Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (31/2026): Reported Progress
Table of Contents
Highlights of the past week: Progress reports on PureOS and the Mecha Comet, Phosh Development News plus a nice project by Phosh.mobi e.V, a video on the Jolla Phone 2, some nice hardware enablement news, and more!
Collected on Sunday, August 2nd 2026, 17:46 UTC and finished (in multiple tiny chunks) on Monday, August 2nd. I am going to collect the next Update late Friday or early Saturday in order to hopefully publish it before Monday. Let's hope it will be less hot then.
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Phosh.mobi Blog: Development News July 2026
- Phosh.mobi e.V. News: Improving Phosh: Mobile Data Usage
- Liliputing: Ubuntu Touch update brings better support for modern smartphones & web apps
- Purism: PureOS Development Report: June 2026
- po-ru: You don’t just have to give in
Worth Watching
Note: This video section is based on select feeds and fediverse accounts and thus very likely incomplete. See the "Personal Note" in 25/2026 for reasons.
- Continuum Gaming: Bitsailor – Password Storage Manager (Continuum Gaming E532)
- Joshua Strobl: Jolla Phone 2 & Sailfish OS: A Real Third Option
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Jolla Phone 2 & Sailfish OS: A Real Third Option
- Local First Conf: Tobias Bernard, Andreas Dzialocha — Towards a Local-First Desktop
- Alper Nebi Yasak: Debian on Chromebooks: The Final Steps?. Anonymous contributor comments: Current progress of native Debian installer support for Chromebooks (including ARM devices).
Worth Noting
- justsoup: "Got close to having working native widevine DRM on postmarketOS tonight. Seems I've hit a roadblock where Firefox can recognize the binary and notify websites that it supports widevine, but then the library crashes whenever its loaded. I've already patched it for gcompat support, so I don't know what else is wrong here.See https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/work_items/4438 to follow along"
- rmader: "For #postmarketOS folks: the latest mobile-config-firefox update fixed #firefox camera selection for #pipewire (and thus #libcamera). So on devices with working cameras you should be able to do video calls now OOTB.Some sites might run into a remaining webrtc issue though (the camera freezing after a short time) - I have some pending patches for that, with a FF test build at https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/merge_requests/105605 (mrtest add -a 105605).With that all major video chat sides should work."
- CleoMenezesjr: For those working on bringing Mobile Linux to life: what are the primary challenges you are currently encountering?#LinuxMobile
- carbonatedcaffeine: Sorry guys, I got lax with the PinePhone Pro daily driving updates. Got a bit busy with other things. I'll take a look at writing a list of problems so that I can find and document solutions to them to share with everyone.#pine64 #pinephonepro #mobilelinux #linuxmobile
Hardware (Enablement)
- mechasystems: Missed posting this; everything we worked on through May :)https://mecha.so/blog/mecha-may-mania-updateHighlights:- More robust IO Connector- Keyboard is moving to ZMK- Gamepad Extension now has support for an Analog Stick and Shoulder buttons- Type-C for detached use/or multiplayer
- mechasystems: We've combined June/July with a wide series of updates as we move into August:https://mecha.so/blog/mecha-monsoon-update Highlights- IMX95 PCB (EVT) in production- Keyboard extension re-designed- Gamepad PCB (DVT) in production- Native App Early Demos- Prep-work for Certification
- okias: "Today implemented Pixel 3 XL panel support, so now MDSS + GPU works, since the
sdm845-next-20260730-2git tag. Since the similarity to the Pixel 3, Debian-based BengalOS and Mobian will run it soon.#MobileLinux #LinuxMobile #sdm845 #Pixel3 #Mobian #BengalOS" - isyourbrainFOSS: "I got the main camera (Sony IMX800) working on my #fairphone 5 with #mobilelinux #libcamera on #postmarketOS #phosh!https://github.com/isyourbrainfoss/fp5-imx800Disclaimer: Experimental bring-up. I’ve been prompting an AI to get here, and have not written anything by hand.ℹ️ Note from linuxmobile.social: 1 attachment in this status was not downloaded. Treat the following external link with care: 3bca9416e4bd6051.mp4 (error: file size limit reached)"
- isyourbrainFOSS: Also, I got the NFC working on #mobilelinux on the #Fairphone5 https://github.com/isyourbrainfoss/fp5-nfc
- sd: "Bluetooth works now, so I can listen to music on the go! #mobilelinux #pixel9a". Context: Pixel 9a.
- sd: After adjusting ModemManager to ignore the AT port, Phosh does now connect on first try!(It connects properly with the IA-APN set without those changes, so the setting does make a difference. I don‘t understand why the modem acts this way. Moving away from AT is definitely the right choice anyway, since it mirrors downstream) #mobilelinux #pixel9a
- sd: AOSP has a 40000 line config file that correctly maps my SIM to o2 Postpaid‘s „internet“ APN, also marked as IA. I am wondering if we could reuse that (not sure about licensing). But then again, the way ModemManager would query the data is not super clear. #mobilelinux #pixel9a
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #260 Freezing
- Zelda Ahmed: GUADEC 2026 Report
- Felipe Borges: GUADEC 2026 Trip Report
- Lucas Baudin: Visual Signatures in Papers (and Papers 51.beta)
Phosh
- Phosh.mobi Blog: Development News July 2026
- Phosh.mobi e.V. News: Improving Phosh: Mobile Data Usage
- Phosh (gotosocial): Sam captured today;s #cellbroadcast test messages from #AusAlert in Australia on two devices running #phosh , one with @fedor...
