Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (34/2025): Reporting from Elsinore
Table of Contents
Another week, another update: Another FuriOS update, help postmarketOS test Phrog, a Ubuntu Touch Q&A, a round-up of Sailfish OS Community news, and a lot more! Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- craftyguy's blog: When being comfortable stopped being enough Awesome!
- BattlePenguin: The Purism Librem 5 and the Six Year Refund Oof.
- Via Purism (Reddit): The Purism Librem 5 and the Six Year Refund
Worth Watching
- qkall: Postmarketos SXMO Oneplus 6 August 2025
- Continuum Gaming: Continuum Gaming E483: SFOS Update 5.0.0.70 for C2 (with Video Camera Update)
- Anino Ni Kugi: Ubuntu Touch 24.04 Noble Beta | Fairphone 4 on External Display
- Anino Ni Kugi: Sadly Fairphone Gen 6 won't be able to do this anymore 😭 | Fairphone 5 can 😄
- YMP Yuri: LINUX on an OLD tablet for pennies? | PostmarketOS on Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite
- Piepaint Android: "PostmarketOS running on Nothing Phone (1), with Linux 6.14 kernel"
- Jejak Teknologi: Sailfish OS: OS legendaris yang nyaris jadi pesaing Android & iOS!
- UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 172. Just AppLee, but then a late Marius appears!
Worth Noting
- gnumdk: "Mobile Power Saver is a small system/user daemon designed to extend battery life on mobile devices.So far it’s only been tested and actively used on #droidian . I gave it a shot on #postmarketOS, but since systemd integration there is still a bit rough, it’s not fully working yet (idle hint broken).On my Redmi Note 9 Pro, with Mobile Power Saver running, I can stretch usage to up to 3 days on a single charge. (with some optimization in #ofono too)Source & details: https://gitlab.gnome.org/gnumdk/mobile-power-saver"
- tobykurien: "I'm currently testing a #Mobian kernel patch to improve battery life on the #PinephonePro and it's looking promising (about 3 hours of continuous use instead of 1 hour). If you'd like to try it out, download the linked deb file onto your phone, install it, then shutdown your phone and remove battery, wait 10 minutes (to reset the battery meter), then boot into the new kernel. Note that suspend doesn't work in this kernel. Let me know if you try it out.Linux 6.16… https://tobykurien.com/post-1754464702"
- kuleszdl: ""Will 2026 be the year of the Mainline Linux Smartphone?"Slides of my talk from this year's FOSS on Mobile workshop at FroSCON are online and linked here:https://programm.froscon.org/2025/events/3434.htmlOriginally, the talk was targeted at LinuxMobile developers. Yet I was very pleased that so many other people showed up. As it turned out, most of them don't use LinuxMobile on their daily driver smartphone today - and this is exactly what we need to change!#froscon #froscon25 #FOSSonMobile #linuxmobile"
- awai: "I got my new @starlabssystems StarLite 5 this morning, replacing a Surface Go 2 which is starting to show its age...Of course I've immediately installed @debian #Trixie and #Phosh, and after #rsync'ing my /home from the SG2 it's good to go, with everything working out-of-the-box! (including the cameras, yes)This definitely demonstrates how far ARM-based devices are from wider adoption, and how a Linux-first x86 #Tablet can still be very relevant to end users!#LinuxMobile #Debian"
- @katzenmann: Guess what? I got the lens focus driver working on my #Pixel3a running #postmarketOS It's still very messy and I haven't found out the correct values for everything but I can set the focus using my poor-mans PipeTap.I'm on vacation for the next 2 weeks so I won't have time to work on getting it upstreamed but if you want to play around with it you can pm me to get the patch.#mobilelinux #shotonmainline #linuxonmobile
- mntmn: "since a few days i/we've been thinking to make parts of my todo list semi-public and to attach bounties to the tasks to let freelancers (but also people in the company who i might not have considered to delegate to) grab 'em. the tasks range from "find a manufacturer for x" to "fix this linux bug", "fix this ruby code", "improve this circuit/pcb", "repair this device", "shoot these photos" etc. would you find this interesting or do/did you already work in this way?"
- danct12: "I'll probably push the #PineTab2 Bluetooth driver in 6.16 kernel tree, it's still not great but seems to be quite usable.There might be cases where you'll have to turn on/off Bluetooth to get it working again because of some weird firmware bug (nothing I can do, I'm afraid)."
- pabloyoyoista: "After talking to a few #postmarketOS community members, I'm now setup weekly office hours 🎉 https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Office_hours Come show up if you want to talk about feelings or non-technical aspects of the project!"
Events
- adrianyyy: "@postmarketOS @cccac PS: the next Mainlining-Meetup is on the 2nd of September, a perfect opportunity to visit, hack and grab some stickers!"
