Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (25/2025): Packed with Goodies
Table of Contents
This week really was something: postmarketOS ship 25.06 (which, among other things, brings systemd) and work to reverse-engineer VoLTE, FuriOS 13.1.0 lands with Open-Store support (for Ubuntu Touch apps), and plenty of other improvments, Plasma Mobile share detailed log of all the fixes and improvements they managed to land in the past year (and what's to come), Jolla announce free updates for all Jolla C2 customers, ... and, if you missed it, I managed to interview Liberux about their Nexx phone - but there's way more still, including a packed Apps section. Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Plasma Mobile: April 2024 - June 2025](https://plasma-mobile.org/2025/06/18/dev-log/)
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: KDE Plasma Mobile β The Dev Log: April 2024 - June 2025
- r/linux: Plasma Mobile Dev Log: April 2024 - June 2025
- postmarketOS Blog: v25.06: the one with systemd
- SailfishOS announcements: Long-term Sailfish OS updates free-of-charge for all Jolla C2!. Given recent EU regulation changes, this may not be a decision Jolla arrived at totally voluntarily. I hope this does not endanger their budget for future development.
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Long-term Sailfish OS updates free-of-charge for all Jolla C2!
- Purism: PureOS Crimson Development Report: May 2025
- postmarketOS Blog: Creating QMI traces from Android phones with Frida to reverse engineer Voice over LTE
- LINux on MOBile: Liberux Nexx: An interview with Liberux about their made-in-EU OSHW Linux Phone
Worth Watching
- sw7ft: Linux running in the google #pixel 3XL #Ubports #waydroid #android great project! #Programming
- Hello Volla: Volla Community Days 2025 Tag 1 To find the bits that interest you, check their schedule.
- Hello Volla: Volla Community Days Day 1 Part 2
- Hello Volla: Volla Community Days 2025 Day 2
- onecircuit: Orange Pi RISC-V plus Touch Screen
- CybeRonics: Turn Your Phone into Linux! | Ubuntu Touch Install π± FREE
- Taf16: I installed Ubuntu Touch (Linux) natively on my Android π»π± | A functional pocket PC?π€―
- Actualia tech: "Linux, Liberux NEXX, the new Linux smartphone!"
- Rob Braxman Tech: Open Source Phones: The Only Safe Smartphones, Very Little Sacrifices to Convenience Today. This video and the one below where suggested by an anonymous contributor - thanks for that!
- Good e-Reader: Android eReader vs Linux eReaders Compared
Worth Noting
- furilabs: "FuriOS 13.1.0 includes support for installing apps from the OpenStore (https://open-store.io/), changing encryption password, installation of Ubuntu Touch dual boot and Android quick settings. This release also fixes some GPU crashes, modem crashes, MMS issues and fingerprint stability improvements and kernel updates to improve overall system stability and performance.For more information see https://furilabs.com/update-13-1-0/"
- bshah: With this change merged in #ModemManager, now if you enable the wakeup for modem device (wake phone from suspend when Call/SMS comes), it'll not wakeup for unsolicited events that are not relevant to user experience.@postmarketOS @plasmamobile @NGIZero and of-course, this work will benefit @phosh or any other #LinuxMobile project using modem manager! π
- Purism community: Redpine wireless gone after upgrade into 6.6.0-1
Hardware
- mntmn: "i'm also happy and excited to announce that we've signed a partnership with @LinaroLtd to collaborate on the integration of the Qualcomm QCS6490 processor in the MNT Reform series of devices, including Pocket, Next, and especially our future mini tablet. more about this soon!"
- sajattack: #uboot #u_boot now boots on BlackBerry Key2LE (using a android boot img and someone else's bootloader exploit)#postmarketos is my next goal!Thanks @cas for u-fetch to let me show off!, Next goal partially achieved! #postmarketos
- Phoronix: Framework Laptop 12: An Upgrade-Friendly, Convertible 2-in-1 Linux Laptop. I mean, it's also a tablet, right?
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #205 Loading Films
- Steven Deobald: 2025-06-20 Foundation Report
- Matthew Garrett: My a11y journey
- Peter Hutterer: libinput and tablet tool eraser buttons
- Marcus Lundblad: Midsommer Maps
- Hari Rana: Itβs True, βWeβ Donβt Care About Accessibility on Linux
Phosh
- Phosh: Dear distro maintainers and "i build my own stuff" people:In case you want to check out 0.48 release upfront: we've tagged the first release candidates (0.48~rc1) of #phosh and related components πRelease is planned 2025-06-30 ( https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Phosh/phosh/-/wikis/Releases )We've also tagged the companion release for #gmobile 0.4.0.Note that phosh-osk-stub got renamed to #stevia: https://ruhr.social/@agx/114573267876571831
- Phosh: "Most of #Phosh's short tutorial and demo videos are now also available on #peertube at https://peertube.debian.social/c/phosh/videos . Some of them are already a bit dated and thus look a bit old fashioned (but...
