LINux on MOBile

GNOME OS has been demoed running on a Fairphone 5 at GUADEC 2026, Phosh's immutable BengalOS booted on a Pixel 3a, and more!

Collected on Sunday, July 19th 2026, 19:07 UTC and edited (in multiple tiny chunks) on Monday, July 20th. What took me so long? Maybe ask the baby, but please don't wake it up while you do so! ;-)

Commentary in italics.

Worth Reading

• foss2go.com: Juno Computers begins work on a Qt-based OpenStreetMap navigation app

Worth Watching

• Continuum Gaming: Movie Sailor - The native SFOS Movie & Shop App (Continuum Gaming E530)
• UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 194

Worth Listening

• projetslibres_podcast: "We are thrilled to present this episode on @postmarketOS 📱We've taken the time to produce this in-depth interview as part of our series on #mobilelinux to tell the story behind #postmarketOS — how it works and its governance structure.This project is especially close to our hearts, and this episode highlights the human and organizational aspects of the project.👉 https://www.projets-libres.org/en/podcast/s4e21-postmarketos-linux-smartphone/A huge thank you to @RannyBergamotte and @ayakael for joining us!Thanks to Ranny for completely rewriting the English translation. 👏👏 We hope you enjoy reading this interview 📖!#podcast #opensource #freesoftware"

Worth Noting

• fsfe: "There is no birthday party without a cake 🍰🎂! And no party without all those great friends who joined us this weekend in Krakow.Thank you for celebrating these 25 years with us!As they say here, "Sto lat"! 🎉🎊🥂 Here's to more years of hard work, fun, and #softwarefreedom!". Congrats!
• carbonatedcaffeine: "For some reason I have decided that daily driving the PinePhone Pro for a month is a good idea. With encouragement from the PINE64 community chatrooms, I am prepared to endure this potential pain. For science!!!Before we get into things, here are some ground rules and boundaries that I wish to lay out for potential readers.1. My employment requires an app that doesn’t work, even with MicroG. I will have my Android device with me for this reason, but my primary SIM will be in the PinePhone Pro. 2. No Android apps, Waydroid or Android translation layer. I must use native and Flatpak Linux apps. 3. My primary SIM must be in the PinePhone Pro for the duration of the month. (rules subject to change, I think)This thread will continue to get updated every day/few days when I can. Hopefully this goes fine /s#pine64 #pinephone #pinephonepro #mobilelinux #linuxmobile"
• allpurposemat: "My first successful launch of @CoMaps's Android app on Linux, via #AndroidTranslationLayer! I previously tried using CoMaps with Waydroid, but Waydroid does not support GPS.Very broken right now, but I got it to at least launch after two days of debugging / relearning Java syntax. Hopefully eventually this means I can use it on my #postmarketOS phone!"
• r/MobileLinux: Why does it look like mobile Linux distros support older devices much more widely than newer devices?
• Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Lomiri UI Tweaks: More Android-like UI for Ubuntu Touch (source)
• Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: postmarketOS introduces KDE Plasma 6.7, better USB gadget handling, and Waydroid updates
• Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Android 8 and above will become restricted globally in 2027

Events

• mobilni_linux_cs_sk: "1. Mobile Linux Hackday v Plzni!24.7. od 10:00 do 18:00, TechTowerZveme vás na první komunitní setkání věnované Linuxu na mobilních zařízeních.Proběhnou přednášky Davida a Petra o stavu mobilního Linuxu: proč vůbec chtít tučňáka v kapse, jaké telefony jsou dnesdobře podporované atd. Po obědě se zaměříme na konkrétní technická témata.Lze si vyzkoušet linuxové telefony. Přineste si vlastní telefon pokud chcete si vyzkoušet instalaci Linuxu.Registrace na akci zde 👇️https://tally.so/r/gDrlXP"
• postmarketOS: "📰 News on the postmarketOS and @alpinelinux conference:* We are currently out of tickets, some people are on the waiting list already. We are looking into potentially making more spots available.* The deadline for the Call for Contributions is in two weeks and four days (2026-07-31)!PROTIP: if your talk/workshop/meetup/discussion round gets accepted, then you have a spot for sure even if you don't have a ticket yet. 😎Looking forward to see everybody who is coming to Aachen!https://postmarketos.org/conference/#postmarketos #alpinelinux"
  • aelin: Small reminder that there's now less than 2 weeks left to hand in your proposals for the postmarketOS and Alpine Linux conference :)https://postmarketos.org/conference/
• gnulinux: Das Programm der FrOSCon ist daDas diesjährige Programm überzeugt mit über 90 Vorträgen und Workshops an zwei Tagen. Auch GNU/Linux.ch wird mit einem Stand vor Ort sein. Wir freuen uns auf euren Besuch. #FrOSCon #Veranstaltung #Linuxhttps://gnulinux.ch/das-programm-der-froscon-ist-da. Looking good, the FrOSCon schedule contains some mobile-focused talks as part of the main track. Not sure if I'll be able to make it to FrOSCon yet, though.
• jolla: "Looking back on an unforgettable Jolla Phone Day1 event. ❤️ What made the event truly special was the support of the Jolla community. Thank you to everyone who joined us, shared ideas, and celebrated this milestone with us. This is what makes the Jolla community so special. Moments like these remind us that our community has always been at the heart of Jolla. Here's a look back at some of our favorite moments. #Jolla #SailfishOS #DigitalSovereignty #PrivacyFirst #CommunityPowered #Europeanℹ️"

