Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (Weeks 28 and 29 of 2024)
Table of Contents
Hopefully all that happened since July 9th, 2024: Furi Labs get VoLTE to work on 4G and 5G, Purism has bunch of announcements, LWN posts on postmarketOS and Sxmo, a bugfix release for Phosh, a replacement for Mozilla's abandonned Location Services, a new UBports Q&A, progress on getting newer Gecko to work for Sailfish's browser, a really stupid Mozilla management decision ruining the excitement about Firefox ESR for anyone who cares a little bit about privacy ... and more! Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- adamd's place: Furi Labs FLX1 Linux Phone first impressions
- Koen Vervloesem for LWN.net: PostmarketOS: Linux for phones and more
- Koen Vervloesem for LWN.net: Sxmo: a text-centric mobile user interface
- Drew DeVaults blog: So you want to compete with or replace open source
Manufacturer's Propaganda
- Furi Labs: 4G/5G VoLTE calling is here! Nice! If in the US, make sure to check supported bands before ordering, just in case.
- Purism: Abside and Purism Partner to Deliver Secure Mobile Solution for U.S. Government and NATO Countries
- Purism: Purpose-Built Smartphones for Government vs. Commercial Off-The-Shelf Devices
- Purism: Purism Announcing MiMi Robot Crowdfunding Campaign My initial thought was: But why? I am still somewhat irritated, but at least this helped me develop some level of understanding.
- Purism: Your Phone is Giving Away More Than You Ever Bargained For
- Purism: Federal Government Mobility Veteran Randy Siegel Joins Purism
Worth Watching
- Martijn Braam: Megapixels 2.0 development progress
- Bitter Epic Productions: Can I get Android Apps to run on my Linux Phone? - The magic of Waydroid
- Continuum Gaming: Continuum Gaming E425: Vodman – Video download for streaming videos
- UBports: Ubuntu Tuch Q&A 145
- Anino Ni Kugi: Revisiting Lomiri Desktop Experience on an Outdated Samsung S10 | Ubuntu Touch 16.04 (Xenial)
- FogyVerse: Gnome Shell Mobile 46 QuickSettings on both Orientation #linuxmobile #linux #gnomeshell #linuxphone
- FogyVerse: Booting Arch Linux Arm on Oneplus 6T | Kupfer Mobile Linux #archlinuxarm #linuxmobile #ytshorts
- FogyVerse: Testing New Epiphany on GNOME Shell Mobile 46 #linux #linuxmobile #gnome46 #mobile #mobileshell
- Fossery Tech: Matrix - A FOSS, Decentralized Discord Alternative. Not mobile specific, but a nice walkthrough through a bunch of Matrix clients!
As this post is being released, GUADEC/Berlin Mini GUADEC are still going on. Make sure to check the schedule and watch things!
Worth Noting
- Hackstub: "Your attention please: Maybe… " On NGI, really important!
- Debacle: "#XMPP #community sprint comes to an end …"
- Jeff Martin: "Yup, it's true. Firefox 128 includes new adtech features that are turned on by default and announced with very little fanfare, so most people might not even know they're there. …" - GladTech Related mobile-config-firefox Merge Request.
- justsoup: "Okay so my library efl-rs is at a point where it can display a basic app with buttons and labels and such.…". Nice, I still remember all the efl apps on Openmoko!
- Andromxda: "@beacondb is an open, and privacy-friendly network location service (just like Mozilla's now defunct location service…"
- r/MobileLinux: Decided to revisit my Samsung S10 with a very outdated Ubuntu Touch
- r/MobileLinux: Games recommendations
- r/linux: Oneplus 6 Daily Driver!
- r/PinePhoneOfficial: Error when trying to run Kali on PinePhone Pro
- Purism community: Byzantium backports unofficial
- Purism community: Why and how to extend ZRAM on L5. A REVOLUTION FOR THE LIBREM 5 STABILITY!
- Lemmy - linuxphones: Follow-up: Mobian on the Pixel 3a / 3a XL (getting close)
- Lemmy - linuxphones: Found some stuff which might be useful to those that would like WhatsApp on Linux phones
- @pocketvj: finally gps without sim card working on #linuxmobile 🤩compile newest modemmanager and activate gnss...https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/User:Magdesign#ModemManager
- @verdre: Alright, I’ve finally done a new #GNOME Shell Mobile release! Time for a little thread about the updates.https://gitlab.gnome.org/verdre/gnome-shell-mobile/-/tree/46-mobile-0?ref_type=tags#LinuxMobile
- @robot: What is the current state of NFC on linux?I want to write an HCE application for Asteroid and potentially other mobile linux targets but am having trouble finding information on where to start.What toolkits should I use? Should I make my APDU handler a little library? Should provisioning be in that library or somewhere else? How do I register an AID with the system? How do I shove APDUs back at the reader? Is any of this even possible yet?If anyone knows anything about this please reach out.#postmarketOS #linuxMobile #AsteroidOS #wearables #linux #mobileLinux #nfc #hce
- @hexaheximal: A year ago today, @justsoup and I created the lowendlibre project with the goal of lowering the bar for getting started with mobile linux, more specifically postmarketOS.While it didn't quite go as we had initially hoped, it has been a net positive.#PostMarketOS #Linux #MobileLinux #MediaTek #Android #AndroidDevices
- @kirschner: "While #PostmarketOS may not be a mobile OS suitable for all, it is certainly usable for #Linux enthusiasts. ... #Phosh is a capable mobile user interface on these devices, including functional phone calls and SMS messages. ... Combined with the fact that this is a real Linux distribution that you can mold to your liking, install Linux packages on, and back up with tools such as rsync, postmarketOS undoubtedly serves a niche that includes many non-phone use cases."https://lwn.net/Articles/979522/
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #157 GUADEC 2024
- This Week in GNOME: #156 Happy Hacking
- GTK blog: Graphics offload continued
- Marcus Lundblad: Summer Maps
Phosh
- Phosh.mobi blog: The European Union must keep funding Free Software
- Phosh.mobi: Phosh 0.40.1
- Guido Günther: I've tagged version 0.0.1 of #libcmatrix - a #matrix client library.The project was initiated and developed bySadiq (https://gitlab.gnome.org/pksadiq) in order to add Matrix support to chatty (https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Chatty) for @purism It has been a bit 😴 over the past months but my recent interest in #unifiedpush derailed me and I had a look at the code base, cleaned up minor things and figured it might make sense to tag a release so here we go: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/libcmatrix/-/releases/v0.0.1Thanks @devrtz for the reviews!
