Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (27/2025): Releases, Reports and Setbacks
Table of Contents
Another week, another update: The failed crowdfunder is not the end for Liberux, two usage reports, Jolla unveils plans for open-sourcing SailfishOS apps, Phosh 0.48.0, and more! Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- David Clubb: Ditching Android: Two months daily driving Linux as my only Mobile OS. Nice report!
- fossphones.com: Linux Phone News - July 1, 2025 Nice write-up!
- LaoBlog: Pinephone review: SailfishOS 5
- Liliputing: Liberux isn’t giving up on its ambitious Linux phone (despite crowdfunding fail)
- Purism: After a week, Trump Mobile drops claim that the T1 Phone is “Made in the USA”
Worth Watching
- Continuum Gaming: Continuum Gaming E475: SFOS – ColorTubes
- CyberPunkEdu: Terminal Tutorial - Ubuntu Touch
- Jolla: "Jolla Community Meeting – Live from Tampere | July 2nd, 2025" Nice to see open-sourcing plans!
- Random Alley Cat: Building a Pocket Cyberdeck With Raspberry Pi and Random Parts From My Junk Drawer
- Salih Altuntaş: Ubuntu Touch 16.04 on Xiaomi Mi 8
Worth Noting
- ieeespectrum: "Estonian engineers found that 15-year-old smartphones, when hacked to work together as a single self-organized unit, can handle many such tasks, including image recognition, with unexpected ease. How did they turn a bunch of old phones into a mini datacenter? https://spectrum.ieee.org/smartphone-data-centers?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-Mastodon-Daily-Pipeline"
- postmarketOS: The first revision PCBs have arrived for our hardware testing device harness! Now the testing and firmware development can begin.Check out our last status report for more details https://postmarketos.org/blog/2025/05/13/hw-ci-status/
- austriancoder: "Last night, I spent several hours debugging an issue with some CTS tests for a new feature. I couldn't pinpoint the problem and ended up staring at related GPU states until I eventually gave up for the night.The next day, I took another look at my code - and within moments, I spotted the issue, fixed it, and the CTS passed without complaint.dEQP-GLES31.functional.texture.gather.offset.rgbaTest run totals:Passed: 136/136 (100.0%)#etnaviv #mesa #Librem5"
- cas: finally was able to publish the blog post i wrote about this!https://www.linaro.org/blog/hidden-jtag-qualcomm-snapdragon-usb/ https://social.treehouse.systems/@cas/114263584126338412
- agx: My #FreeSoftware Activities for June 2025:Again mostly #phosh/#LinuxMobile related: See https://honk.sigxcpu.org/con/Free_Software_Activities_May_2025.html for details.🙏 to everyone supporting this!
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #207 Replacing Shortcuts
- Steven Deobald: 2025-07-05 Foundation Update
- Victor Ma: Bugs, bugs, and more bugs!
