Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (46/2026): RISC-V Librem 5 and a Plasma Mobile job
Table of Contents
Purism is crowdfunding a RISC-V-powered Librem 5 v2, KDE e.V. is hiring a software engineer for Plasma Mobile, Phosh 0.59 is out, Mir 2 is making good progress on Ubuntu Touch, Amazfish 3.0.0 is out, Sailfish OS boots on the Fairphone 6, and more!
Collected on Sunday, November 15th 2026, 15:17 UTC and finished later the same day. Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Purism: Librem 5 v2 – A phone that frees us all
- bradlinder: Purism has begun crowfunding for the Librem 5 v2, a Linux smartphone with a SpacemiT K1 RISC-V processor, a 5.7 inch display, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, WiFi and camera kill switches, and modular design. https://puri.sm/librem-5-v2-crowdfunding-campaign/ #Purism_Is_Crowdfunding_A_RISC__V_Smartphone #RISC__V #Purism_Librem5_v2 #Librem5
- David Heidelberg: I swear someone at Purism heard, “The phone's battery lasts half a day,” and thought, “Unacceptable. Let's get that down to three hours.” except it's nuts, the SpacemiT K1 only supports RVA22 (doesn't make sense to support anything below RVA23 today). I'm convinced that power consumption of K3 (K3 supports RVA23) would be still much worse than i.MX8MQ which is Librem 5 build on..... so, if K1 gets fully optimized, it could be in par with Librem 5. Not that terrible as I expected first, but... then there is RVA22.These days distros such as Ubuntu no longer supports anything older than RVA23. I would call RVA23 profile HW as "first useful RISC-V gen".Thus, even when the phone battery, after optimized, hold same as Librem 5, in few years Purism will have to maintain own binaries.https://docs.riscv.org/reference/rva23/_attachments/rva23-profile.pdf. Let me add this Geekbench (usual caveats apply) link in case I don't manage to blog about this device later in the week. Now, vector extensions are likely not used, affecting K1 benchmark results negatively, but still: Even if all #MobileLinux remain as lean as they are, the web will surely not, and shipping what seems to be the same real world performance in April 2028 as in a device envisioned ten years earlier and shipped about five years ago is... something (the RAM will definitely help though). One last pun for tonight: Also, when I read freedom, I immediately think of PowerVR graphics.
- KDE e.V. News: KDE e.V. is looking for a software engineer. This is really good news!
- ethical_shopper: My European smartphone: the first 3 weeks
- Rahul Sainani: Using my old Android phone as a DNS resolver
- Make Use Of: Someone used Claude Code to build a Linux phone OS, and you can try it in your browser. I briefly tried it (without trying and of the additional apps), and, well, fast LVGL is fast, even on AllWinner A64.
Worth Watching
- Juhani Lehtimäki: Kotlin Multiplatform on Sailfish OS - Android apps on a Linux phone (PeerTube, Slides)
- Continuum Gaming: OffShore – Know Your Meal (Continuum Gaming E548)
- UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 203. Nice one!
- Phosh: Speech to text input coming to Phosh
Worth Noting
- opensourceopenmind: RE: https://social.vivaldi.net/@GNUTUX/117513154441925763From the creator of #waydroid, another way to make Android apps work on #Linux.UPDATE:I had completely ignored the article (which I now see is pretty unbearable to read) and had scanned for the Github repo link. I'll just put the direct Github link here:https://github.com/erfanoabdi/apklayer#linuxmobile #mobilelinux #mobian #nuraeco #pureos #librem5 #pinephone #flx1 #flx1s #gnuLinux #freesoftware #androidtranslationlayer #postmarketos
- agx: @fsfe I really appreciate the FSFEs work over the decades but the focus on proprietary mobile platforms while there are #FreeSoftware alternatives with openess and user freedom built in strikes me as odd. Let's rather make sure those Free Software Android apps continue to run great on #MobileLinux (we don't need anything from google for that) and put the money into moving a platform forward that has freedom and openess built in from the ground up. #LinuxMobile #mobile #linux
- Purism community: I am working on implementing VoWifi
Events
- ev: Gentle reminder: Our next online #Phosh #community #gettogether is next Tuesday 19:00 CET https://ev.phosh.mobi/gettogether/ . Save the date!#LinuxMobile. _I don't think the baby will allow me to make it,