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This past two weeks in KDE: fixing sticky keys and the worst crashes
- KDE Announcements: KDE signs petition urging European Union to continue funding free software
- KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.1.3, Bugfix Release for July
- KDE Announcements: KDE Ships Frameworks 6.4.0
- Akademy blog: Akademy 2024 Program Now Live I hope to make it there (on Saturday and Sunday)!
- #plasmamobile: Since my last blog post describing how I started daily driving #PlasmaMobile has gotten quite a bit of attention, I decided to give a talk about my experiences with it at this year's #Akademy2024! https://conf.kde.org/event/6/contributions/225/Day 2, come and watch!
Sxmo
Sailfish OS
- @piggz: "My @PINE64 #PinephonePro running #SailfishOS and the latest kernel build 6.10 has an uptime of 1 day, 22 hours and a 79% suspend rate…"
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 293
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 292
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 291
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 290
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 289
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 288
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 287
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 286
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 285
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 284
- flypig's Gecko log: Day 283
- #sailfishOS: Thank you @poetaster and @flypig for all your amazing hard work and dedication in making #SailfishOS better for us all!
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports Newsletter: Newsletter July 19th
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 143
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 144
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 145 Saturday 20th July at 19:00 UTC
- fredldotme: ThinkPad x13s here. No idea what would happen with KVM, but it works without KVM as well.
- fredldotme: Pocket VMs from the Snap Store running on Lomiri on Ubuntu 24.04. Works.
- fredldotme: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1dQWsa2I5sI&t=420sStill proud of this appearance on the T-Dose Podcast Special of Angry Nerds.Tried to cover Ubuntu Touch to Lomiri and libhybris with Halium.
- #UbuntuTouch: My @ubports #ubuntutouch phone is not lying. Yes it’s odd for me I hadn’t taken any photos today. #ubuntu #linux
Distributions
- postmarketOS Blog: postmarketOS selected for NGI Zero Core funding / The European Union must keep funding free software
Apps
- Purism forums: List of Apps that fit and function well: in-the-sky.org
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Transito
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: PowerPlant
Kernel
- CNX Software: Linux 6.10 Release - Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures
- phone-devel: [PATCH v2] arm64: dts: qcom: msm8916-samsung-grandmax: Add touchscreen
- phone-devel: [PATCH] arm64: dts: exynos: exynos7885-jackpotlte: Correct RAM amount to 4GB
- phone-devel: [PATCH] arm64: dts: qcom: msm8916-samsung-grandmax: Add touchscreen
- phone-devel: Re: [PATCH v3 1/9] dt-bindings: interconnect: qcom: Add Qualcomm MSM8976 NoC
- phone-devel: [PATCH v3 0/9] msm8937/msm8976/qcs404 icc patches
- Phoronix: New Linux Patches Enable The Snapdragon X1 Elite Powered Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6
- Phoronix: Linux 6.11 Lands Support For Snapdragon X1 Elite ASUS Vivobook S15 & Lenovo Yoga Slim7x
- Phoronix: Rust Safety Standard Proposed For The Linux Kernel
- Phoronix: Raspberry Pi "PiSP" Driver Landing Upstream For Raspberry Pi 5 Camera System
- Phoronix: New Patches To Get More Qualcomm Lenovo Devices Supported By The Mainline Linux Kernel
Stack
- Phoronix: Mesa 24.2-rc1 Released With Many OpenGL & Vulkan Driver Improvements
- Collabora Office: Taming the Panthor: OpenGL ES 3.1 conformance achieved on Mali-G610
- Phoronix: Rusticl In Mesa 24.2 Now Supports OpenCL Read-Write Images
- Phoronix: Freedreno Gallium3D Driver Now Enables The Snapdragon X1 Elite/Plus SoC's GPU
- Phoronix: wlroots 0.18 Brings New Wayland Protocols & Support For GPU Reset Recovery
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2024-07-19
- Matrix.org: The European Union must keep funding free software
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2024-07-12
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!