Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (43/2025): Plasma 6.5 and more
Table of Contents
This past week: KDE release Plasma 6.5, DeltaChat adds calling, camera support for all three cameras on the Fairphone 4 with postmarketOS, PureOS 11 becomes (alledgedly) daily driveable on the Librem 5, and Fairphone contributed more code to Linux 6.17 than Microsoft! Plus some reading material, a few videos to watch and more. Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Guido Günther for Phosh.mobi: Audio Roles, Volumes and Routes
- Liam Proven for The Register: Mobian brings Debian 13 'Trixie' to phones and tablets
- Mathias Steiner: Mobile Linux: Why Its Time Hasn’t Come Yet (and Is Unlikely to Come Anytime Soon), scribe.rip
- RESET.ORG: Why the Computer World Would Be Greener With Open Hardware: In Conversation With Lucie Hartmann From MNT Research
- LINux on MOBile: GNU/Linux on Tolino Tab 8. _This is a guest post by Benjamin - please read and help out if you can. (And if you have a similar topic or something else entirely you would like to write about, do it
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: GNU/Linux on Tolino Tab 8
Worth Watching
- Frickelfieber: Setting up postmarketos as a daily driver on the Oneplus 6
- School of Intology: Remotely Access Linux Desktop With Linux Desktop Monitor | Ubuntu Touch Apps | Access Desktop Apps
- The Linux Experiment: Full Linux apps on Android, Plasma 6.5, Zorin OS does big numbers - Linux Weekly News
- TWiT Tech Podcast Network: FSF's Librephone Could Redefine Linux Phones
- The Linux Experiment: Good open source smartphone news
German talks from LinuxDay.at, Dornbirn
- 5 Jahre meines Lebens mit 'Mobile Linux' Smartphones - Beertube
- Mainline Linux auf dem Smartphone - bereits heute eine gute Wahl fuer Endanwender - Beertube
Worth Noting
- z3ntu: "Camera support on Fairphone 4 with postmarketOS is coming to you very soon! All 3 cameras are supported, main rear camera, ultra-wide camera and front camera.And all with a completely open source software stack of course!#postmarketOS #LinuxMobile #MobileLinux #libcamera #Fairphone #Fairphone4 #Cat #Caturday"
- itsfoss: Google is flagging open source projects without an explanation. 😐https://news.itsfoss.com/google-safe-browsing-flags-immich/#opensource #google
- dos: "@me @janvlug It's time to switch to Crimson and make it just "old" rather than "very old" 😉 It was a bumpy road to Crimson, shouldn't take as long to Dawn.The strength of PureOS is that it can be focused on a single device, so things that affect it become strong blockers. There's no way Crimson would be released without echo cancellation, or Dawn without GLES in GTK, while for Mobian or pmOS these are just some regressions that affect some device while they still move forward as a whole."
- sunweaver: "We, Fre(i)e Software GmbH, are hiring Lomiri developers (C/C++ - Qt5+6 - QML - CMake). For details see https://sunweavers.net/blog/node/150Please boost. Thx!"
- dcz: "Preparing for my #ARM #Chromebook mainlining project.Is my old main laptop faster than a new-ish Chromebook?In left corner current 2-core champion: Lenovo X230, i5-3380M! Opposite, ASUS Chromebook Flip CM3200FVA with 8 cores! 4xA73 and 4xA53!The challenge is... compiling #bevy !> time cargo build --example bevymarkX230's 2 cores try hard:real 24m25.782suser 33m34.125ssys 1m56.381sBut Chromebook wins!real 17m51.922suser 99m29.030ssys 3m49.953s#rustlang"
- dos: So PureOS 11 (crimson) on Librem 5 has become daily driveable, as evidenced by me upgrading the system of my daily driver to it and not having much to complain about. From oldoldstable to oldstable - heading towards modernity one step at a time 😂 #pureos #librem5 #linuxmobile #mobilelinux
- dos: "… One thing I regret is that I don't spend more time making sure L5 is well supported across other distros, as there are still many things that they could take from PureOS, but alas I'm currently struggling with my productivity even under rather light workload 😔 If someone wants to help with maintaining L5 ports of other distros, or upstreaming kernel stuff, I'd be happy to mentor. Many low hanging fruits still in there."