- @jolla@techhub.social: We are at Slush 2026! Join us next week during Slush in Helsinki (Nov 18-19): meet (and hold) the European Jolla Phone, experience our local sovereign AI and witness The Other Half in action.Meet us at the Jolla Demo Suite at Holiday Inn Expo. We’re hosting a come-and-go event with live demos. The Jolla team is there to show you around, answer questions and hear what you think.Where: Jolla Demo Suite #901, Holiday Inn ExpoWhen: 18 and 19 November, drop by anytime between 10am and 8pmNo Slush ticket required. No event registration required.More info at our Jolla Demo Suite official Slush side event page: https://platform.slush.org/public/slush26/activities/0f397cf3-fbbb-4ae2-a49f-cb2a702ed3e6#Jolla #SailfishOS #DigitalSovereignty #PrivacyFirst #CommunityPowered #European
- Announcements - Sailfish OS Forum: Roadshow: community meeting @Göteborg November 25
- HSN: Did you always wanted a #Linux #phone? Come and discover #Ubuntu #Touch. At #Hackerspace #Nijmegen we'll organize an introduction to the fabulous world of #UnbuntuTouch on Wednesday November 25th at 20:00pm.If you bring a supported device, we help you install Ubuntu Touch on your phone (make sure you backed up all your data!). Check supported devices here:https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/See our website for more info: https://hackerspacenijmegen.nl/Ubuntu_Touch_for_the_curious#hack #phone #linux #UbuntuTouch #Ubuntu_touch
Hardware (enablement)
- valpackett: Mainline on the Moto G9 Power (cebu) with full display support.. filmed with my Edge 30 (damn gnome-snapshot uses some really crunchy x264 encoding parameters lol)Basic dts submitted to LKML, further patches only in my tree for now.#nura #mainlining #mobilelinux #linuxmobile
- pi_crew: Neat, NFC is working too on my OnePlus 6 @nura #LinuxMobile phone, at least it detected my university card ;)
- @cas@treehouse.systems: there's an sdm845 bootrom exploit poc?!!tethered oneplus 6 jailbreak timehttps://github.com/Daniel224455/katana
- @linmob@linuxmobile.social: Remember #MarathonShell, the #Blackberry inspired mobile shell? They just published a release for the Zinwa Q25, a very much Blackberry inspired device: https://github.com/patrickjquinn/Marathon-Shell/releases/tag/zinwa-q25-26110802 #LinuxMobile #ZinwaQ25 #Mediatek
- mntmn: - 24 Hyper MNT Reform Nexts are packed for customs check + shipping to Crowd Supply tomorrow. This means we shipped 40 units so far, which is around 21% of the crowdfunded units (<Feb 2025)- 23 MNT shop orders packed and going out tomorrow, most of them standalone MNT Pocket Reform keyboards
- r/MobileLinux: I wrote a feature phone firmware for the original PinePhone: Buildroot, mainline Linux, one LVGL app, 66 FPS
- r/MobileLinux: Debian 13, Linux 6.18 & KDE Plasma on the Cosmo Communicator: looking for beta testers!
- r/MobileLinux: Native Arch Linux ARM (Mainline 7.3.0) on the OnePlus 9 Pro — Repo is live! (Reposted due to removal from r/Linux)
- r/MobileLinux: Arch Linux ARM + XFCE running natively on the Moto Pad 2026 (Lenovo Idea Tab), with a GPU-accelerated desktop and hardware video decoding
- r/MobileLinux: Surface Duo Linux 6.19 Mainline bare metal
- r/MobileLinux: PostmarketOS/Nura Mi 11 lite 5g NE / Mi 11 LE
- Nura pmaports Merge Requests: Draft: Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE (xiaomi-lisa): new device
- r/MobileLinux: Debian on Redmi 12 5G with external display on usb 2.0
- r/MobileLinux: oneplus 6t linux camera tuning
- r/MobileLinux: HTC Dream: 7.4-rc2. I still miss the form factor and the keyboard, but I doubt I miss this meager amount of RAM... IIRC 192 MB.
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #274 Fancy Statistics
- Peter Eisenmann: Fellowship Report October 2026 (Lothlórien)
- pi_crew: Patched the Torch #GNOME extension by @vixalientoots to show only one tile to toggle the torch on my #LinuxMobile phone, even if it detects several light sources
Phosh
- Phosh releases: Phosh 0.59.0 · Phosh
- phosh: phosh 0.59.0 is out 🚀📱:We've got a bunch of new features, quality-of-life improvements and 🐛 fixes this time:Check out the full release notes at https://phosh.mobi/releases/rel-0.59.0/ for details or see 👇 for a short 🧵🙏 to everyone who contributed to this release.#phosh #gtk #wlroots #gnome #linux #mobile #LinuxMobile #Librem5 #PinePhone #BengalOS #phosh059
- phosh: mobile-broadband-provider-info 20261111 is out 🎉️: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mobile-broadband-provider-info/-/releases/20261111 I guess the growing number of contributors and changes from release to release means we're onto something with Linux based ☎️.#LinuxMobile #linux #mobile #phosh #ModemManager #NetworkManager
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: XWayland On Demand
- KDE e.V. News: KDE e.V. is looking for a software engineer. This is really good news!
