Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (43/2024): Go and install Mobile NixOS or Android 15 (glodroid) on your PinePhone!
Table of Contents
This past week: Jolla C2 phones arriving and unboxed, more videos on Steam gaming on postmarketOS and postmarketOS on the Pixel 3a, some RISC-V news, Phosh 0.42.1 fixing some bugs, and way more fun things! Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Hippo: 72 hours with Phosh and Mobian
- LWN.net: [Free-software foundations face fundraising problems]](https://lwn.net/Articles/993665/). Here's a subscriber link!
- Phoronix: System76 Thelio Astra Reviewed: High-End ARM64 Developer Desktop
Vendor content
- Purism: The Case for Free/Libre and Open-Source Software: Enhancing Security and Privacy in the Digital Age
- Purism: RIP RSA AES: The Immediate Need of Quantum-Resistant Cryptography
- FuriLabs: Tokyo OSC2024 Live Blog
- FuriLabs: Tokyo Open Source Conference Oct 2024
Worth Watching
- Continuum Gaming: SFOS: Jolla Community Phone C2 – Unboxing and physical comparison
- CyberPunkEdu: Plasma Mobile - postmarketOS - Google Pixel 3a Sargo (edge 2024-10-16)
- PageKey: How to Install NixOS on PinePhone (Ultimate Linux Cell Phone Setup). Wow, that mobile NixOS installer improved A LOT since I last tried it!
- Comfort Computer: postmarketOS 24.06 with Phosh 39 Benchmarked Tier List - New Best Performing Gnome Mobile Desktop. Ok, but why? OTOH, why not.
- CalcProgrammer1: Steam Gaming on postmarketOS using FEX Emulator and Distrobox
- ChuanTzu: Ubuntu Touch freedom of choices in mobile OS space
- mutantCybernetics: Booting up #mutantc
RISC-V Corner
- TechTechPotato: The RISC-V News We've Been Waiting For: RVA23
- Just another devops guy: Milk-V Jupiter with external GPU, playing (Y)Quake2
- Just another devops guy: Milk-V Jupiter with external GPU, playing Factorio
- Just another devops guy: OpenSUSE with an external GPU on a VisionFive 2 with a mailine kernel (HOWTO). Thanks anonymous for contributing this sub-section!
Worth Noting
- flathub: "Have you seen our new About page? ☺️https://flathub.org/aboutWe’ve added a some helpful information for both users and developers checking Flathub out, plus more clear links for people to get in touch with us. Feel free to reference anything on the page or link to it directly when you come across someone asking about Flathub!#Flathub #Flatpak #Linux"
- unifiedpush: "The new #UnifiedPush specifications for Android are merged 🎉 The main changes are as follows:- Server-to-server requests are defined as web push- It introduces VAPID (a way of authorizing the application server), urgency and topics- The ability to define a default distributor- Gives the distributor the power to properly wake up applications, a bit like what play services do with urgent messages!"
- Linux: ✍️ Handwriting TO TEXT on Linux? A work in progress! 🛠️ 🏴 Scotsman Martin Lellep is developing handwritten text recognition solution for Xournal++ (Xournal++ HTR) 🙂 A big hand for Harald Scheidl for making his repositories about handwritten text recognition public.Want to help as a developer..?https://github.com/PellelNitram/xournalpp_htr#handwriting #text #HTR #Linux #Xournal #plugins #developers #development #GPL #GitHub #help
- conorf: "Excited to do some more work with the Beepy I've borrowed from a friend. Continuing the goal of having a more phone-like ecosystem for it, I'm going to continue making rich/textualize TUIs for services and utils. First up - Network Manager.#beepy #beeper #python #tui #rich #textualize #linux #raspberrypi"
- @linmob@fosstodon.org: Weekly GNU-like #MobileLinux Update (42/2024): Pushy Camerashttps://linmob.net/weekly-update-42-2024/#LinuxMobile #SailfishOS #postmarketOS #PureOS #Librem5 #PinePhone #UbuntuTouch #Pixel3a #UnifiedPush #Linux
- r/PinePhone: Is the 0.8.0 open source baseband firmware stable?. If you are using that version, go share your experience!
