Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (39/2025): Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA 10 and a birthday
Table of Contents
FuriLabs turns two (right after announcing their second phone), Ubuntu Touch pumps out one more 20.04 based OTA, some hardware enablement progress, and more! Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- CAIS: Furilabs Furiphone FLX1s
- FuriLabs: FuriLabs Celebrates an Incredible 2 years!. Congratulations!
- GeekySchmidt: Revisiting SailfishOS – September 2025 Thoughts |
- Purism: Purism Approach vs. Google Model
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-10 Release
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-10 Release
- bradlinder: Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-10 is now available with some minor changes and a new upgrader function that will let users move to Ubuntu Touch 24.04 once it's available. #UbuntuTouch MobileLinux https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/ubuntu-touch-20-04-ota-10-release-3972
Worth Watching
- Nitin Tech Breakdown: FuriLabs FLX1s Linux Phone – $550 Android App Support
- Laura Malvoyante: Using Google Apps on a Linux Phone | How to use microG on Sailfish OS
- sphaerophoria: Exploring feasibility of writing our own phone OS (a.k.a. can i boot something that isn't android)
- Tech News: FuriLabs’ $550 FLX1s is a Linux phone with Android app support
- Texas Technician: FuriLabs made FuriOS A Debian based Linux phone. It looks nice.
Worth Noting
- furilabs: FuriLabs Celebrates an Incredible 2 years! https://furilabs.com/2-years-celebration/Furilabs celebrates 2 years!www.FuriLabs.com#flx1s #furios #furilabs #FuriPhoneFLX1s #LinuxOnMobile #2years
- kelbot: "Name your favorite obsolete, retro, vintage (etc.) technology that modern alternatives still have not actually surpassed in your eyes."
- justsoup: "I'm curious. Send me your dream phone to run postmarketOS on. Can be a super cool, high-end phone or some weird early 2000s phone with two screens and a keyboard. Get creative!#postmarketOS #MobileLinux #LinuxMobile"
Hardware (enablement)
- erebion: 🤫#LinuxOnMobile
- Igor (BotchedRPR): "Finally - after some 6 hours of work, and multiple new drivers, fixes to the tree - #uboot with internal storage (ufs), and USB gadget is up on the CMF Phone 1 (MediaTek MT6878)." And if that wasn't enough - yep, that's first stage U-Boot on the CMF Phone 1.This device has a vulnerability in its secure boot system allowing unsigned bl2 and lk images. I've settled on replacing lk, as bl2_ext initializes clocks, PDs and importantly display (which U-Boot is currently incapable of on this platform). So, the CMF logo is drawn by bl2, after that it's all U-Boot.Such a simple boot sequence too:Preloader -> bl2_ext -> u-boot#postmarketos #mobilelinux #uboot
- Paul Sajna's Blog: Redox in your pocket. Non-Linux, still quite cool.
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #218 Adaptive Sidebars
- Allan Day: GNOME Foundation Update, 2025-09-26
- Sam Thursfield: Status update, 22/09/2025
- Christian Hergert: Getting Started with Foundry
- Phoronix: GNOME's libadwaita Introduces Adaptive Sidebar Widget
Phosh
- Phosh (gotosocial): [We've release version 0.0.5 of our little file chooser widget
pfs...](https://social.phosh.mobi/@phosh/statuses/01K5PSWWSWJXCE19457R4M9C0T) - agx: I've uploaded a version of xdg-desktop-portal-phosh with the #Rust based portal enabled to #Debian experimental.This finally gives @mobian users adaptive account and app chooser portals (contributed by @arunmani ).Thanks to @debian 's Rust maintainers all needed crates were already packaged.The next upload will target unstable but we want to have the current version in unstable migrate first to avoid removal from #forky.#Phosh #LinuxMobile
- agx: Been working on two small improvements for #stevia (a user friendly on-screen keyboard for #Phosh): 1️⃣ Text auto complete automatically adds a space when inserting a word. We now remove that when the next word is a punctuation mark like a full stop (.) or comma (,):2️⃣ When deleting via backspace key repeat no longer deletes single chars but rather deletes complete words at a slightly lower pace.#LinuxMobile
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: lots and lots of bug-fixing for Plasma 6.5!