- KDE Announcements: KDE Plasma 6.8.3, Bugfix Release for November
- KDE Announcements: KDE Ships Frameworks 6.32.0
- Plasma Bigscreen: November 2026 App Releases
- Volker Krause: Boiling the Ocean 12, 13 and 14
- Eike Hein: This Week in Kwi: Flight
Sailfish OS
- jasperamorgan: Fun with #sailfishos continues - this time we are going into deep waters and getting Sailfish to run on some new hardware, the #fairphone 6.https://youtube.com/shorts/WZzacsCUu3M
- adampigg: Have now tagged version 3.0.0 of #amazfish, the #linux #smartwatch companion app. Over 300 commits from 2.9.0, with the main highlights being a new User Interface design, support for some Garmin devices, fixes for huami and bangle.js, and with contributions from 4 new developers! https://github.com/piggz/harbour-amazfish/releases/tag/3.0.0
- frankps: Immich v0.9 for Sailfish OS is here!Two highlights for me are support for motion photos, together with support for displaying photos and videos from watched folders stored on your phone. https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/immich-a-native-immich-application-for-sailfish-os/28066/100?u=frankps#SailfishOS #Immich #OpenSource #Photography
- ilpianista: Hello Sailors, there's a new kid in town: Periscope is a #SailfishOS client for @panoramax. Soon (🤞) in the Jolla Store and sooner in Chum. Enjoy 🗺️
- itsamecthulhu: Search through your tasks, apply filters, and create your own smart lists with the latest update to Askare. Grab it while it's hot at https://fravaccaro.com/askare #Nextcloud #OpenSource #LinuxMobile #JollaPhone #SailfishOS
- pherjung: @raphaelp The store question needs really an improvement as there are 5 stores :- Jolla Store, the official one- Chum, equivalent to F-Droid- Storeman, an frontend to openrepos.net- Harpoon, get apps directly from forges- Reef (https://reefstore.app/catalogue), an UFO/ovniI never saw such error on Jolla Store or on Chum. Which store was it? #sailfishOS
- frankps: Just as Commodore has passed 12.500 pre-orders of their Callback 8020 phone, they published a new blog update about the apps you can run on the phone:https://commodore.net/dont-call-it-dumb-the-apps-of-the-commodore-callback/It is for sure not a dumb phone. Enjoy the read!#Commodore #SailfishOS #Jolla #Detox
- Announcements - Sailfish OS Forum: Community meeting on November 26, 2026
Ubuntu Touch
- fredldotme: To mention this here too: We're making good progress in bringing Mir 2 to Ubuntu Touch!https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ipO-gF9JKewThis is 26.04-1.x daily with additional changes to support Lomiri with Mir 2, a whole Wayland-only user session powering all kinds of toolkit support, with copy-paste across native Lomiri apps & non-native ones, even Waydroid (finally).More work is pending to make this a viable implementation, but we're way closer to what we've been promising for years. It's finally coming. Remember that the system-layer still provides a legacy Mirclient interface for those apps that are not migrated over yet, like Aethercast (Wireless Desktop Mode) and Screen Recorder. The Screen Recorder GUI is still powered by Wayland but uses libmirclient to handle virtual screen creation and buffer retrieval. When it's fully switched I will surely let you know. In the meantime have fun with all kinds of GTK, Qt and other Wayland apps coming to life.. This is huge; it will help massively with running other #LinuxMobile apps from GNOME and Plasma Mobile efforts on Ubuntu Touch. Also, looks like experimenting on how to run mobile-config-firefox with snap installs may become more relevant.