- Atemu: TIL someone is building a lightweight #Android translation layer for #freedesktop and it actually works with some apps already.It translates Android views into native #GTK widgets. Wild.This makes it function quite similarly to #winehq rather than #waydroid.https://gitlab.com/android_translation_layer/android_translation_layer
Hardware (enablement)
- Riscv.org RISC-V Announces Ratification of the RVA23 Profile Standard
- Andes Technology Andes Announces the AndesCore™ AX66 supporting RVA23, Multi-cluster, Hypervisor and Android
- Bloomberg: Arm to Scrap Qualcomm Chip Design License in Feud Escalation
- Phoronix: NVIDIA Shipping Around One Billion RISC-V Cores In Their 2024 Products
- Phoronix: The RISC-V profile RVA23 will also form the basis for an upcoming Android ABI for RISC-V. The RISC-V Foundation hopes that Android support will significantly boost growth for its open Instruction Set Architecture (ISA).. Thanks anonyomous for contributing these links!
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #171 Point of Interest
- Planet GNOME: Steam Deck, HID, and libmanette adventures
- Planet GNOME: Registration Now Open for GNOME Asia 2024
Phosh
- Phosh.mobi: Phosh 0.42.1
- agx: "With the fixes made in the last #phosh release and those in flight for 0.43 regarding on screen keyboard, text input, text completion and copy/paste together with small app fixes here and there I'm really starting to enjoy text input on mobile and grab the phone more often although the laptop is nearby.I consider that a good sign 😃"
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This week in Plasma: all screens, all the time
- KDE Blogs: This Week in KDE Apps
- KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.2.2, Bugfix Release for October
- KDE Mentorship: KDE and Google Summer of Code 2024
- Volker Krause: OSM Hack Weekend October 2024
- KDAB: 10 Tips to Make Your QML Code Faster and More Maintainable
- Akademy blog: Akademy 2025 Call for Hosts
- redstrate: My work in KDE: The end (for this blog series). Spoiler: I was expecting a sad story, but it's fortunately not!
- Phoronix: KDE Fixing Many Bugs, Prepping New Plasma 6.3 Features
Sxmo
Sailfish OS
- Community News - Sailfish OS Forum: Sailfish Community News, 24th October 2024 - Shipping
- [Release notes] Tampella 5.0.0.21 for Jolla C2 - Announcements - Sailfish OS Forum
- #sailfishOS: #SailfishOS 5.0.0.21 - Tampella now on my Xperia-X
- #sailfishOS: Yay, my #Jolla C2 has shipped. I should have my new #Sailfish device in a few days :)#JollaC2 #SailfishOS #Linux #MobileLinux
- piggz: "PSA: if using the @PINE64 Pinetab2 with #SailfishOS, "lock" the version of ofono at 2.7, version 2.10 doesnt play nicely with it currently, and if you zypper dup it will pull in the new version. Until I fix it, lock the version fro m the latest build.zypper al ofono"
- piggz: . @kde KF6 #tokodon #mastodon client running on @jolla #SailfishOS
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports - Mastodon: This work was iniciated by @Puna https://tech.lgbt/@Puna/112275096430812853
- UBports - Mastodon: We're already at the venue for the Ubuntu Summit setting up our stand.#UbuntuSummit #Ubuntu #Linux #OpenSource
- ubports: We just had the help of @thunderbird and some super-cool and very smart community members who together have been improving the snaps for @thunderbird and #firefox on #UbuntuTouch while at #UbuntuSummit
- ubports: And we have an experimental ISO of #nixos with the help of @wimpy
- Lemmy - linuxphones: Everything about UbuntuTouch on the Fairphone 5
Distributions
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: busybox hexdump can break some kernels
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: Accidental edge repository deletion
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Meshtastic
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Apple A7
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Steam in box86
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Steam in FEX
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite (SM8750)
- omasanori: "@longnoserob and I organized a postmarketOS booth at Open Source Conference 2024 Tokyo/Fall (in Asakusa, Tokyo, Japan) today!There were more than 40 persons visited to our booth. Many of them were so surprised when they had understood the fact that very recent MATE and Linux kernel work on a 12-years-old Arm device with proper touchscreen and rotation supports!#postmarketOS #linuxmobile #mobilelinux #osc24tk"
- GloDroid for PinePhone: 2024w43 (Android-15)
- FuriLabs: Update 13.0.4
- Phoronix: Gentoo Linux Touts DTrace 2.0 Support
Apps
- kop316: "A big thank you to @alice and the GTK folks, with their guidance I was able to impliment a maps function to show where nearby nodes are!You can also right click them for more info, but I couldn't figure out how to get that on a print screen."
