Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (44/2024): Forking Flutter
Table of Contents
Progress on libobscura (and, unrelated, Poco F1 camera support), Fedora's Plasma Mobile Spin, a FOSS on Mobile dev room at fosdem 2025, a Ubuntu Touch Q&A, various news from postmarketOS and more!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Adrien Plazas: Towards a GNOME Mobile Test Suite
- Guido Günther: Free Software Activities October 2024. Impressive!
- flutterfoundation.dev: We're forking Flutter. This is why.
Worth Watching
- Linux Stuff: Juno Tab 3 - Plasma Mobie (KDE Neon)
- UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 152
- Ram Ram Android: Install Lomiri on PostmarketOS with My Bootstrap Tool
Worth Noting
- mntmn: "here's a fun PDF based link gallery of "1000 Useful Things To Make" by n-o-d-e, i like how they made all these illustrations in a matching style https://makeityourself.org/MIY.pdf"
- beacondb: "BeaconDB just hit 10 million WiFi networks!!! 🎉 I honestly can't believe the amount of data that has been submitted (thank you!), and I'm really excited to see what the future holds for this project <3Now that there are more contributors, I've increased the detail shown on the map by another level: https://beacondb.net/map/"
- dcz: "Working on #libobscura today.#OpenGL , #EGL , #glium , #glutin , #Rust , #v4l2 .After 2 weeks of effort, the #GPU decoder COMPILES!...The screen is green.But hey, I actually know how to debug this :D It's almost as if 10 years of #debugging and #ReverseEngineering paid off!"
- dcz: "#libobscura progress: a demo camera app!So I've proved (some of) the concepts:- API without segfaults- zero-copy image passing- GPU accelerated decodingYes, the picture is mirrored upside-down, why do you ask?Next: clean up #GPU abstractions and publish a website.#rustlang #rust #opengl #video@libcamera"
- dcz: Remember #libobscura ?I applied to have the project as part of #freedesktop_org @XOrgFoundation .I'd like to start publishing docs and sources ASAP!So can I get some acks from people who know about #cameras ? @libcamera #linux #linuxmobile #v4l2 #opensource https://lemmy.kde.social/post/2232966](https://lemmy.kde.social/post/2232966)
- sohrab: Finally the #Camera for #pocoF1 is here with #Postmarketos Edge and Kernel 6.11 🥳 Not much perfect but it works!#linuxmobile
- cosmin: "I flashed the new Fedora KDE Plasma Mobile Spin 41 to a PinePhone and it boots!I already had Tow-Boot, so I just had to start the device while holding down volume-up, and then connect the USB cable and flash with Balena Etcher. WIth verification included, it took more than half an hour, but then again the image was large (11GB uncompressed).Can't get past the Initial Setup though. First, not everything fits into the screen. Second, I see the Wi-Fi enabled but don't see a way to choose the network (possibly because of the first problem).Nevertheless, I hope one day soon I will have this running.#Fedora #Fedora41 #PlasmaMobile #PinePhone #LinuxMobile"
- fredldotme: "Putting some finishing touches on Tide for Linux. Here we have it, again and properly, running on Ubuntu Touch!"
- NekoCWD: "Yay! Now we can switch audio sinks in call on #postmarketos. I've written 2 programs in @vala_lang.Q6Meow: https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/NekoCWD/q6meowd - system wide routing demonMeowAudio: https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/NekoCWD/meowaudiod - user side callaudiod replacement. It switches pulseaudio profile and asks Q6Meow to restart voice stream.To test on OnePlus 6, you need to use custom AlsaUCM https://gitlab.com/NekoCWD/alsa-ucm-add-speakert-to-call@postmarketOS MR: https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merge_requests/5738Voice routing to the headphones jack:"
- austriancoder: One step closer to getting the etnaviv CI back online.gc7000-gles2 succ: 10; fail: 0; total: 10 of 10#etnaviv #mesa
- newbyte: "Honestly amazing how well NewPipe works on the Librem 5 running via "Android Translation Layer". I had to turn down the resolution from the default 720p60fps to 240p for it to play videos reliably (didn't test anything between those) and the UI looks scuffed with various missing icons and such, but crucially it plays videos back more reliably than any other YouTube app I've tried on #postmarketOS!On #Flathub if you want to try it yourself: https://flathub.org/apps/net.newpipe.NewPipe"
- rmader: "For #linuxmobile / #postmarketos / #mobian etc. folks: there's a rather beginner friendly task to improve battery life for qcom devices like the #oneplus6, #pixel3a etc. by making sure sensors are idle when not needed.If you have some spare cycles, motivation, basic C literacy (or want to learn it) and know how to build and deploy/test a package with pmbootstrap (or want to learn it) - this one could be for you.The details are here: https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/issues/2455#note_453587"
- PinePhoneOfficial (Reddit): Anybody managed to boot Fedora 41 KDE Plasma Mobile Spin on the PinePhone?
