Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (39/2024): ARM Gaming Edition
Table of Contents
Another week has almost passed, here's what happened: postmarketOS shares plans for adding systemd and immutability (and what they've accomplished in September), a Sailfish OS community roundup, a Newsletter by UBports, some progress on working phone calls on the PinePhone Pro, Akademy talks uploaded on PeerTube, Valve seemingly invested in Proton on ARM platforms, and more!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- flypig's Gecko log: Gecko retrospective
- postmarketOS: postmarketOS // in 2024-09: systemd, PCB, talks, non-latin language fonts. This post was added after initial publication.
- Joaquim Rocha: How to fork: Best practices and guide
- mikehenson on PINE64 forums: 2024 Sep 21 - PinePhonePro Calls Working
- Purism: Purism Releases STEP File for Librem 5
- LINux on MOBile: Augmenting my postmarketOS installs with my own Alpine repos
Worth Watching
- TechyNoob: Sailfish OS: A Unique Alternative for OnePlus Users (Linux based OS)
- All Systems Go!: "systemd-ifying postmarketOS, our immutable future, and why Alpine is cooler than you thought"
- EveryByteCounts: PostMarketOS 24.06 Benchmarked - Better Than NixOS
- Rikerlinux: Ubuntu Touch que nada! Sailfish OS também traz o Linux para seu Smartphone! SailfishOS review
- Purism: Quantum Safe Communication with Purism
- KDE Community: Daily driving Plasma Mobile and what's still lacking - Akademy 2024
- KDE Community: Finding your way around Akademy - Venue maps and indoor routing in Kongress - Akademy 2024
- All Systems Go!: GNOME OS + systemd-sysupdate
- Brodie Robertson: Valve Leaks Upcoming Proton Support For ARM Devices. Anonymous Contributor: "If this improves Waydroid/FEX, it will help for mobile Linux at large."
Worth Noting
- tbernard: "Some impressions from Boiling The Ocean yesterday and today! Lots of productive planning and hacking including on postmarketOS, GNOME OS, Papers, eSIM settings, local-first plans, and much more :)#gnome #berlin #postmarketOS #boilingTheOcean". Despite the name, this is no generative AI or cryptocurrency hackfest ;-)
- praveen: "We are voting for priority issues for mobile gnu/linux from 15 issues that are proposed in the last month. https://codema.in/p/hcApNrxT/arrange-the-following-issues-based-on-priorityIf you'd like to participate, join this self hosted loomio instance (AGPLv3) and join https://codema.in/debphoshfund/ this poll is one of the ongoing activities of this project, there will be more polls and setting bounties for identified high priority items.#mobian #debian #freesoftware #mobile #librem5 #flx1 #pinephone"
- rmader: "For those running #postmarketos edge on a device with working camera - the number of which is raising fast enough to make me lose track - and you want to play around with the great new #gnomecamera / #gnomesnapshot #gnome47 release: you'll need to install gst-plugins-rs manually until some build issues are fixed.The release features heavily improved rendering performance, mainly thanks to improvements in #gtk4 and the #gstreamer gtk4paintablesink (also for apps using the aperture library)"
- hexaheximal: "This was posted on a Google Pixel 3A (sargo) running postmarketOS with Phosh.If I didn't choose to keep this device alive and useful with postmarketOS, it would have most likely ended up in a drawer somewhere, and then eventually a landfill somewhere.As postmarketos.org states: "Let's keep our devices useful and safe untill they physically break!"#PostMarketOS #MobileLinux #Linux"
- FirefoxNightly: [Nightly Blog] From ESR to Address Bar – These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 168 https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2024/09/24/from-esr-to-address-bar-these-weeks-in-firefox-issue-168/
- williamtries: "The most reliable Linux phone I've ever had was a Nexus 5 running #UbuntuTouch. After giving it a lot of thought, I can't help but think that #Halium is the best path forward for #LinuxMobile. Several projects have tried to make calling and audio routing as reliable on Linux phones without Halium as on Android or iOS, but it just isn't happening. (1)"
- bragefuglseth: "One of the most important lessons in volunteer-driven development is that motivation isn’t commutable. If a contributor hadn’t worked on thing Y, that doesn’t automatically mean that they would have dedicated their time to thing Z instead. It’s not a given that people are equally motivated for everything."