- agx: Another day out with #phosh and the #OP6 - Woke up with #gnomeClocks β° - Looked up the address of the π via #Firefox and its mobile config- picked my way via #puremap's offline map feature- Send #SMS via #Chatty - Replied a toot via #tuba - Listened to π΅ via #gapless - Looked up the appointment time on #phosh's lockscreen π plugin backed by #eds- Checked π pulse via a simple pacer up using #phosh's lancher plugin for the short πΆ No console needed.#LinuxMobile
- agx: Just in case: If you (unlike me) are using #chromium or #electron apps in #phosh running them like:
chromium --gtk-version=4 --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=waylandmakes the #OSK unfold automatically now that chromium support text-input-v3. (Thanks Hemish for the tip). - agx: @devrtz @NGIZero @snwh β¦and as a service to user interfaces/DEs that don't want to add explicit #CellBroadcast support #cbd can now send notifications. Just enabling the setting is enough. This is configurable on a severity level so you could use a system modal dialog for high severity events and notifications for low severity ones. This is (likely) how we'll wire it up in #phosh once everything has settled in. #LinuxMobile
- fiona: Is there any documentation on how to set CJK input methods for #Phosh (with on-screen keyboard) on #postmarketOS? The input methods wiki page mostly looks at keyboards, the closest I can find is an old blog post on fcitx5 on sxmo. If it matters, I'm specifically interested in Japanese, preferably Anthy. ββ
Plasma Ecosystem
- Plasma Mobile: April 2024 - June 2025](https://plasma-mobile.org/2025/06/18/dev-log/)
- #plasmamobile: Plasma Mobile Newsπ³!@NGIZero Core is funding work on the power management stack; the task switcher gets gestures back; the lockscreen and notifications were redesigned; KDE's very own convergent web browser, Angelfish, has been overhauled and now supports gestures; and look forward to improvements to Discover, Clock, Dialer and more.https://plasma-mobile.org/2025/06/18/dev-log/#plasmamobile #mobile #freesoftware #opensource@kde@lemmy.kde.social
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: Plasma 6.4 has arrived!
- KDE Announcements: Plasma 6.4
- Pablo Arino: Week 3 on Merkuro (GSoC 2025)
- Pablo Arino: Week 2 on Merkuro (GSoC 2025)
- Qt blog: Improving QML Coding by up to 11% with Sonnet 4! Qt AI Assistant 0.9.3 Released.
- TSDgeos: KDE Gear 25.08 release schedule
- Phoronix: KDE Plasma Remains Committed To A Wayland Future: 70%+ Already On Wayland
- Phoronix: KDE Plasma 6.4 Is Looking To Be In Good Shape, Fewer Bugs
Sxmo
- anjan: "I just released honeybee 0.2.0! Honeybee is a simple daemon for making calls via xmpp. For the changelog, see the git commit: https://git.sr.ht/~anjan/honeybee/commit/9f3dfdb4fac505161690aa7cddd0853ac00a3f23It should be available in Alpine testing repos soon."
- #sxmo: Day 5 Uneventful. And isn't that what we want? I haven't rebooted since I have arrived. I might reboot tomorrow as #snapshot seems to be ... having some blinking screen issues. #megapixels seems to be working now though lol... I want to build megapixels 2.0... but... might need to upgrade and everyone is telling me not to...#sxmo #pixel3a #postmarketos #pmos #linuxphones @linuxphones @linuxphones #tui
- #sxmo: Day 3 Well firstly, I messed up some of the tags for Day 2...my-place.social/display/e59937β¦One slightly annoying thing that I forgot on my journey, usb... I could not plug in the phone into the car... it insisted on using some non existing network and would disconnect my network connections.Anyway, Day 3 though... The only thing of note is, I ran into some issue with #peanutbutter ... I don't know exactly what happened... but I had to do a hard reset due to peanutbutter working but not taking inputs. For all the months I've used peanutbutter.. this is a first. I'm chaulking it up to a random fluke.Speaking on battery... I'm spoiled. As a #pinephone refugee, I was used to paying extra attention to battery usage. Which is why I've always really dug #tui software (it has zero about how neat I find them as well /s). So, as I turned off suspend for my journey, I plumb ass forgor to turn it back on today... and ish was actually fine... like I used only like 50% of the battery with zero suspending. I didn't do a lot but my activities today:GPS to a place around the cornerSpend most of the day chatting on #weechat #gomuks and mms/sms. I kept tabs on my M$ apps for work via web apps as well as made a few replies. That said, I missed zero calls (fuck scammers and promote #scambaiting ), I had zero sms or mms get stuck in the modem. We'll see how tomorrow goes with suspend on.#sxmo #postmarketos #pixel3a(hopefully i dont fk this up)@linuxphones @linuxphones.ml