More Software News

Gnome Ecosystem

• This Week in GNOME: #258 GUADEC 2026
• Phoronix: GNOME OS Safe Mode Improving The System Reliability

Phosh

• ev: To make our info booths at conferences easier to identify we printed two banners for future use.They will also make future group photos (like the one from our last #pcm26 ( https://ev.phosh.mobi/blog/pcm26-bits/ ) more telling.Our next booth will be at @FrOSCon in August in Sankt Augustin. Drop by and say hi!#Phosh #phoshev #froscon2026
• agx: Got Phosh's immutable BengalOS to boot on a Google Pixel 3A. There's quiet a bit of work left to make that usable but I'm already looking forward to try some of Phosh's features for immutable on a real device rather than a VM image.This is only possible due to the immense work of @mobian and @postmarketOS .#Phosh #BengalOS #LinuxMobile #immutable #mkosi
• ev: Our next online community get together is next Tuesday https://ev.phosh.mobi/gettogether/ . Join us!#LinuxMobile #Phosh
• opensourceopenmind: @cpy @okias This project by @praveen et al asks to create bounties for individual issues on OpenCollective:https://codema.in/g/D8TO7J5c#MobileLinux #LinuxMobile #phosh #Mobian #DebianonMobile #gnuLinux

Plasma Ecosystem

• Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: Shadows for Steam and Discord
• KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.7.3, Bugfix Release for July
• Volker Krause: OSM Indoor Mapping Workshop 2026
• toscalix: Evaluating the EU Open Source Strategy: Strengths and Weaknesses
• Akademy: The Akademy 2026 Program is now live!

Sailfish OS

• jolla: "Jolla Phone deliveries have officially begun! What started with a very ambitious goal in December has become a reality. It was an incredible milestone delivered by the Jolla Team with amazing support of our community ❤️ Last week, we handed over the first Jolla Phones to early backers at our launch event in Helsinki, and now we're moving into Batch #1 deliveries. Here's what happens next: Batch #1 (around 2,700 orders!) will start shipping in order of purchase. Please allow 2–3 weeks for all Batch #1 deliveries to get rolling. Batch #2: we target to ship some early orders by the end of July but most shippings are expected in early to mid-August. Batch #3 we target to start shipping by end of August. For those who ordered the Snow White: due to a last-minute manufacturing issue, the Snow White TOHs will be shipped in backorder at no extra cost. Meanwhile, Snow White phone customers will receive The Orange with their phone and the Snow White in a follow-up shipment. Thank you to everyone who's backed the project and supported us along the way. We're really excited to get a Jolla Phone into your hands and appreciate your patience as we work through every order. Read more here: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/30730 #Jolla #SailfishOS #DigitalSovereignty #PrivacyFirst #CommunityPowered #European"
• Jolla Blog: This site will be archived. Replaced by this section on the forums.
• frankps: What a great moment it is for the Sailfish Community! Tonight a community port of Sailfish OS for Sony Xperia 10 IV got released. It is based on Lineage22.2.https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/lineage-based-port-for-xperia-10-iv/30708/14?u=frankps#SailfishOS
• thaodan: My #Siamese cat Naff talking to me with a miau that moves his hole body. #catsofmastodonShot with #JollaPhone #SailfishOS
• frankps: Are you one that have the new Jolla J2 phone? A Sailfish user with an older phone? And/or one that has a Pebble watch? Try this cool watchface!https://apps.repebble.com/sailfishos_e344e431ee034ba3ba91cc11#Pebble #SailfishOS
• frankps: Jolla has published a blog post on the upcoming deliveries of the J2 phone (batch 1 to 3), just to satisfy people like me that are not good at waiting. Guess what… Shipping starts today!They added some release notes on Sailfish OS 5.2, and info on two bug fixes releases coming up. Hopefully Jolla will have fine tuned the camera a bit with these releases.Jolla asks for contributions on the open source parts of the OS.https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/jolla-phone-update-deliveries-started-and-other-next-steps/30730?u=frankps#SailfishOS #OpenSource #MadeInEurope @jolla
• frankps: I guess I will soon do some more translation work on the Rockpool app for Sailfish OS. Support for the new Pebble clocks is coming!https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/rockpool-thread/25596/22?u=frankps#Pebble #Rockpool #SailfishOS
• frankps: Immich for Sailfish OS v0.6 released. It is now updated with support for Immich v3.0 and its updated APIs. Some small GUI changes have also been added.#SailfishOS #Immich #Photography

