Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (50/2024): Pay for your Flatpaks
Table of Contents
Flathub is hoping to add a payment infrastructure, another Ubuntu Touch Q&A, some more RISC-V devices landing in postmarketOS, another release (+ a bug fix follow-up) of the Kaidan XMPP client, KDE Gear 24.12 brining many improvements to various KDE apps, and more! Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- Matthew Garrett: When should we require that firmware be free?
- cas: "reminder that the librem 5 is more complicated and more expensive to meet the FSF Respect Your Freedom certification. What do you get for this? Some firmware is stored on a flashROM rather than internal storage, making it HARDER to reverse engineer and replace"
- marcan: "@mjg59 Fun anecdote: A friend of mine once tried to get a certain piece of open hardware RYF-certified. At the time Linux would run on the hardware, without free GPU acceleration. The shipping software/firmware did not include any nonfree components.They rejected it because users could hypothetically install nonfree GPU drivers. They said if he could get the GPU permanently fused off, they'd certify it.It was never certified. A few years later, free GPU drivers were available. Had he followed the FSF's ridiculous demand, users would have owned an intentionally crippled piece of hardware and lost the ability to have free GPU acceleration in the future, once it existed."
Worth Watching
- UBports: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 155
- PC-FREEDOM＠なんちゃってエンジニアリング: スマホで動く Linux ⇒ Droidian をインストールしてみよう！
- James Champion: Linux On Phones and Tablets With postmarketOS
- JollaDevices: The JC2 UNBOXING - Jolla Community Phone 2, Late 2024
- FuturePhone Reviews: "Librem 5 Review: The Ultimate Privacy-Focused Smartphone". ... this is AI-generated horseshit, I guess!
- heise & c't: Keywan schaut sich das #Jolla Community Phone mit #SailfishOS an.. German.
Worth Noting
- flathub: "Have experience in open source program management, especially within the US legislative landscape? We’re seeking a contractor to help bootstrap Flathub into a self-sustaining entity.Help us:• Launch payment & donation systems• Establish operational governance• Coordinate financial & legal operations• Ensure community engagement & transparency https://discourse.flathub.org/t/request-for-proposals-flathub-program-management/8276#Flathub #FediHire #GetFediHired #Flatpak #job #JobAlert #OpenSource #Flatpak #Linux"
- sovtechfund: "Public investments are vital for sustaining the open source ecosystem, but how do we measure their impact?In collaboration with @cosborne @geekygirldawn and Mirko Boehm, STA’s Policy and Research Manager, Paul Sharratt, has co-authored "A Toolkit for Measuring the Impacts of Public Funding on Open Source Software Development."Our newest blogpost gives a glimpse into the paper: https://www.sovereign.tech/news/measuring-the-impact-of-our-funding"
- newbyte: "First photos taken with the Samsung Galaxy S III on #postmarketOS, probably! Credits to Jack Kekzoz, @martijnbraam, and whoever else helped him with getting #Megapixels working on the Midas (Samsung Galaxy S III and Note II) devices — I'm just posting about this, I didn't work on it myself. Hopefully we'll have it available in Edge over the coming months."
- hackaday: "Smartphone Runs Home Server It’s one of the great tragedies of our technological era. Smartphones that feature an incredible amount of computational power compared to computers the past, are largely locked down by carriers …read more#hacking #projectshttps://hackaday.com/2024/12/09/smartphone-runs-home-server/"
- jmlich: You can install the call blocking app from open-store nowhttps://open-store.io/app/com.github.jmlich.exphone
- r/linux: Baba’s old Nokia N900!
Event foreshadowing
- z3ntu: See you soon at #FOSDEM!