- justsoup: "Want to test #systemd in #postmarketOS a bit more in-depth? I wrote a shell script (my first serious one ever) to convert APK packages into systemd-sysext (and confext) images. This isn't anything that will go into pmOS proper, just me messing around with stuff that could work.https://codeberg.org/JustSoup321/apk-sysext#MobileLinux #Linux #AlpineLinux"
- chfkch: "@Taler @NGI_Taler Would you be interested in a collaboration to port the android wallet app to #Linux preferrably #LinuxMobile.If yes i would love to contribute, but i am not sure if it can be done yet (mostly dependency-wise).Or do you know of a client which already exists?"
- janvlug: "On 1 July 2024 @purism introduced optional subscriptions to advance the development of the #PureOS Linux distribution that is also used on the #Librem5 Linux #phone.Purism released this about the subscriptions:Month Net Sales Subscribers2024-07 $637.49 512024-08 $753.41 59#Purism upstreams as much as possible, so contributing to PureOS might benefit several other Linux devices.The focus is now on moving #PureOS to #Crimson.https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-optional-subscription-added-to-advance-development/#FOSS #opensource #MobileLinux"
- @linmob@fosstodon.org: #PinePhonePro owners with Call audio issues: This thread on the PINE64 forums https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=19428 may help/be worth another attempt!
- Purism (Reddit): Daily driving the Librem 5 for over a year - Review
- Purism community: Firefox for Librem 5, PinePhone & other Linux phones
- Lemmy - linuxphones: Mirror Hall: peer-to-peer screen sharing between Linux devices
- #LinuxMobile: How can i use my second simcard on poco phone f1 with postmarketos?i use one of my Sims for mobile data, esim isn't an option for me because of my country:)any help would be appreciated.#linuxmobile #postmarketos
- #MobileLinux: I'd personally love to see a replacement to gnome-software one day. Something that functions a lot closer to #Fdroid. #MobileLinux
- fosdem: FOSDEM 2025 call for devrooms https://fosdem.org/2025/news/2024-09-23-devrooms-cfp/. I hope there'll be one!
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #167 Linking Apps
- Carlos Garcia Campos: Graphics improvements in WebKitGTK and WPEWebKit 2.46
- xjuan: New Cambalache Release 0.92.0!
Phosh
- arunmani: "At @phosh, we are working on making the quick-settings panel more responsive and snappy.This new layout lets you access the preferences (i.e. status pages) quickly and in a responsive manner.Feel free to join the merge request discussion (https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Phosh/phosh/-/merge_requests/1498) and test this new feature, so we can land it soon!#phosh #linux #linuxmobile #mobile #wayland"
- agx: Thanks to the bits and pieces collected by @isyourbrainFOSS we can now support the alert slider on the #Onplus6/6T to toggle #feedbackd's full/quiet/silent profiles. #phosh
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This week in Plasma: converging 6.2
- KDE Apps: This Week in KDE Apps (2024-09-29). This post was added after initial publication.
- KDE Apps: This Week in KDE Apps
- Bhushan Shah: Akademy 2024 in Würzburg
Sailfish OS
- Community News - Sailfish OS Forum: Sailfish Community News, 26th September 2024 - Sailathon
- flypig's Gecko log: Gecko retrospective
- piggz: "Not the most impressive screenshot, but the first. #SailfishOS #Qt6"
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports: Newsletter Sept 27th
- UBports - Development - Issues: Tracking issue for minor release: 20.04 OTA-6
- fredldotme: "The Ubuntu Touch powered JingPad, running a VM in the new Pocket VMs 0.9, released today. All in Wireless Desktop Mode.https://open-store.io/app/pvms.me.fredl"
- fredldotme: "On a personal note, I'm dire need of financial support. Due to trouble in private life over the last few years I've come to the point where I cannot pay back debt right now, either for the tax office or otherwise.It's really urgent, threatening me with deeper trouble if I don't manage to pay off my debts. So if you value my contributions to FLOSS, Ubuntu Touch, or otherwise, then please consider a donation and sharing this message: https://paypal.me/beidl", If you need a summary of what might justify the help I require, here is a list of things I've contributed in my spare time over the last years: https://fredl.me/, If you prefer helping through Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/fredldotme/, Update: I'm nowhere near feeling safe from the worst case scenario yet, but I've been overwhelmed with positive responses and help, no matter how big or small. A big thank you to those who've already helped!https://mastodon.social/@fredldotme/113188341482592522. If you can, try help Alfred out - he's done great work for Ubuntu Touch that has also benefitted the wider ecosystem!
