Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (37/2026): September Lull
Table of Contents
German emergency alerts working on Phosh, work on a significant Gecko engine for the Sailfish OS browser, etnaviv progress, and more!
Collected on Sunday, September 13th 2026, 8:58 UTC and finished on the same day. Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Phosh.mobi e.V. News: Phosh.mobi @ Mini Debconf Winterthur 2026
- The Official Jolla Blog: Change on Jolla Phone memory configurations going forward
- Community News - Sailfish OS Forum: Sailfish Community News, September 10, 2026 - Symbiosis. The biggest development IMHO is the perpective for the browser to move the recently released Firefox 153 ESR, which is not even yet in Alpine or Debian.
- This Week in GNOME: #265 New Commitments
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 - please help out and add relevant videos you enjoy to the pad.
- Continuum Gaming: Local Data Transfer with Sailfish OS (Continuum Gaming E539)
- orailnoor: I Built My Own Linux Phone — And You Can Too. Built ... in software.
- Switch and Click: I Replaced my iPhone with Linux. Here's What Happened.. Maybe pick a device that has more green checkboxes on the wiki next time…
Worth Noting
- craftyguy: "I'm thinking about offering some informal mentoring to someone who wants to get into #postmarketOS development (packaging, #duranium) or other projects I'm heavily involved with. I've been contributing to pmOS for a while, and I'm happy to help someone get unstuck. In return I'd ask for patience (I make mistakes and I don't have infinite time), and some self-motivation and comfort with Linux, the command line, and git. Would anyone be interested in this?"
- elly: "Me: "Okay, time to put this into drawer and revisit it when I'll have more time"My brain: "So... you're just going to let the device win?"Me: "...hold my tea""
- hugoposnic: "Just have updated devices list of linux-mobile.com:- Added Pixel 3a with BengalOS from @phosh - Added Fairphone 6+ (software compatible with FP6)- Decoupled OP6 and OP6TDon't hesitate to contribute if you see any mistake, the website is OSS and published on Codeberg.👀 https://linux-mobile.com/devices/🔗 https://codeberg.org/hugoposnic/linux-mobile#linuxmobile"
- austriancoder: "A year ago, I couldn’t have imagined that this website would work at all. There’s been a lot of progress around #etnaviv over the past year. The last few days, I’ve been doing some dogfooding on my #mntreform - and look at this nice photo!Chromium running with a debug build of mesa (including some patches I still need to upstream) on sway.#etnaviv #mesa"
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #265 New Commitments
- vixalien: Project Final Report: Adding Debug Adapter Protocol Support to GJS
- Georges Basile Stavracas Neto: What’s New in Calendar 51: Prologue
- Matthias Klumpp: JPEG-XL as default in AppStream, and better media processing
- Felipe Borges: Wrapping up Google Summer of Code 2026 with GNOME!
- Phoronix: GTK 4.24 Released With Better Fractional Scaling, More Precise GDK Frame-Clock
- Phoronix: GNOME 51 Adds Support For Custom Pointer Acceleration Profiles
Phosh
- Phosh.mobi e.V. News: Phosh.mobi @ Mini Debconf Winterthur 2026
- Phosh e.V.: Our next online community get together is in a little more than a week on 2026-09-22 19:00 CEST: https://ev.phosh.mobi/gettogether/ .Join us! Everyone interested in Phosh is welcome.#LinuxMobile #Phosh #phoshev
- Björn: Habe heute am bundesweiten Warntag auch das erste mal eine Probewarnung bekommen auf mein Linux Telefon. Danke an die Entwickler:innen. Und bei diesem Toot gerade die Mehrfachauswahl von Dateien verwendet. Das ist ein neues Feature von Phosh 0.57. Auch zum ersten mal. Auch hier Danke an die Entwickler:innen. Ein guter Tag heute :) #phosh #linuxmobile #mobilelinux #fairphone5 #postmarketos Cell broadcast working now, worked for me too (Pixel 3a, pmOS edge) :-)
- Bender Robot: Okaaay, survived the first day, here is the summary:- Got 2 incoming calls with working audio- Emergency cell broadcast worked- Browsing with 4G and Firefox very nice- Chatty did not sync Matrix messages from 4G, only wifi- Had to do one hard reboot because the login screen malfunctioned- Battery duration was approx. 12h with medium usage- Pretty nice handwarmer, though#postmarketos #phosh #linuxmobile #mobilelinux
- Phosh e.V.: We had a great time at the MiniDebconf in Winterthur. Here's a short look back: https://ev.phosh.mobi/de/blog/minidc-winti-2026/ .Thanks @manut and the other organizers.#Phosh #LinuxMobile #linux #mobile #minidebconfch #debian #BengalOS
- phosh: First hardware from our Back from the drawer campaign being put to use for continuous testing of our daily BengalOS image builds on the Google Pixel 3a:This amends our VM image tests ensuring things boot up properly before publishing the images. We're currently using usb-cereal but hope to switch to @postmarketOS test harness to also be able to recover from crashed boots and get the device into a defined state more easily.Thanks @decorum @robiwahn @chris for the hardware.#Phosh #BengalOS #LinuxMobile #Linux #mobile #cicd
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: 6.8 Beta Release!