- Tobias Bernard: Aardvark: Summer 2025 Update
Phosh
- Phosh.mobi: Phosh 0.48.0
- #phosh: #Phosh's #MobileSetting app has a new panel to configure #CellBroadcast categories. This requires a recent #ModemManager and mobile-broadband-provider-info database:3/x
- #phosh: #Phosh's compositor #phoc got updated to the latest stable #wlroots release 0.19.0 giving us all the goodies from there. Apart from that it now remembers your phone's display resolution in case you want something different than the calculated default. It also supports adaptive sync now and gained support for protocols like shortcuts-inhibit.2/x
- agx: When going to higher display resolutions in #phosh #stevia's 🎹 can become a bit small to type with (as our ☝️s usually don't adjust to display size). I've thus cooked up an MR that allows to keep the physical size of the OSK constant (in portrait mode for now).On top of that one can add a "dead zone" at the bottom of the OSK which helps on taller devices like the #OP6 as the 📱 otherwise tends to tilt when typing on the bottom row.For me this is a typing speed booster.#phosh #LinuxMobile
- #phosh: There's a new plugin for #Phosh's lock screen that allows to interact with all running media players. No need to unlock anymore to switch between podcasts, internet radio and playing music:#mpris1/x
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: chugging along
- Carl Schwan et al.: This Week in KDE Apps
- KDE Announcements: KDE Gear 25.04.3
- KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.4.2, Bugfix Release for July
- broulik: PI(M)P Your Clock
Sailfish OS
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 104
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 103
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 102
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 101
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 100
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 99
- #sailfishOS: Big thanks to everyone who joined our community event this week, whether live, remotely or in spirit!The discussion was open, honest, and full of the kind of energy that makes this community special. If you missed the live stream or want to revisit it, the full recording is now available here:▶️ https://youtu.be/GMAGgdn-JK0Thanks again for being part of it. Let’s keep building together.#jollac2 #JollaMind2 #SailfishOS #CommunityPowered
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports - Development - Issues: Quake 2 Touch Window Management segfaults Lomiri/QtMir
- UBports - Development - Issues: Clicking on the Settings button won't refocus the Settings window in UT
- UBports - Development - Issues: flatbuffers: use
Verifier::Optionson noble+ - UBports - Development - Issues: Unable to connect to any wireless display
Distributions
- kop316: "I fixed the long standing issue of taking pictures on the L5 on @mobian ! This will allow a new build to come out soon, but if anyone is impatient, they can build it from this MR: https://salsa.debian.org/Mobian-team/packages/millipixels/-/merge_requests/2Edit: I just merged and uploaded the new version. It is in staging now but will come to trixie soon."
- Lemmy - postmarketOS: is jolla 1 able to boot from emmc
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: apk v3 migration requires pmbootstrap 3.5.1 or higher
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: Alpine Linux switched to apk v3
- postmarketOS pmaports issues: File missing to have autocompletion working in French in Stevia OSK
- Phoronix: Fedora 43 GNU & LLVM 21 Toolchain Updates Planned
- Phoronix: Debian Looks To Attract More Contributors, Eyes Budget For AI/LLM Usage By Debian Developers. Checks calendar... Not April fools... huh!
Apps
- piggz: "Amazfish, the #smartwatch companion for #Linux mobiles and desktops release 2.7.0 is out. This adds initial support for #ZeppOS devices as the main new feature, with lots of background re factorings. Contributions from @jmlich and @b100dian , with plenty of help from the @gadgetbridge team. https://github.com/piggz/harbour-amazfish/releases/tag/2.7.0"
- #sailfishOS: @thelinuxEXP I really like Speech Note! It's a fantastic tool for quick and local voice transcription in multiple languages, created by @mkiol It's incredibly handy for capturing thoughts on the go, conducting interviews, or making voice memos without worrying about language barriers. The app uses strictly locally running LLMs, and its ease of use makes it a standout choice for anyone needing offline transcription services.I primarily use #WhisperAI for transcription and Piper for voice, but many other models are available as well. It is available as flatpak and https://github.com/mkiol/dsnote #TTS #transcription #TextToSpeech #translator translation #offline #machinetranslation #sailfishos #SpeechSynthesis #SpeechRecognition #speechtotext #nmt #linux-desktop #stt #asr #flatpak-applications #SpeechNote
- Purism (Reddit): Librem 5 & Liberty Phone users: what apps do you want?
Kernel
- Phoronix: Linux 6.17 To Finish Clearing Out Old Code For OpenMoko Devices. Farewell, old friend!
- phone-devel: [PATCH v2 0/3] Add support for AW8898 Amplifier
Stack
- Phoronix: X.Org Server Lands Big Improvement For Using Zink With GLAMOR
- Phoronix: Coreboot 25.06 Released With Xeon Emerald Rapids Support, Better Panther Lake
- Phoronix: Vulkan 1.4.321 Released With A Handful Of New Extensions
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-07-04
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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