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Main camera working with FP4 on PmOS
- #MobileLinux: I'm seeing a lot of #MobileLinux posts going around all of a sudden. Did something exciting happen—maybe the latest release of #Phosh? There's quite a bit of chatter about the need for Google-independent mobile development as well though 👀Anyway, keep calm and use #postmarketOS or #Mobian! 😌
Events
- fizzo: "Today i took part of #linuxday2025 in Palermo,I talked about the risks for Android ROMs related to AOSP and how #LinuxMobile and @postmarketOS might be a way forward, together with our communities.Shout out to @thefreecircle for the great organization and the ambitious and very lively event!#postmarketOS #mobilelinux"
- longnoserob: "Had a blast representing #postmarketOS today at the Open Source Conference Tokyo Fall edition. #osc2025tkWhile I was I alone at the booth, I had a good time esp with the folks from #tlug #rockylinux #homeassistant"
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #222 Trip Notifications
- Matthias Clasen: SVG in GTK
- Allan Day: GNOME Foundation Update, 2025-10-24
- Jonathan Blandford: Crosswords 0.3.16: 2025 Internship Results
- Toluwaleke Ogundipe: GSoC Final Report: Printing in GNOME Crosswords
- Planet GNOME: Daniel García Moreno: GNOME Tour in openSUSE and welcome app
Phosh
- Guido Günther for Phosh.mobi: Audio Roles, Volumes and Routes
- Phosh Releases: Phosh 0.50.1
- #phosh: @ati1 @MissBehave You could use #phosh's launcher-box lockscreen plugin to trigger those scripts from the lock screen by putting a desktop file into ~/.config/phosh/plugins/launcher-box/ or listen to the dbus API for incoming calls and trigger it automatically even.
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: Plasma 6.5 is here!
- KDE Announcements: Plasma 6.5
- Volker Krause: Open Transport Community Conference 2025
- Nate Graham: KDE Linux deep dive: package management is amazing, which is why we don’t include it
- tsdgeos: KDE Gear 25.12 release schedule
- anditosan: Plasma Design System Leaps Forward with Migration to Penpot
- sebas' blog: More mobile settings: keyboard & wired network
- Phoronix: KDE Plasma 6.6 Will Cater To Windows Power Users With "winver"
- Phoronix: KDE Plasma 6.5's Overlay Planes Support Yields Significant Power Savings
Sailfish OS
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 173. Prototyping fullscreen video rendering 📹 📱 https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1411&list=newpipe
- #sailfishOS: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 172. Massively overengineering and overmeashing a simple pull request to fix a tricksy bug.https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1410&list=newpipe
- flypig: "#NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 171. Creating an app that's designed to fail!It may sound strange, but the aim is to find a consistent way to trigger a GStreamer mandelbug that occasionally causes the app to hang.https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1409&list=newpipe"
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 170. Testing my cherry-picked changes 🍒 Choosing a pathway forwards! 🗺️ https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1408&list=newpipe
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 169. Cherry-picking 🍒 GStreamer changes.https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1407&list=newpipe
- flypig: #NewPipe #SailfishOS dev diary day 168. Switching tack ⛵ pulling a lost pull request from the future 🤖 into the past 📜https://www.flypig.co.uk/newpipe?&list_id=1406&list=newpipe
- frankps: A quiet Sunday morning was needed for a deep dipe in to the wonders and possibilities with MicroG. Now I have the Norwegian payment service VIPPS running on my Sailfish device. The Ruter app also seems to work for bus, subway and tram tickets. Sweet! The DNB (bank) app seems to be a no go. But luckily not needed on a daily basis.So looking forward to get my Jolla Community Phone (C2). Sadly, still a few weeks away…#Jolla #SailfishOS #VIPPS #Ruter #DNB #NorwegianApps #MicroG
- trilobyte: I've been experimenting with #SailfishOS on my Xperia XA2 for some time, and I realy like its look and feel, and support of Android apps. Also the idea of European OS is tempting. The problem is that my old Xperia is slowly dying... Today, I ordered Xperia 10 III (quite familiar phone, I run 10 IV as my main device). The another option was #JollaC2 phone, but its delivery time is currently 6+ weeks. I am looking forward to #openalt2025, which also has Linux on smartphones as a topic. #jolla