- Lemmy - linuxphones: A guide on how to use the Gole 2 Pro device as a Linux phone
- Lemmy - linuxphones: WhatsApp running through android-translation-layer (no container!) on Linux desktop
- #LinuxMobile: Once this demo application is bug-free, It's official announcement time, with a public repo, fanfares, and a blog post.#libobscura #linuxmobile #cake
- #LinuxMobile: @fedora @kde Hello, is fedora mobile compatible with #librem5 phone ? i have already installed #pureOS #postmarketos and #mobianI tried to install fedora mobile on sdcard by 2 ways i know, it not booting.There are a compatibility list of phone and tablet somewhere ?Thank#linuxphone #linuxmobile #fedora #linux #help
- #MobileLinux: Late night thought while working, has anyone tried to perform a (LFS) Linux From Scratch on mobile? If so what was the results? If not what would be the best way to start or accomplish this?#latenightthoughts #linux #linixfromscratch #mobilelinux #tinkering #tinker #mobilecode
- r/linux: "I Tried Running Ubuntu on My Phone, Here's How It Went"
Events
- devrtz: "If you followed the latest #FOSDEM news,you may have already learned that theFOSS on mobile devices devroomis back for another round in 2025 🚀You can view the Call for Proposals here:https://gitlab.com/fosdem_mobile/devroom/-/blob/main/README.mdIt should also show up soon on the mailing list archive:https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosdem/2024q4/date.htmlWe are looking forward to all submissions 🎉Submit today! 👌or at least no later than the first of December ⛄#MobileLinux #Mobile #FOSS #Mobian #postmarketOS #phosh #GNOME #KDE #sxmo #embedded #FOSDEM25"
- 38C3: Call for Assemblies - CCC Event Blog
- 38C3 Community Stages Call For Participation postmarketOS is even mentioned in the Hack, Make & Break section!
Hardware (enablement)
- firstpost.com NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Google, Samsung team up to take on Intel, AMD with new CPU architecture
More Software News
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH v4 0/6] iio: light: stk3310: support powering off during suspend
- phone-devel: Re: [PATCH v2 01/13] media: i2c: imx214: Fix link frequency
Distributions
- Mobian (Mastodon): There's currently a discussion happening between Mobian developers on whether to stick with phosh-osk-stub as a keyboard or switch back to squeekboard (which was replaced after having been removed from Debian testing for a while).If you feel one option is a lot better for you than the other, let us know at https://salsa.debian.org/DebianOnMobile-team/meta-phosh/-/merge_requests/38
- GloDroid for PinePhone: 2024w44 (Kernel upgrade and bug fixes)
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: Action required for existing installs on x86_64 Chromebooks
- Breaking updates in pmOS edge: Recent changes might affect booting
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): We're trying to track down those last few bugs and get them squashed so we can finally tag that 3.0 release. Please don't hesitate to report any issues you encounter!
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): pmbootstrap 2.3.2 is out.Most importantly, this release migrates the pmaports.git URLs from gitlab.com to gitlab.postmarketos.org, so you don't need to do that manually anymore or use pmbootstrap master. Thanks to everybody who contributed!https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/-/tags/2.3.2
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: Draft: patches for native cross-compilation
- postmarketOS: "We just shipped some major refactoring in our initramfs, removing some of the oldest tech-debt in the distro and finally making it possible to boot without first finding and unpacking the "initramfs-extra" archive!This new unified-initramfs behaviour is now the default for most devices, and may lead to a slight boottime speedup!https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merge_requests/5636We're hopeful this doesn't break anything, but if you do run into issues please go check out the tracking thread here https://postmarketos.org/edge/2024/10/31/Recent-changes-might-affect-booting/"
- cas: "Had actually a lot of fun hacking on this.…"
- postmarketOS: pmbootstrap got some big refactoring today to its "apk" handling.It will now always run apk on the host (no more slow apk through QEMU!) and should do a slightly better job at caching packages.https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/-/merge_requests/2463This should make some things like building packages go faster!If you're already running pmbootstrap 3.0 alpha you can "git pull" and give it a whirl.#PostmarketOS #tooling #pmbootstrap
Apps
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Morphosis
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Fruit Credits
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Add Water
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: NymphCast Player
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Mobile Config for Firefox
- @linmob@fosstodon.org: personal, m-f-c This was fun to come up with: https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/mobile-config-firefox/-/merge_requests/56(testing welcome!) This has been merged by now, and more merge requests have been cooked up. Help with testing is appreciated!