- mpanhans: Severe weather in the area recently, and my OnePlus 6T phone running #postmarketos received the cell broadcast alert! Certainly many to thank for this feature being available on #mobilelinux, including @phosh @postmarketOS and many more I don't even know. #phosh #duranium
- boud: @nek #PamDuress [1] is a small #LGPL package, looks serious and well-written, developed since 2021, though should be checked by people with infosec experience. Fork for #phosh [2]. Up to the user to write or choose "duress" scripts - not necessarily deleting anything - could be emailing an alert or audio/photo files to a trusted address. Should be usable on any GNU/Linux desktop/laptop/phone for people whose threat model needs this.[1] https://github.com/nuvious/pam-duress[2] https://github.com/Sirr-OS/phosh-pam-duress
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: Emoji Resizing
- Volker Krause: June/July in KDE Itinerary
- Planet KDE: Plasma Vault Advisory: You should probably switch to gocryptfs
- Phoronix: KDE Plasma 6.8 To Enjoy Huge Performance Gains For Multi-GPU/eGPU Performance
Sailfish OS
- Announcements - Sailfish OS Forum: [Release notes] Finlayson 5.2.0.16 - Jolla Phone only
- frankps: A community port of SailfishOS for Sony Xperia 10 V is progressing nicely, and will hopefully soon be released.#SailfishOS #LinuxMobile #SailfishOSCommunityhttps://forum.sailfishos.org/t/lineage-based-port-for-xperia-10-v-zambezi/31348/6?u=frankps
- frankps: The upcoming Commodore Callback 8020 feature phone passes 10.000 pre-orders! https://commodore.net/store/callback-8020/#sailfishos #Commodore #Detox
- rubdos: I notice many people are receiving their #JollaPhone! I tried to note down some of the things I did to get cosy with my new #SailfishOS device in a new blog post: "I have my Jolla Phone, what now?"https://www.rubdos.be/2026/08/01/my-sailfish-os-journey-what-they-should-ve-told-you.html #jolla #linuxonmobile #gettingstarted #harbour #android #microg #aurora
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 195
- UBports Forums OS: RCS implementation.
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: UT Release Update
Sxmo
- fdlamotte: coords2img.py script is available here https://github.com/meshcore-dev/meshcore-cli/blob/main/tools/coords2img.pyyou need img2sixel on your system and a sixel enabled terminal to use it.
- fdlamotte: "It finally happened !Let me introduce you sxmo_mc, meshcore-cli wrapper for #sxmo !https://github.com/meshcore-dev/meshcore-cli/blob/main/sxmo/sxmo_mc.sh#linuxmobile #postmarketos #meshcore #sxmo"
Distributions
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): Last call for proposals for the the postmarketOS and @alpinelinux Conference! The deadline is in a little under three hours, so get any last minute proposals in fast.https://pretalx.postmarketos.org/postmarketos-conference-2026/cfpIf you are just hearing about this, please read https://postmarketos.org/conference/.#PostMarketOS #AlpineLinux
- postmarketOS pmaports issues: Syncthing support in Phosh
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: docs: document maintainership and expectations
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Modifying the Android kernel for debugging
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: OnePlus 6 (oneplus-enchilada)/Unbricking and factory reset
- Phoronix: Arch Linux AUR Under Another Wave Of Malicious Packages, Package Adoptions Halted
- okias: "BengalOS is now booting on the Pixel 3! 🎉 Just two weeks after @agx got it running on the Pixel 3a, support is already expanding.Next up: Snapdragon 845 devices, including the OnePlus 6, OnePlus 6T, Xiaomi Pocophone F1, Xiaomi Mi 8, and more.https://bengalos.phosh.mobi/#BengalOS #Phosh #LinuxMobile #MobileLinux #Pixel3 #sdm845"
Apps
- UndeadLeech: "Kumo 1.9.0 brings some minor QoL changes, including a color indicator for ephemeral mode and preloading tabs opened in the background.You can find the full changelog here:https://git.sr.ht/~undeadleech/kumo/refs/v1.9.0#catacomb #linuxmobile #browser #rust". Sadly no longer on Flathub :-(
- UndeadLeech: Decided to add scroll velocity to #Alacritty as a nice QoL improvement for #linuxmobile :https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/pull/9008Hopefully this should help scrolling through big terminal backlogs without access to a mouse.#rust #linux
- kolunmi: "Hi, I’m the creator of the Bazaar App Store! I’m looking to work on something new and exciting!Last time when I asked about what kind of professional software people wanted on Linux, here are the suggestions I received:- Pro tools alternative (appears to be some sort of DAW)- Adobe indesign / affinity publisher alternative - Google Maps alternative- Canva alternative How do yall feel about these suggestions? Any others?Boosts appreciated!"
- pak0st: @linmob I fired up the #pixel3a today and #megapixels has the focus controls! 🔥
- postmarketOS: Apps by Category: Account1009: /* Other */
- postmarketOS: Apps by Category: Mariob: /* Camera Apps */ add cosmic camera & remove archived cheese
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH 0/4] Dongwoon DW9714 - correct vcc/vdd supply voltage
- phone-devel: [PATCH v9 0/5] Input: synaptics-rmi4 - add quirks for third party touchscreen controllers
- phone-devel: [PATCH v10 4/4] arm64: dts: qcom: msm8939-asus-z00t: add Venus
Stack
- servo: "Servo now passes 100% of WPT tests for the WebCrypto API, all 73,292 subtests, covering 25 cryptographic algorithms 🎉A complete, spec-correct cryptography implementation in an independent Rust-powered browser engine is a big milestone! Thank you to the contributors over the last few months who pushed this work along!"
- Phoronix: Vulkan 1.4.358 Released With New Image Tiling Control Extension
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2026-07-31
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!