Distributions
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postmarketOS: postmarketOS // in 2024-09: systemd, PCB, talks, non-latin language fonts. This post was added after initial publication.
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DanctNIX (Mastodon): Looks like GNOME wins.Gotta do some experiment with GNOME on a low resolution touch screen. #PineTab2
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Phoronix: Valve Helping Arch Linux With Build Service Infrastructure & Secure Signing Enclave - Phoronix
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GamingonLinux: Valve (Steam) begin a direct collaboration with Arch Linux Anonymous Contibutor adds: Update 28/09/24 - 14:13 UTC: Arch Linux packager and Valve collaborator Campbell Jones, mentioned to me:
The enclave is essentially intended to be a way for us to PGP-sign packages with a single signing key instead of how we do it right now, which is with one personal key per packager. It will not benefit Proton or the anti-cheat situation in any way and is completely unrelated.
Apps
- afranke: "School is back, #Fractal is back! Here is Fractal 9.beta. Read more about it here:https://discourse.gnome.org/t/fractal-9-beta-released/23532"
- lofenyy: "Friends, I need five dead simple project ideas, just to stick onto my portfolio. Anyone have any app requests? I'd rather write apps than webpages right now. I can do websites later. #mobilelinux #linuxmobile #Postmarketos #pinephone"
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Mirror Hall
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Bitritter
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Plattenalbum
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: GhostCloud
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: newsFish
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Games: explosive-c4
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Games: Skladnik
- linuxphoneapps: "We're currently collecting a bunch of issues to then work on in the next two quarters:https://framagit.org/linuxphoneapps/linuxphoneapps.frama.io/-/issuesIf you have further ideas, comments or just general input, please chime in!"
Kernel
- Phoronix: Upstream Linux 6.12 Makes It Easier To Build A Debug Kernel For Arch Linux
- Phoronix: RISC-V Wires Up More Kernel Features With Linux 6.12
Stack
- Phoronix: Blumenkrantz Proposes Workflow Improvements For Wayland Protocols
- Phoronix: Blumenkrantz Seeks Clear Policy How Wayland Protocol Changes Can Be Rejected
- Phoronix: Wow! Microsoft DirectX Adopting SPIR-V Moving Forward. Thanks, anonymous!
- libcamera: libcamera v0.3.2
- Phoronix: System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 2 Desktop Packages
- frog: "Announcing: Frog Protocols for Wayland 🐸Let's create Wayland Protocols but much more iterative.Wayland Protocols has long had a problem with new protocols sitting for months, to years at a time for even basic functionality.This is hugely problematic when some protocols implement very primitive and basic functionality such as frog-fifo-v1, which is needed for VSync to not cause GPU starvation under Wayland and also fix the dreaded application freezing when windows are occluded with FIFO/VSync enabled.We need to get protocols into end-users hands quicker! The main reason many users are still using X11 is because of missing functionality that we can be shipping today, but is blocked for one reason or another.Check out the repo here! https://github.com/misyltoad/frog-protocols and the Mesa MR that adds support for frog-fifo-v1 to fix these issues and goes into much more detail: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/31329/ "
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2024-09-27
Mobile Gaming on a Linux handheld
- Tom's Hardware: Expanded Steam gaming compatibility likely coming to Arm chips with hundreds of Windows games — Valve testing ARM64 Proton compatibility layer (here are also some mentions of Waydroid, which means even Android Arm devices may be getting Proton support, which would surely expand its audience significantly.)
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!