Ubuntu Touch

• UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 194
• Ubuntu Touch Forums News: UBports at Bornhack Friday 17th July
• Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Sunday is Q&A Day
• fredldotme: Here's something I recently released: https://snapcraft.io/gdb-static These are static builds of gdb & gdbserver as a Snap. Just two files! Run them outside of confinement for now, I'll check for confined usecases later. If you can come up with one then feel free to comment. Main reason I did this was to have an always installed, not wiped with each update debugger on Ubuntu Touch. Ubuntu Core and Ubuntu Desktop users might also be interested though.
• #UbuntuTouch: Convocatoria para pruebas: Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0 RC y 24.04-1.4 RCHola a todos.Nos complace anunciar que Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0 RC ya está disponible para su prueba. Esta imagen está destinada a convertirse en Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0, la próxima versión con nuevas funciones de Ubuntu Touch basada en Ubuntu 24.04.Además de Ubuntu To...Sigue en https://t.me/ubports_noticias/494#UTNoble #UT2404 #UT24041 #UT240414 #UT24042 #UT240420 #NobleNumbat #UBports #UbuntuTouch #Lomiri #SoftwareLibre #GNULinux

Catacomb

• UndeadLeech: "Seems like my automatic keyboard toggle patch got accepted into wvkbd. It might be time to finally switch away from Squeekboard, after my look at Stevia provided much less fruitful.For anyone running master, all you need to do is add --auto as a startup option and wvkbd should now toggle automatically based on input focus.#linuxmobile #sxmo"

Distributions

• postmarketOS (Mastodon): pmbootstrap 3.11.0 is out now!Highlights:* Strict builds are now the default behavior* UI packages can now explicitly say if systemd and/or openrc are supported (previously they could only set the default)* Default to 512MB for /boot (previously 256 MiB)* 32-bit capable aarch64 CPUs can now compile armhf packages natively* Improved rust cross compilation* Lots of fixes and maintenance improvementsThanks to everybody who contributed to this release!https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/-/tags/3.11.0#postmarketos #pmbootstrap
• postmarketOS (Mastodon): Boot partitions have been increased to 512MiB by default in pre-built images, and will be created so by the upcoming pmbootstrap 3.11 version."For quite a while now, 256MiB has served us very well, but we've been starting to see issues with larger kernel packages like linux-postmarketos-stable or linux-next, which occupy around 150MiB on /boot on aarch64 systems due to the large number of device tree blobs shipped with the kernels."Thanks to @aelin for making the change and for writing the devel blog post!https://postmarketos.org/devel/2026/07/09/pmOS_boot-default-size/#postmarketos
• postmarketOS pmbootstrap tags: 3.11.1
• postmarketOS pmbootstrap tags: 3.11.0
• Mobian mobian-recipes Issues: devices/qcom/bootloader.sh should pass all parameters to mkbootimg otherwise base is assumed 0x10000000 by default
• Mobian mobian-recipes Issues: Sub-set of device-specific bootimg parameters results in wrong parameters passed to mkbootimg
• Mobian mobian-recipes Issues: Uses forky even if setting suite variable
• DanctNIX (Mastodon): New FDE utility for DanctNIX ALARM / Ports (CLI / GUI)Credits for the "keygen" GUI:- Code: @danct12 - Font: @rez - Logo: M3RL0CKSH0LM3S- Tune: c512w & @cs127 https://codeberg.org/DanctNIX/alarmdiskcryptor/releases#DanctNIX #PinePhone #PinePhonePro #PineTab2 #MobileLinux #LinuxMobile
• collabora: "We've been working with Valve on Holo Core, a pure aarch64 port of Arch Linux, built to run on Steam Frame. Arch has no official aarch64 support and no CI infra of its own, so we built both. First public preview (binaries, sources, containers) is out now! https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/building-an-arch-linux-aarch64-port-for-holo-core.html#ArchLinux #Linux #OpenSource #SteamFrame"
• jjardon: Abderrahim is showing us how to install #GNOMEOS on a #Fairphone 5! Thanks to Fairphone for donating some phones and @codethink for some engineering time to work on thisInstructions to try yourself (at your own risk :)) at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-build-meta/-/blob/master/docs/phones.md #GUADEC2026 #linuxmobile #mobilelinux