- KDE Announcements: KDE Gear 26.08.1
- KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta Release
- KDE Announcements: KDE Ships Frameworks 6.30.0
- KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.7.5, Bugfix Release for September
- Nuno Icons: I just want us to feel something…
- merritt.codes: Updates for Plasma Software Engineer & plasma-keyboard
- Nate Graham: Photos: a proposed replacement for Gwenview. Koko!
- Anders Lund: Big thanks goes to @carl, whose code I copied (and adapted a wee bit).#pumoku #plasmaMobile #kde
- LibreNews: Announcing Plasma Studio
Catacomb
Sailfish OS
- Community News - Sailfish OS Forum: Sailfish Community News, September 10, 2026 - Symbiosis. The biggest development IMHO is the perpective for the browser to move the recently released Firefox 153 ESR, which is not even yet in Alpine or Debian.
- The Official Jolla Blog: Change on Jolla Phone memory configurations going forward
- frankps: Hauler - Mastodon client for #sailfishos 0.4.0- Fix: surrender infinite load for "load more" button since it caused all (thx @lorenzo for a bug report)- Media viewer with a download link that downloads to ~/Downloads (for @RTheren)https://openrepos.net/content/sznowicki/hauler-mastodon-client
- frankps: RE: https://social.sneak.ovh/@hlrx/34531539432919040Not sure on the state of this one, but an important initiative:A conceptual project to enable payments on SailfishOS, leveraging Wero’s infrastructure for a card-free, European-controlled alternative.#SailfishOS #Wero
- frankps: And the updated Fiat Pons app (Qobuz) is out:https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/qobuz-qbz-native-music-client/32939/55?u=frankps#SailfishOS #QBZ #Qobuz #Streaming #Music
- frankps: A developer is working on a bridge to be able to use Proton Contacts and Calendar directly on SailfishOS! It is in an early stage, but possible to try out! The dev wants feedback…(PS! A similar bridge excists for Proton Mail)https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/native-proton-apps/30342/23?u=frankps#SailfishOS #Proton
- frankps: Oh, oh... I'm jumping up and down in excitement!The developer of the native Qobuz music player for Sailfish OS, Fiat Pons, has added MPRIS (Media Player Remote Interfacing Specification, the standard communication protocol used on Linux) and both Hi-res and Ultra Hi-res formats in an upcoming release. https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/qobuz-qbz-native-music-client/32939/54?u=frankps#SailfishOS #QBZ #Qobuz #Streaming #Music
- stayerk: Started coding a #SailfishOS co-spend application compatible with iHateMoney and Nextcloud Cospend backend.My C++ is a bit rusty and I never used QML before.Since I am trying to learn I decided not to use AI. Wish me luck :) @linux
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports Forums OS: [DRAFT 26.04.1.x]: New contact/calendar/alarm backend
- UBports - Development - Merge Requests: lomiri-session.in: Prevent Qt6 applications (such as Morph-Qt6 and QWE/Qt6)...
- #UbuntuTouch: Some progress on Seabass3 for #ubuntutouch. Both phone and tablet layouts are taking shape, and there is now a vertical tab list for mobile devices.(Performance in the video is heavily affected by screencasting, but hopefully it still gives an idea of what to expect from the UI)
- Lemmy.ml - linuxphones: Ubuntu Touch on Pixel 5 with VoLTE
Distributions
- postmarketOS Blog: postmarketOS in 2026-08: Conferences
- Lemmy - postmarketOS: postmarketOS in 2026-08: Conferences
- News for developers of postmarketOS: Userspace pd-mapper removed
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: Merging sbin into bin
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: Dropping x86 from postmarketOS
- postmarketOS: "Turns out we don't have any postmarketOS device port for x86 except in the archived category, and therefore we don't have any users on this architecture. So we are now dropping x86 (not x86_64!) from postmarketOS edge to save some build times. It never was in a stable version.https://postmarketos.org/edge/2026/09/10/Dropping-x86-from-postmarketOS/"
- postmarketOS pmaports issues: Switch default camera application
- Pine64-Arch: Arch Linux ARM / Ports - 2026/09/04
Apps
- chfkch: I guess at some point i cannot procrastinate any more and have to announce the release of my pet projects website:https://bitritter.devis officially launched¹ 🎉Typos can be corrected via Pull Request 🤔:boostRequest: :boost_ok: ¹ read: in Fediverse Beta testing#BitRitter #MobileLinux #LinuxMobile #passwordManagers If you want to say hi or discuss topics about #BitRitter - a mobile friendly Bitwarden client (for linux), you can join the matrix room at
#biritter-public:matrix.org.The website should be fully online tomorrow or at the weekend.#BitWarden #MobileLinux #passwortmanager #drop1password - LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Dropzone
Kernel
- Phoronix: Linux's IO_uring Sees Some "Crazy" Patches That Deliver Very Nice Improvements
- phone-devel: [PATCH RFC 12/20] dt-bindings: clock: qcom,rpmcc: Add MSM8952 compatible
Stack
- Phoronix: Prominent Mesa Developer Now Working For Arm On PanVK & Panfrost Code
- Phoronix: GCC 13.5 Released With 265+ Bug Fixes
- Phoronix: X.Org Server 26.1 Moves Closer To Release As Half-Decade Update
- Phoronix: GNU Automake 1.19 Released With More Than One Year Worth Of Fixes
- Phoronix: COSMIC Epoch 1.8 Provides Latest Fixes & Minor Improvements For This Rust Desktop
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2026-09-11
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!