- linmob: Here's the assembly page: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2024/hub/en/assembly/linmob/ And we have a Matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#linmob-38c3:erebion.eu
- #LinuxMobile: Wasted some time on a #LinuxMobile leaflet / flyer for #38c3 https://framagit.org/1peter10/flyer/-/blob/master/build/flyer.pdfSource: https://framagit.org/1peter10/flyerorhttps://github.com/1peter10/linux-mobile-flyerFeedback welcome 🙂
Hardware
- haui: Quick update: my merge request for the #spacemitk1 on the #dcromapad2 at #postmarketOS has passed all tests! :)))https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merge_requests/5903
- Lemmy - postmarketOS: PostmarketOS on the SpacemitK1 (DC-ROMA PAD II and BananaPi-F3)
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #178 Fuzz Testing
- sonny: Workbench 47 is out! 🛠️ The highlight of this release is experimental TypeScript support by GSoC student @vixalientoots ✨ But there's more!https://blog.sonny.re/workbench-47#GNOME #GTK #TypeScript #GSoC
- alice: I did a thing (I got tired of endlessly resizing the window in very precise ways to test moble screen sizes)
Phosh
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: Better fractional scaling
- Carl Schwan et al.: This Week in KDE Apps: Gear 24.12.0 incoming
- KDE Announcements: KDE Ships Frameworks 6.9.0
- KDE Announcements: KDE ⚙️ Gear 24.12
- Phoronix: KDE Plasma 6.3 Delivers Much Better Fractional Scaling, Clipboard Using SQLite
Sailfish OS
- #sailfishOS: [BLOG] I received my fixed Jolla C2 unit! - https://www.ncartron.org/i-received-my-fixed-jolla-c2-unit.html #SailfishOS
- #sailfishOS: @Alkaris Check your distributions package manager. For systems which use zypper such as #sailfishos and #opensuse there's zypper si -d <package> for example.
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 154
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 155 Call for Questions
- UBports - Development - Issues: [devel-noble] task: fingerprint
- UBports - Development - Issues: [devel-noble] task: nfc
- UBports - Development - Issues: [devel-noble] Wi-Fi strength in the indicator is missing
- fredldotme: Testing image uploads from Mimi Browser to Mastodon, meanwhile here a Screenshot and Screenrecording of Printing on Ubuntu TouchEDIT: I don't know what it did to the video file but rest assured, it looks properly running on-device.
- #UbuntuTouch: I've got mail! Thanks @ubports ! #ubports #ubuntu #ubuntutouch
- #UbuntuTouch: I've created a simple call-blocking app for Ubuntu Touch! 🚫📞 It's currently under review, and I hope it will be live on the open-store soon.Check out the source code on GitHub: https://github.com/jmlich/exphone#CallBlocking #UbuntuTouch #Contribute
Distributions
- postmarketOS: "The testing phase for the upcoming postmarketOS release v24.12 has started! 🧪If you want to give it a spin and help with making it more stable, head over to...✏️ Testing issue: https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/issues/3359💬 Testing chat:https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Matrix_and_IRC"
- Lemmy - postmarketOS: postmarketOS in 2024-11: pmbootstrap v3, RFC process and Seattle
- postmarketOS Blog: postmarketOS in 2024-11: pmbootstrap v3, RFC process and Seattle
- postmarketOS pmaports Merge Requests: Draft: [TESTING] temp/xdg-desktop-portal-phosh: fork from alpine, upgrade to 0.42.0_git20241214
- postmarketOS Wiki New Pages: Pmbootstrap/Troubleshooting
- postmarketOS: ":terminal: pmbootstrap 3.1.0 is out!> This release allows using pmbootstrap with Alpine 3.21 / pmOS v24.12, adds support for ppc64le, adds code to install keyboard configuration based on chosen locale and has a bunch of fixes. Thanks to everybody who contributed! https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/-/tags/3.1.0"
Apps
- KDE Announcements: KDE ⚙️ Gear 24.12
- Kaidan.im: Kaidan 0.10.1: Media Sharing and New Message Marker Fixes, Kaidan 0.10.0: Too Much to Summarize!
- semiprime: "I've just released version 0.3.5 of Pygenda - my WIP #Psion Agenda-like app targetting #GeminiPDA & #CosmoCommunicator running Linux. (Similar keyboard #PDA type devices running #LinuxMobile should work too, e.g. #PinePhone + keyboard, F(x)tec #Pro1x, #PocketReform)The main change this release it that todo-items with a due date are (optionally) shown in Week & Year Views. This has been a useful improvement for me as I now see todos in my "home" views, rather than having to switch to Todo View."
- kaidan: 🎉️ Kaidan 0.10 is finally there: https://www.kaidan.im/2024/12/09/kaidan-0.10.0/Please skip 0.10.0 if possible and directly use 0.10.1: https://www.kaidan.im/2024/12/14/kaidan-0.10.1/ since it fixes an important bug.
Kernel
Stack
- LWN: Systemd 257 released https://lwn.net/Articles/1001657/ #LWN
- Phoronix: Linux 6.6.66 LTS Kernel Released With New Hardware Support & Many Fixes
- Phoronix: VKD3D-Proton 2.14 Released With New Features For D3D12 On Vulkan
- Phoronix: Mesa 25.0 Introduces Standard Library For Driver OpenCL C
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2024-12-13
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!