- KDE e.V. News: Symless Becomes KDE's Supporter
- Volker Krause: KDE Android News (September 2025)
- Carl Schwan: Kirigami Addons 1.10.0
- Akademy: Rewatch the Highlights - Akademy 2025 Talks & Sessions Now Available Online
- Phoronix: KDE Plasma 6.5 Receives A Grayscale Mode, Early Feature Work Toward Plasma 6.6
Sxmo
Sailfish OS
- #sailfishOS: @aerique @oneguynick In my view, the issue with 3rd party repos on #SailfishOs is not that there are 3rd party repos, it's the why of it, and the kind of boundary you have to cross to go there. The Jolla store has very strict limitations on what you can do (https://harbour.jolla.com/faq#RPM-Packaging). …
- #sailfishOS: @jolla I really like the idea of a voluntary subscription for #SailfishOS! But I do not like PayPal and CreditCards.Is it possible to support #Jolla by a SEPA / IBAN money transfer?
- #sailfishOS: @txt_file #sailfishos ist halt auch nicht wirklich #floss. Alerdings mit nem Sony 10 III oder IV kannst du ja auch zurück zu nem Android Derivat.
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-10 Release
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-10 Release
- bradlinder: Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-10 is now available with some minor changes and a new upgrader function that will let users move to Ubuntu Touch 24.04 once it's available. #UbuntuTouch MobileLinux https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/ubuntu-touch-20-04-ota-10-release-3972
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Focal OTA-10 Release Blog.
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Event Coming Up
- UBports - Development - Issues: [24.04-1.x] delta updates fails to apply on OnePlus 5 (?)
- #UbuntuTouch: I'm still not sure what to do either. I've been considering flashing #UbuntuTouch onto my #Fairphone 4 or maybe purchasing the Fairphone 5 for #PostmarketOS as i see from their wiki that just about everything works under mainline Linux apart from audio but it does via bluetooth. Maybe it won't be long before some smart cookie fixes that ?CC: @latenightlinux@mastodon.social @felimwhiteley@mastodon.social
- #UbuntuTouch: #UbuntuTouch I felt rather nerdy last year with my privacy and security focus and continuation of the Ubuntu Touch project on a OnePlus 6 but is certainly looking like an increasingly good idea as 2025 progresses… 🙄 #alternative #operatingsystem #mobile #batshitcrazy #president
Distributions
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: MediaTek MT8168
- Mobian mobian-recipes Issues: Please consider installing
Recommendsby default for forky
Apps
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Dconf Editor
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Midori in the Magic School
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Pentobi
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: r3-next
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: awesome calculator
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Key Cutter
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: NewPipe (unofficial port)
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Hitori
- Purism: Shortwave App Now Available
- badrihippo: "New version of #Convo just dropped. Main highlight: end-to-end #encryption support with #OMEMO! 🔒✨https://git.disroot.org/badrihippo/convo/releases/tag/0.2.0Coming up on the #BananaHackers store soon, which will incidentally also fix the currently broken install process from there 🍌I'm going to now switch over to a more polished UI (based on the excellent work by solid-telekram author Cyan) after which we can let all the small but numerous missing features roll in 🏗️"
- afranke: "Fall is here, #Fractal 13.beta is here too. https://discourse.gnome.org/t/fractal-13-beta-released/31660 #Matrix #GNOME"
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH 0/8] Add OnePlus 6T display (Samsung S6E3FC2X01 DDIC with AMS641RW panel)
- phone-devel: [PATCH] Input: edt-ft5x06 - Detect ft5452
- phone-devel: Re: [PATCH 0/4] Add CAMSS support for MSM8939
- Phoronix: Features Expected For Linux 6.18: File-System Improvements, Sheaves, New Drivers & More Perf
- Phoronix: Linux 6.18 Linear RAID "md-linear" To Support Atomic Writes
Stack
- Phoronix: Vulkan 1.4.328 Published With Copy Memory Indirect Extension
- Phoronix: Unvanquished Game Ported To SDL3, Working Natively On Wayland
- Phoronix: Servo Engine Lands Support For Rendering Inline SVG Elements, More Performance
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-09-26
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?
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