- adampigg: The #SailfishOS port for the @volla is starting to take shape, boots necely every time now after figuring out an annoying module load issue! Here is it running @kde #tokodon mastodon client v25.08.2
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports - Development - Issues: [24.04.1.x]: Online Account calendars not removed
- UBports - Development - Issues: [feature request] Allow disable suspending of app (Notifications)
- fredldotme: I'll be at @openalt 2025, giving a talk about Ubuntu Touch. See you there!https://talks.openalt.cz/openalt-2025/talk/388QWQ/
- #UbuntuTouch: New release v2.22.0, finally bringing push notifications to Ubuntu Touch users 🔔 Prerequisite is a chatmail profile. Other highlights:📞 Experimental calls (on UT, no video is a known issue, but do let us know if audio doesn't work: https://support.delta.chat/t/deltatouch-help-testing-calls/4249) Emoji reaction UI/UX has been reworked👇 Long-press a message to select text for copyingand more, see the full changelog at https://codeberg.org/lk108/deltatouch/src/branch/main/CHANGELOG#DeltaTouch #DeltaChat #UbuntuTouch
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: New Podcast App for Ubuntu Touch Called Podcat
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Morph Browser Qt6 preview
Distributions
- Parch Linux Blog: This month in Parch: Parch in motion
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: ESIM
- Phoronix: Fedora Linux 43 Cleared For Release Next Week
- craftyguy: "Do you like graphic design, are not a coder, and want to contribute to #postmarketOS ?We're missing a rad slideshow to inform and entertain folks while they wait for our OS installer app to finish, and we could use your help creating graphics/images for one! Otherwise this just looks... sad and boring 😂https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/artwork/-/issues/22"
Apps
- pi_crew: There’s a very useful pull request by @nemuii for #GNOME Podcasts: the app now remembers the last played episode and reloads it when reopened ➡️ https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/podcasts/-/merge_requests/441#LinuxMobile #postmarketOS
- schmiddionmobile: "Railway version 2.9.0 was released. This release allows you to get notifications about the current status of the trip, including for example when you will need to transition to the next train, when a train is running late, or when a departure platform changes. It also fixes an error with DB not working anymore. We also updated to the GNOME 49 runtime."
- Flathub Blog: Enhanced License Compliance Tools for Flathub
- fossapps: #love2d #Phosh #LinuxMobile #PostmarketOs "Sienna" supports now Landscape mode on Postmarket Os! (Select rotate screen from the main menu)
- fossapps: "This is the first video of Spinny the Runner running on a phone using PostmarketOS.https://video.gamerstavern.online/w/4Pe8SYYxYbS31F8tuXx6YBThere’s a lot to comment on, but overall, the performance is excellent—especially considering how demanding this game is and how much is happening on screen. The game is running in low-quality and performance mode; the non-performance mode doesn’t run well on phones, but that’s expected."
- fossapps: #love2d #Phosh #LinuxMobile #PostmarketOs “Madwheelz” is now playable in both portrait and landscape modes on PostmarketOS!You can switch orientations easily from the pull-down menu.
- fossapps: #love2d #Phosh #LinuxMobile #PostmarketOs “Chess-engine” is now playable in both portrait and landscape modes on PostmarketOS!You can switch orientations easily from the pull-down menu.This version of chess can only be played against the CPU.Note that the two chess apps differ not only in visuals — “Chess board” is designed exclusively for two human players.
- fossapps: #love2d #Phosh #LinuxMobile #PostmarketOs "Chessboard" is now playable in both portrait and landscape mode on Postmarket Os (You can toggle orientation from the pull menu).This game is for 2 human players (it has no CPU A.I)
- fossapps: #love2d #Phosh #LinuxMobile #PostmarketOs "Spinny the runner" supports now landscape mode on Postmarket Os (by pulling the pull menu and selecting "rotate screen")
- #phosh: @neil @lproven really good article that explains the differences of all those linux mobile distros - thanks @lproven !I use #mobian and #phosh on a oneplus6 and it is amazing to see how it becomes even better usable from update to update.