- #sxmo: Day 2...So... I think I need to address the audio overflow issues I'be been having. Like, day one on #pmos on my pixel 3a I've seen random buffer overflow... I've just ignored it. While the device did get fairly warm... it wasn't more than my regular android phone would get, but I had two reboots happen in an 11hr drive. Given, audio has rebooted and frozen the phone in the past, I can't say navigating was the issue. Also, I #puremaps worked well... but obivously waze navigated a quicker route. There were a few questiobable decisions puremaps decided on routing... like getting off a highway for an exit and getting back on... While I relied on waze, puremaps would have gotten me there... reboots aside. But yes, otherwise I had #qutebrowser monotoring my work communiques. I was streaming a twitch stream (shout out to #theunexpectables) for a good chunk too... which was a little much...should have done audio only#postmarketos #pixel3a #sxmo @linuxphones @linuxphones
- #sxmo: Day 1 of daily driving my #pixel 3a with #postmarketos #sxmo on my trip. I'm not sure how I'm going to document all this... but I'm planning on using #puremaps (#osmin as back up) otherwise using a bunch of #tui apps. I wish I had tethering working but I think I have everthing "working" @linuxphones @linuxphones #pmos
Sailfish OS
- OSnews: Jolla kills β¬25 yearly subscription for updates, guaranteeing five years of free updates instead - https://www.osnews.com/story/142610/jolla-kills-e25-yearly-subscription-for-updates-guaranteeing-five-years-of-free-updates-instead/ #sailfishos
- nobodyinperson: Luckily, I have #nix on my #SailfishOS phone, so getting the #Immich cli was super easy.
immich upload {Pictures,Videos}/Camerawas much faster than the Android app, checked locally for duplicates via hashes and uploaded the rest like a champ. - flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 91. Generating all the icon resolutions.https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1324&list=newpipe
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 90. Properly populating and formatting the video description and metadata fields in the user interface.https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1323&list=newpipe
- #sailfishOS: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 89. Abandoning search ordering... but embracing expandable media info panes!https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1322&list=newpipe
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 88.Wrapping up the continuous loading of search items.πππhttps://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1321&list=newpipe
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 87. Moving from comment loading to search result loading.https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1320&list=newpipe
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 85. Returning after a bit of a break to look at infinite (endless?) scrolling and to catch up on all of the interesting activity here on Mastodon that I managed to miss while travelling!π π π π α πα π¨ https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1318&list=newpipe
Ubuntu Touch
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: UBports Database Migration Completed
- UBports - Development - Issues: Update Click updater to hard-code channel name to
focal, as from now on we rely solely on framework - UBports - Development - Issues: Suggestion: add example for a flatpak package .yml in the README for how to use the ubuntu touch runtime as a base for packaging an app
- UBports - Development - Issues: [devel-noble] Lomiri's first run wizard can't set user's Gecos (displayed name)
- fredldotme: Bringing Mirclient enablement to Mesa in 2025, for hopefully the last time.
Maemo Leste
- Maemo Leste: Maemo Leste - Forgejo migration
Distributions
- FuriLabs: Update 13.1.0
- postmarketOS Blog: v25.06: the one with systemd
- postmarketOS Blog: Creating QMI traces from Android phones with Frida to reverse engineer Voice over LTE
- Lemmy - postmarketOS: Creating QMI traces from Android phones with Frida to reverse engineer Voice over LTE
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: OnePlus 6 and 6T: main speaker not working
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): Speaking of great things for Linux Mobile that @nlnet and @NGIZero are funding:One of them is the OpenIMSD project, which has the goal of getting VoLTE on Qualcomm based phones working with postmarketOS, @mobian and all other Linux (Mobile) distributions.As a precursor to that, we need to be able to create VoLTE-related QMI traces from Android phones. @lynxis figured out a good method and wrote a blog post about it:https://postmarketos.org/blog/2025/06/17/volte-project-qmi-sniffing-with-frida/#linuxmobile #openimsd #frida
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): Heads up: on postmarketOS edge and (not released yet!) v25.06, the main speaker is currently not working for the OnePlus 6 and 6T.See the edge blog post for a workaround and more information: https://postmarketos.org/edge/2025/06/16/OnePlus-6-and-6T:-main-speaker-not-working/
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Dark mode
- Mobian mobian-recipes Issues: mobian-amd64-p*-20250608 images fail to boot
- DanctNIX (Mastodon): The Wi-Fi driver on the #PineTab2 appears to be much more stable now. Kernel 6.15.2 coming soon. Stay tuned!