- rasumi: Juhu, ich werde nach einigen Jahren mal wieder einen Vortrag auf den @datenspuren halten! Thema diesmal: Linux auf dem Smartphone. Wenn es euch interessiert, kommt gern vorbei: Sa 20.9. 12:15 im kleinen Saal und ggf. ja auch im Stream. Ich freu mich! https://talks.datenspuren.de/ds25/talk/GWDVAA/ #mobilelinux #foss #c3d2 #datenspuren #datenspuren25
- tbernard: "Save the date! We'll have another edition of #BoilingTheOcean in Berlin on October 3-5, right after All Systems Go. More details to follow 😎#gnome #localfirst #linuxmobile #systemd #berlin"
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #213 Fixed Rules
- Steven Deobald: 2025-08-22 Foundation Update
- Sebastian Wick: Testing with Portals
- Cassidy James Blaede: Here’s to What’s Next
- Christian Hergert: Status Week 33
Phosh
- Phosh.mobi e.V. News: FrOSCon 2025
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: KDE Initial System Setup
Sxmo
Sailfish OS
- Community News - Sailfish OS Forum: Sailfish Community News, 21st August 2025 - Camera Discussion
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 146
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 145
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 144
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 143
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 142
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 141
- flypig's NewPipe log: Day 140
Ubuntu Touch
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 172 Call for Questions
- UBports - Development - Issues: [24.04-1.x] Screenlock crashes Lomiri
- #UbuntuTouch: Hi Mastodon! I am starting to use #ubuntutouch on my #VollaPhone as an experiment, can you suggest a stack of applications for day to day use:1. 2fa app2. Mail/Calendar for @mailbox_org 3. Messaging apps4. Some way to use @CoMaps I don't want to install Android ports or emulators, to have native experience and keep low resource consumption. Thank you in advance!
Distributions
- FuriLabs: Update 13.1.1
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: Call for Testing: Phrog will be the new Phosh login greeter
- adrianyyy: "@fossdd and me set up a nightly mesa repository for Alpine Linux Edge to enable easier testing of new mesa features and let us catch regressions early.You can find the repository and setup instructions at http://repo.rackspace.moe/mesa-nightly/Available for aarch64 / armv7 / x86_64, mayhaps ppc64le and loongarch64 later on."
Apps
- pojntfx: "Bazaar looks great. Bit of a strange UX in some places, like naming the main tab Flathub. But damn is it fast, the animations are on point, and it feels almost like a commercial app store/Google Play/Apple App Store in a way that GNOME Software doesn't, at least to me." Not mobile-ready yet, but really interesting as Bazaar is a flatpak store that allows for some curation.
- tbernard: "After more than 4 years in review (on and off, not continuous 😅) Wordbook by Mufeed Ali is finally in Circle!It's a handy offline dictionary for looking up English words when you're not sure you remember the exact definition.Congratulations 🥳https://flathub.org/apps/dev.mufeed.Wordbook#gnome #circle"
- agx: While the #matrix network is going through a major version room upgrade to version 12 (https://matrix.org/blog/2025/08/security-release/) you might wonder if #chatty works with that room version. Seems so: #gtk #phosh #LinuxMobile
- tpikonen: Yet another, mostly bugfix release of OLS, my local location server. The main attraction is probably native support for m8b-files from wigle.net. Get while it's hot (or not)! https://codeberg.org/tpikonen/ols/releases/tag/0.2.1 #geolocation #geoclue #beacondb #mobileLinux
- tpikonen: ... and speaking of #geolocation, a new release of Geoclue, the Dbus location service for Linux is about to be made. My finger is itching to press the merge button and this can only be prevented if you (yes, You) test the code from git and report bugs! https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/geoclue/geoclue/-/merge_requests/209 #geoclue #beacondb #mobileLinux
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Gauge
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: BlueBubbles
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Fedinspect
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Recordbox
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: KomoDo
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH v4 0/2] mmc: sdhci-pxav3: pinctrl setting for fast bus clocks
- phone-devel: [PATCH v2 0/4] Marvell PXA1908 power domains
- Phoronix: Linux Primed For Significant Performance Gains With Kernel Swap Code Overhaul
- Phoronix: Linux Kernel Patches Posted For Enabling USB3 Support On Apple M1 / M2
- Phoronix: Libre-Chip Awarded NLnet Grant To Prototype A CPU That Isn't Vulnerable To Spectre Flaws
Stack
- Phoronix: Google Prepares Chrome Field Trial For Accelerated Video Decode On Wayland
- Phoronix: Mesa 25.3 Lands More Changes To Prepare For OpenGL Mesh Shaders
- Phoronix: Servo Lands APNG & Animated WebP Support, Vello Backends For Faster 2D Graphics
- Phoronix: Panthor Open-Source Driver To Support Many More Arm Mali GPUs In Linux 6.18
- Phoronix: FFmpeg 8.0 Released With OpenAI Whisper Filter, Many Vulkan Video Improvements
- Phoronix: VKD3D 1.17 Released With More Improvements For Direct3D 12 On Vulkan
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-08-22
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!