- fossapps: #love2d #Phosh #LinuxMobile #PostmarketOs Mr. Rescue now supports landscape mode on PostmarketOS! Until I find a better way to detect screen orientation automatically, you can switch between portrait and landscape by pulling down the quick settings menu and selecting “Rotate screen.”
- fossapps: #love2d #Phosh #LinuxMobile #PostmarketOs Here’s a video of Mr. Rescue running on PostmarketOS.You’ll notice that it looks quite different from the original version by Tangram Games (https://tangramgames.itch.io/mrrescue)I’ve made a number of creative changes, including new assets, updated shading, and additional features. For those who prefer the original look and feel, don’t worry—you can easily switch back. Just set Assets to Original to play the game almost exactly as the developer intended.
- fossapps: #love2d #Phosh #LinuxMobile #PostmarketOs First ever video recording of "Lövecraft" running on PostmarketOs.
- fossapps: #love2d #Phosh #LinuxMobile #PostmarketOs "Starphase" is now playable in both portrait and landscape mode on Postmarket Os (You can toggle orientation from the pull menu).
- fossapps: #love2d #Phosh #LinuxMobile #PostmarketOs "Gravitonik" is now playable in both portrait and landscape mode on Postmarket Os (You can toggle orientation from the pull menu).Internal game keyboard disabled as it is not needed (Phosh keyboard works just fine).
- krille: "🥳I improved the #FluffyChat website a little bit and made it localizeable over weblate. It now even contains an imprint, the changelog, the privacy policy and a long FAQ. 🚀Also it has a fancy new domain: https://fluffy.chat If you have some feedback, I'd appretiate it. You can help translating it or even improving the FAQ on weblate. ❤️❤️❤️"
- delta: "Believe it or not: #deltachat is growing audio/video calls starting with the currently rolling 2.22 releases ... A few people already had two hour long stable calls :) Calls are an experimental option while we continue to work on reliability, UX/UI revisions, and configuration of TURN servers on #chatmail relays and in clients. We want calls to reliably work across all major platforms, networks and phones, including #UbuntuTouch Feedback and debugging happens at https://support.delta.chat/t/help-testing-upcoming-delta-chat-release-with-calls/4220/17"
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH 0/3] Add CAMSS support for SM6350
- phone-devel: [PATCH v5 0/6] Add OnePlus 6T display (Samsung S6E3FC2X01 DDIC with AMS641RW panel)
- phone-devel: [PATCH v3 0/3] Fixes/improvements for SM6350 UFS
- ingo_wichmann: #fairphone contributed more lines of code to the 6.17 Linux #kernel release than Microsoft or ArmSee complete list at LWN https://lwn.net/Articles/1038358/
- Phoronix: OpenGL Sees New Extensions Added To The Registry
- Phoronix: Asahi Linux Still Working On Apple M3 Support, m1n1 Bootloader Going Rust
- Phoronix: Linux's Kconfig Is No Longer Orphaned
Stack
- servo: This month in Servo…☢️🕸️ experimental mode button🕵🏼♀️🍲 Trusted Types now stable👻✍️ strokeText() on 2D canvases🗜️📄 ‘Content-Encoding: zstd’🧾🥺 new funding request processhttps://servo.org/blog/2025/10/24/this-month-in-servo/
- Phoronix: Rust Coreutils 0.3 Released With Some Major Speed-Ups, Better GNU Compatibility
- Phoronix: Vulkan 1.4.330 Released With Five New Extensions
- Phoronix: Patina 13.0 Released As Rust UEFI Firmware Implementation
- emersion: wlroots 0.19.2 has been released!https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots/-/releases/0.19.2
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-10-24
- Matrix.org: Matrix for Public Sector: DINUM joins the Foundation as we launch a new forum!
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!