- Phoronix: Debian's tag2upload Reaches Open Beta For Enhancing Packaging Workflow
Apps
- krille: "π₯³ #FluffyChat 2.0.0 is released β now powered by Vodozemac!Together with the brand-new Matrix Dart SDK 1.0.0, which also uses Vodozemac β the modern encryption library for Matrix written in Rust.https://ko-fi.com/Post/FluffyChat-2-0-0-has-been-released-with-Vodozem-L3L01GRELK#matrix #encryption" State events can be informative and spammy at the same time. That's why I made them now collapsed by default in #fluffychat#matrix
- braid: "#voyagynx, a tiny #travelynx client written in Flutter! And : #Accessibility should begin with the first lines of codes, it's not a nice to have but the foundation of sustainable software !CC: @derf"
- NekoCWD: Singularity - mobile friendly SingBox client written in @vala_lang For now only vless/trojan outbounds and subscription parsing On screenshots: OnePlus 6 running @postmarketOS https://git.nekocwd.duckdns.org/NekoCWD/singularity
- Luigi311: Since I started my #fitness journey and moving more to #mobilelinux I needed a way to track my HR during a cycling session at the gym. #polar has a nice HR sensor, H10, that someone supports really well in python. I bought one on ebay for cheap and created a simple tracking app. This lets me take any of my #linux phones to the gym and connect to my earbuds and HR sensor over bluetooth and complete and log my workout. Useful until bluetooth pass through to android. https://github.com/luigi311/fitness-tracker
- seshpenguin: KRetro is now an official (wip) KDE app!! If you like retro games and have wanted a native Qt/Kirigami Libretro frontend for Plasma (and Plasma Mobile), this is it!It's not released yet (name is still subject to change too), and there is still a lot to do, but please do come and test/contribute: https://invent.kde.org/games/kretro (Also special thanks for @carl for his help!) #kde #linux #mobilelinux #retrogaming
- praveen: #AudioTube fills one more common usecase for me on #flx1. Earlier on #Android we used #NewPipe to play songs via youtube playlists via bluetooth when driving. I wanted to replace Android with FLX1 but could not until now because #FreeTube audio via bluetooth was distorted and NewPipe vian andromeda don't have mpris passthrough so we could not skip songs we don't like without opening the phone screen. AudioTube fixes both issues. This feels good. #mobile-linux
- tbernard: WIP new Tuba post editor looking hot π₯Kudos to @GeopJr for making it happen!https://github.com/GeopJr/Tuba/pull/623
- schmiddionmobile: "Pipeline version 2.6.0 was released. This release adds more keyboard shortcuts to the video player. Furthermore, you can now hide the sidebar when viewing a video. Pipeline now also displays a setup window on first startup, allowing the user to import their subscriptions from YouTube or NewPipe, as well as informing the user about privacy implications when using Pipeline. There were also fixes for minor errors, refer to the changelog for more information about those:https://gitlab.com/schmiddi-on-mobile/pipeline/-/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md?ref_type=heads#260---2025-06-21"
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Multiplication Puzzle
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Startup Configuration
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: MQTTy
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Cavasik
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Filmbook
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Kapitano
- theDarky: The binary for SimpleX Chat Terminal (version v6.3.6.0) I compiled on my #librem5 (aarch64) on Mobian can be shared.I'm looking a place to share it.It took me 4 hours to do it correctly.We can try it to exchange with it if you wantJust give it the +X permission.If you have any problem or question, just answer to this tootMore infos in the official documentation:https://simplex.chat/docs/cli.html #LinuxMobile
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH 0/4] Start using rpmpd for power domains on MSM8974
- phone-devel: [PATCH RESEND v4 0/5] media: i2c: imx214: Add support for more clock frequencies
- phone-devel: [PATCH 3/3] arm64: dts: qcom: msm8953: Add device tree for Billion Capture+
- cas: sent some kernel patches... these improve charging on sdm845 and enable support for the smb5 charger found on snapdragon 855/865 and a bunch of other socs (including the fairphone 4)https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-msm/20250619-smb2-smb5-support-v1-0-ac5dec51b6e1@linaro.org/
Stack
- Phoronix: Vulkan 1.4.319 Published With New Data Graph Extension
- Phoronix: Servo Browser Engine Finally Supporting Animated GIFs
- Phoronix: Mesa 25.1.4 Delivers Latest Open-Source OpenGL & Vulkan Driver Fixes
- Phoronix: XWayland 24.1.8 & X.Org Server 21.1.18 Further Address Yesterday's Security Disclosures
- Phoronix: XLibre 25.0 Released As Inaugural Version Of X.Org Server Fork
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-06-20
- Matrix.org: Introducing your new Governing Board representatives
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 - the script part may sound harder than it is, it's a press of a button and a bit of waiting), please get in touch via email (see below)! It would really help to have someone else taking on the responsibility for this collection every once in a while!