- agx: https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/iotas is great for note taking / lists and gnome-text-editor for generic text. I like the fact that I don't have to worry about saving to a file.
- #LinuxMobile: Does anyone know a good music-oriented Jellyfin or DLNA client for postmarketOS?#linuxMobile #postmarketOS
- #MobileLinux: My first (tiny) project coded exclusively on #mobile! It's a small utility making it more convenient for me to add links to my #Pocket reading list (can probably be updated to work for other things like #Wallabag) too 🔖https://git.disroot.org/badrihippo/pocket-save(It's a basic shell script and was done via. #SSH, so yeah not physically coded on a phone, but I've got my git and all set up there! )#MobileLinux
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Caffeine
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Turn On
- postmarketOS: Apps by Category: Magdesign: /* Onscreen Keyboards */
Gaming
- alice: "Let's restart the highscore thread again, people are saying it got too long."
- CalcProgrammer1: "I've updated my postmarketOS Steam wiki page:https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/SteamI split it into two guides, one for using FEX and the other for using box86/box64:https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Steam_in_FEXhttps://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Steam_in_box86I've tested both setups on my OnePlus 6T, but have not tested many games on box86/box64 yet."
- CalcProgrammer1: "Also, I noticed that the OnePlus 6T kernel (linux-postmarketos-qcom-sdm845) does not have CONFIG_HID_PLAYSTATION enabled. I've seen complaints that DualShock 4 controllers didn't work and I just bought a GameSir X2S Bluetooth phone grip controller that mimics a DS4. It pairs just fine, btmon shows controller data is coming in, but no input device gets registered. It works on my PC (Arch Linux) and dmesg shows the "playstation" driver is responsible."
- Lemmy - postmarketOS: [VIDEO] Steam Gaming on postmarketOS using FEX Emulator and Distrobox
- #MobileLinux: @linmob ahhh the #PocoF1 and #OnePlus6 are lagging behind #Pixel3a on cameras! I backed the wrong horse on that one 🐎 🫠#MobileLinux #postmarketOS
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH v2 00/13] media: i2c: imx214: Miscellaneous cleanups and improvements
- Phoronix: Some Clarity On The Linux Kernel's "Compliance Requirements" Around Russian Sanctions
- Phoronix: Several Linux Kernel Driver Maintainers Removed Due To Their Association To Russia
- Phoronix: Significant CRC32C Throughput Optimization On The Way To The Linux Kernel
- Phoronix: Linux Support Continues For The Now-Canceled Snapdragon X Elite Dev Kit For Windows
- Phoronix: DRM Client Library Code Ready Ahead Of Linux 6.13
Stack
- Phoronix: Rust-Written Rustls Now Reportedly Outperforming OpenSSL & BoringSSL
- Phoronix: Cloud Hypervisor 42 Released With SVE/SVE2 Support For AArch64 Guests
- Reset the modem using gpio pins if it doesn't respond to the AT reset sequence (!58) · Merge requests · Mobian / eg25-manager · GitLab
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2024-10-25
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!