard for #Phosh has been switched to Stevia (formerly known as phosh-osk-stub) in postmarketOS edge: https://postmarketos.org/edge/2025/06/03/switch-to-p-o-s/
- Phosh (Mastodon): We usually learn a lot about this on conferences but let's try it here as well:If you're daily driving #phosh we're keen to here on which phone (or other device)? Which distro do you use and which phosh version are you currently running? #LinuxMobile
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: Plasma 6.4 is nigh
- Carl Schwan et al.: This Week in KDE Apps
- KDE Announcements: KDE Gear 25.04.2
- Planet KDE: Interview on FLOSS Weekly
Sailfish OS
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 84
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 83
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 82
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 81
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 80
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 79
- #sailfishOS: I'm finally almost ready to release the first alpha¹ version of my social media meta-client for Sailfish OS.It has themes!I initially planned this for last January but I had some delays.There's also an Android package but that might bring too many issues at once.Now I have to finish some side-quests like a website and a Qt license since this isn't open-source.¹) this basically means it won't work#CommonLisp #Lisp #LQML #QML #Qt #SailfishOS
- #sailfishOS: So, after about a month of slow and gradual changes to my phone ecosystem (and after accepting the quite unfortunate limitation of having to rely on my work phone for the national eID in Sweden: "BankID", due to missing NFC): I'm now ready to try out the actual switch from iPhone to #sailfishos #linuxPhone from #jolla as my 'main driver' phone.Let's see how it goes! 😄
- #sailfishOS: The port of Sailfish for the OnePlus 6 has the best performance out of all the ports currently imo. I recommend giving it a try. https://verdanditeam.com/device/enchilada#oneplus6 #pixel3a #mobilelinux #sailfishos
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch OTA-9 Focal Release
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Focal 20.04 OTA-9 Released
- UBports - Development - Issues: Waydroid Crashes When Moving Cursor to Window or Enabling "Show Taps" After Updating to 20250503 Image or Later
Nemo Mobile
- Nemo Mobile UX team: Nemo redesign part 2
Distributions
- postmarketOS Blog: postmarketOS in 2025-05: Continuous testing, downstream split, niri, os-installer. Amazing progress, once more.
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: postmarketOS in 2025-05: Continuous testing, downstream split, niri, os-installer
- Lemmy - postmarketOS: postmarketOS in 2025-05: Continuous testing, downstream split, niri, os-installer
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: Default keyboard for Phosh switched to Stevia Mobian has been shipping Stevia (formerly phosh-osk-stub) for a while, so this is no change to be afraid of. (Personally, I went back to squeekboard, though - I really should write a post about OSK ergonomics.)
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Jolla C/Intex Aqua Fish (jolla-l500d)
Apps
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Keep Me Awake
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Pigment
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Tuner
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Klaro
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Kontainer
- postmarketOS: Apps by Category: ApertureUA: Steam definitely isn't meant for mobile
- adampigg: Status of ZeppOS support in Amazfish. https://github.com/piggz/harbour-amazfish/issues/504 #smartwatch #linux @gadgetbridge
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH v4 0/4] CAMSS support for MSM8939
- phone-devel: Re: [PATCH v3 3/4] media: dt-bindings: Add qcom,msm8939-camss
- Phoronix: Linux 6.16 Introduces New Helper For Restricting Symbols To Select Kernel Modules
- Phoronix: Linux GPIB Drivers Maturing Into Good Shape 50+ Years After The Bus Was Introduced
- Phoronix: Initial USB Audio Offloading Code Merged For Linux 6.16
Stack
- libcamera: libcamera v0.5.1
- Phoronix: Mesa's Rusticl Lands OpenCL FP16 Half-Float Support
- Phoronix: Vulkan 1.4.317 Introduces VP9 Video Decode, ARM Tensors & 8-bit Floating Point
- Phoronix: Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite GCC vs. LLVM Clang Compiler Performance
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-06-06
Thanks
Huge thanks to Plata for the nifty set of Python scripts that speed up collecting links from feeds by a lot.
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