Apps

• opensourceopenmind: "@junocomputers also working on a car navigation app for #Linuxhttps://gitlab.com/junocomp/car-navigation> Modern Qt6 Linux Car Navigation map powered by MapLibre GL, OpenStreetMap, Photon, Nominatim, Overture Maps, OSRM, and Valhalla#LinuxMobile #MobileLinux #JunoComputers #postmarketOS #Mobian #PureOS #JunoTab #Librem5 #Pinephone #OpenStreetMap #OSM #QT #qt6 #Valhalla #mapLibre #Overturemaps #Nominatim #OSRM"
• Oleksii: "I just tested nightly build of tuba with unifiedpush implementation. Huge thanks to everyone and especially for @GeopJr #unifiedpush #Tuba #plasmamobile #postmarketOS #fairphone5 #linuxmobile #mobilelinuxI kinda like my low quality video, so you know it's authentic 😁https://vid.northbound.online/w/92tHtf2b25ueANPWnCth9v"
• ppulfer: I've been testing two #linux #phone #apps that work well for phone screens and use on a daily basis. Discord client called WebCord (https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.spacingbat3.webcord). Use the menu to hide and show the sidebar and you'll be fine.WhatsApp client called Karere (https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.tobagin.karere) which is optimized for mobile and works fine. I know WhatsApo and Discord are not services we should use in the first place but unfortunately family and gaming communities use them. #mobilelinux #linuxmobile
• pi_crew: Oh wow this is hot 🔥 GTK4 mail client Stamp by @jbrummer running on #postmarketOS phone!Here's the Git repository https://gitlab.gnome.org/jbrummer/stamp#LinuxMobile #OnePlus6 #Gnome
• vtrlx: "RE: https://sunny.garden/@bragefuglseth/116941900980651226Finally—counting, on Linux!I'm very happy about Tally getting accepted in GNOME Circle. You won't always need it, but you'll be happy to have it when you do."
• postmarketOS: Apps by Category: Visika: Add ZapZap

Kernel

• phone-devel: [PATCH] arm64: dts: qcom: sm6125-xiaomi-ginkgo: Add vbus-supply in Type-C connector
• phone-devel: [PATCH v2 0/2] Add Milos CPU OPP table for DDR & L3 bandwidth scaling
• phone-devel: [PATCH v2 0/3] Sort kodiak pinctrl nodes & add camera mclk definitions
• phone-devel: [PATCH v2 1/3] dt-bindings: phy: qcom,sc8280xp-qmp-usb43dp-phy: Add SM8475 QMP PHY

Stack

• Phoronix: Imagination PowerVR BXM-4-64 GPU Firmware Upstreamed For The T-Head TH1520
• Phoronix: D7VK 2.0 Released With Some Nice Performance Improvements: Up To 2x Or More
• Phoronix: DXVK 3.0.2 Released With Improved Hang Debugging, Handful Of Game Fixes
• Phoronix: Wayland 1.26 Released With New Pointer Warp Event

Matrix

• Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2026-07-17

XMPP

• movim: "We've been a little quiet lately 👀, but silence just means we've been heads-down building something exciting.The next Movim release comes with a special surprise 🎁: a fully integrated SFU service, powered by #Galene, that plugs directly into your XMPP server and lets it handle large group calls effortlessly 🌬️.And of course, it will rely on fully standardized XMPP, as always.Fun fact: pair the Movim SFU with @ejabberd and your video calls run on a 100% French stack 🇫🇷😁!European tech doesn't have to play catch-up, it can finally lead! 🇪🇺Huge thanks to @nlnet for funding this project 🫶#xmpp #discord #movim #jabber #european #europe"

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 this 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!