- UBports - Development - Merge Requests: wayland-session: Support Mir2-on-Mir1
- UBports - Development - Merge Requests: Draft: Output scaling fixes for Mir 2
- UBports - Development - Merge Requests: [MIR2] Enable ext_data_control_manager_v1 extention (for clipboard manager)
- UBports - Development - Merge Requests: Add keyboard shortcuts to the media viewer and selection mode
- r/MobileLinux: Lomiri Gestures & Shortcuts: a floating Back/Home/Apps bar, 3-finger app switching, screenshots, and camera + flashlight on the lock screen
- vivia: I saw that Fairphones have excellent Ubuntu Touch support nowadays (it's mostly aGPS and eSIM functionality missing!), so I repurposed my old Fairphone 3 and installed Ubuntu Touch on it, planning to use it for testing/development.I haven't tried installing my applications and everything, but from the little I used it, I don't really like the UI. It's like they saw the edge swipes from Meego/SFOS and they thought "oh cool idea, yeah edge swipes are Intuitive™" and they reïmplemented them in a non-intuitive way to avoid stepping on Nokia/Jolla's toes. That said, I still prefer UT over Android.#LinuxMobile #UbuntuTouch #Fairphone
Distributions
- Nura pmaports issues: Tracking issue for completing the bin-merge in pmaports
- Nura pmaports Merge Requests: main/postmarketos-base: enact bin-merge in core
- Nura pmaports Merge Requests: Draft: Initramfs overhaul
- Nura pmaports Merge Requests: deviceinfo_schema: default initfs_compression changed to zstd
- Nura pmaports Merge Requests: firmware-fairphone-fp6: package amplifier firmware
- Nura pmaports Merge Requests: qcom-handheld: new device
- Nura Wiki New Pages: OnePlus Nord 4 (oneplus-avalon)
- ncopa: Would you like to help fix build failures blocking #AlpineLinux 3.25?Have a look at those:https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/work_items/18492
Apps
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: OpenSCQ30
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: BudsLink
- newinlinux: Developers of Bazaar, a #Flatpak software manager for #Linux announced this week the release of #Bazaar 0.10.0, which comes with features for managing remote repositories. A few other small changes are here, too.https://www.newinlinux.com/whats-new-in-bazaar-0-10/
- tzafrir: I own a #FLX1 phone and use it as a daily driver. Recently @furilabs@fosstodon.org issued a new update for the software on the phone ( #FuriOS ) - 14.1.0 . There is a rewrite to the phone app, that is greatly improved.There is a single place for all the phone stuff. I can call from the phone book. I really like it. It's a nice improvement over the combination of gnome-calls, gnome-addressbook and chatty, that are not really well-integrated.Indeed I lost the support XMPP and Matrix that #Chatty has. But I mostly used XMPP support for notifications, and relied on #Dino anyway. And failed to use it for Matrix and used #Nheko instead.However, what I dislike is that the code seems to be geared for internal development. The app seems to be:https://github.com/FuriLabs/telephonyNot very inviting. No place to report bugs. I had a major problem (if I lock screen and get a call, or even dial through the command-line interface - telephony-cli, quite nice - I get a very-partially-functional interface similar to gnome calls that fails to be controlled (so mute or disabling speaker is impossible) - "libcall"(?). I ended up contacting support and sound that this is because of functionality not yet implemented.I appreciate the FuriLabs folks very much. But I keep getting memories of Ubuntu of 10 or 15 years ago, or working on their own (even with libnih - a name that they actually used in upstart). This is a phone with its very own and somewhat different than others stack. And now it has just gotten more different than others.Anyway, I hope it works well.
Kernel
- phone-devel: [PATCH v2 0/9] arm64: mediatek: Add initial MT6895 and Xiaomi Poco X4 GT support
- phone-devel: Re: [PATCH] arm64: dts: qcom: milos-fairphone-fp6: Enable Iris
- phone-devel: [PATCH v3 5/5] arm64: dts: qcom: sm7225-fairphone-fp4: Add battery temperature node
- phone-devel: [PATCH v7 0/4] leds: aw2013: Add AW2027 support
- Lemmy.ml - linuxphones: [PATCH v4 00/12] Enable more nodes for the Xperia 10 III
- pi_crew: Mainline #LinuxMobile kernel patch for OnePlus 6 enabling media controls of analog headphones 🎧#nuraos #linux #gnome. Oooh, interesting for me personally. Wonder what's going to take longer: Me merging two broken OnePlus 6 into one working OnePlus 6 or something similar landing for Pixel 3a...
Stack
- Phoronix: Wine 11.22 Introduces x86 AVX Emulation On ARM64
- Phoronix: Rust 1.100 Released With The "Never" Type Finally Stable
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2026-11-13
- Matrix.org: Matrix Governing Board report, November 2026
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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