- postmarketOS: Apps by Category: LongnoseRob: update to gitlab.postmarketos.org
- carl: In case you are wondering how hard it is to add support for an onboard API to Itinerary. Here is me adding support for the NS train (Netherlands). It's like 50 lines of Javascript code and the most tricky part is parsing the weird date time format.https://invent.kde.org/libraries/kpublictransport/-/merge_requests/86
- kop316: "I just tagged gtk-meshtastic-client as a beta! I added....well a lot of features since the alpha. If you want to try it out, let me know (and if you find bugs, also let me know!): https://gitlab.com/kop316/gtk-meshtastic-client"
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #172 Valencia
- Planet GNOME: Igalia and WebKit: status update and plans (2024)
- Planet GNOME: Profiling w/o Frame Pointers
- Planet GNOME: A million portals
- Planet GNOME: The Bargain-Finder-inator 5000: One programmer's quest for a new flat
- Adrien Plazas: Towards a GNOME Mobile Test Suite
Phosh
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: Help fight the proprietary software monsters!
- Volker Krause: Emergency and weather alerts
- KDE Blogs: This Week in KDE Apps
- KDE Blogs: This Week in Plasma: spoooooky ooooooooom notifications!
- Planet KDE: Ruqola 2.3.1
- Planet KDE: Linux App Summit 2024
Sxmo
- proycon: "99,9% of smartphone users already enjoyed seeing a clock and status icons on their phone's lockscreen. Now we #sxmo users are joining the mainstream crowd (something we do only reluctantly if we really need to, and in our own hackable & minimalist way!). I implemented a clock and status icon support in our lockscreen 'peanutbutter' (patch still pending review and merge)."
- anjan: I will be giving a talk about postmarketOS at #SeaGL2024 ! I will be there for both days. So come through to Seattle if you want to chat about postmarketOS with me.https://pretalx.seagl.org/2024/speaker/R7ZWVR/
- #sxmo: This is a nice day to be working on man pages for #sxmo , and ensure our documentation is all up to date, as on this day in 1971 the first edition of the man pages were published in the Unix Programmer's Manual.Documentation only works if it's complete and up to date, as illustrated nicely in my favourite Geek & Poke comic.
- #sxmo: Cool one-liner of the day on #sxmo to access machines in .ssh/configsxmo_terminal.sh ssh
grep "Host " ~/.ssh/config | awk '{print $2}' | sxmo_dmenu.shThis one will directly go into my scripts menu ;)
Sailfish OS
Ubuntu Touch
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 152 Call for Questions
- #UbuntuTouch: Fairphone 4 and sensorsFull post here. https://rene.seindal.dk/2024/11/03/fairphone-4-and-sensors/I bought a Fairphone 4 as a part of my project of de-googling my life.Playing with different operating systems, I somehow ended up with a phone where most of the sensors didn't work, even if they did when I got the phone.#EOS #DeGoogling #FairPhone4 #FP4 #MurenaOS #UbuntuTouch
- Phoronix: Ubuntu's Great Mainline Kernel PPA Hasn't Been Working Since Mid-September
Non-Linux
Stack
- Phoronix: Google Chrome/Chromium Lands linux_drm_syncobj_v1 For Wayland Explicit Sync
- Phoronix: Vulkan 1.3.301 Released With New Extension For HDR Vivid
- Phoronix: Academy Software Foundation Releases OpenVDB 12.0 Under New License
Matrix
- Matrix.org: Matrix 2.0 Is Here!
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2024-11-01
- Matrix.org: The wait is over, videos from The Matrix Conference 2024 are here!
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!