Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (51/2025): The Other Half reloaded
Table of Contents
This past week: postmarketOS publishes transparency report on contributor compensation from donations and now ships systemd built from unpatched upstream source code thanks to merged musl libc support, v25.12 testing phase begins, Nemo Mobile boots on openSUSE, Jolla's "The Other Half" extensible covers could add hardware capabilities like physical keyboards or extra battery, and Lomiri being shipped in yet another distro. Enjoy!
Commentary in italics.
Worth Reading
- postmarketOS Blog: Getting sustainable work done in postmarketOS thanks to your donations
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Getting sustainable work done in postmarketOS thanks to your donations
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): The testing phase for v25.12 has officially begun! If you want to give the new postmarketOS release a try early and help with finding bugs on your device, find the instructions here:https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/issues/4169Happy testing! 🧪
- Liliputing: The new Jolla Phone might support swappable back covers that add new hardware capabilities
- Purism: PureOS Crimson Development Report: November 2025
- Purism: A Quarter Century After Cyberselfish, Big Tech Proves Borsook Right
- Rhino Linux blog: Rhino Linux 2025.4, and what to expect from us in 2026. With Lomiri? Interesting.
Worth Watching
- RTP Tech Tips: Charged Criminally For Wiping Phone!
- neochapay: Nemomobile start on OpenSUSE
- Continuum Gaming: Continuum Gaming E500: Jolla Phone (J2) – The Other Half
- awai at Capitol du Libre: Un Linux dans la poche : où en est-on ? - Vidéos Capitole du Libre French.
- TuxWix: FuriPhone FLX1 Unboxing. German, reupload.
Worth Noting
- deobald: "the @postmarketOS transparency report is excellent, especially for a small project with a limited number of contributors:https://postmarketos.org/blog/2025/12/19/contributor-compensantion-and-financial-update/i think every donor to every open source project mostly just wants to know "how did my money turn into code?" this is a better answer than many of us would even expect to receive. kudos, folks. ❤️"
- williamtries: "I've been testing Dino on my Linux phones to see if any could support video calls. I'm sure this is old news to some, but #pmOS stable on the OnePlus 6 can do video calls! Yeah, my face comes out as green as Kermit but it works! It crashes or freezes up a lot and disconnects frequently. It was also a refresh rate of one second at best. But audio was synced!It isn't usable yet but definitely something to watch. Merry Christmas through the eyes of #postmarketOS."
- craftyguy: "Look ma, no fork! 🎉https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merge_requests/7584#postmarketOS is now shipping #systemd built from unpatched upstream source code, thanks to all the amazing folks involved with adding #musl libc support 😁"
- PinePhone (Reddit): Enjoying postmarketOS on PinePhone
- Lemmy.ml - linuxphones: Does any mobile Linux use systemd-sysupdate?
Events
- modal: "Since there's CCC and FOSDEM coming up, the next #BoilingTheOcean is happening in February!The weekend of February 14-15th we'll be hacking as usual, but on the 13th we'll also have an evening of talks and discussions on identity in peer-to-peer systems, with @bumbleblue and @shibacomputer ✨More details TBA :)#gnome #localfirst #p2panda #postmarketos #berlin"
- z3ntu: Happy to share, that my #FOSDEM talk for 2026 has been accepted!Join me on Saturday, 31st January 2026 in Brussels (Belgium) to hear the latest mainline kernel status for Fairphones! Lots of things to talk about!https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/mainline_kernel_for_fairphones_-_2026_update/There's also so many more exciting talks scheduled for the FOSS on Mobile devroom, so you probably want to see them all!#Fairphone #MobileLinux #LinuxMobile #postmarketOS
- mntmn: looking forward to the rockchip mainline talk at fosdem 2026 https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/no-line-like-mainline-rockchip/
- smallsolar: "Finally finished my clunky #postmarketos test rig for mainlining the a5y17lte. I took a very bust up Samsung A5, wired up push buttons for the main buttons, managed to solder to the very small pitch serial line (only get Tx from the phone), printed a case with my 3d printer and then attached a usb-serial converter (1.8v) and it works.Now to work on the actual kernel! #DecemberAdventure"
Hardware (enablement)
- tobykurien: "The new iteration of my #DIY #RaspberryPi #Linux #tablet looks great, in my opinion! Very happy with how it came out, and it feels much more comfortable to hold and use than the previous version. The back cover was designed using #FreeCAD. I added "fingers" over the screen buttons and engraved symbols into them, added air vent holes on one side with SD card access hole, and a button on the back for screen backlight brightness control.https://tobykurien.com/images/microblog/post-1766319993-0.jpg… https://tobykurien.com/post-1766319993"
- collabora: "For over a year, in close partnership with #MediaTek, we’ve been enhancing Chromium on Genio and Kompanio platforms to fully unlock the hardware users depend on, delivering out-of-the-box hardware-accelerated video decoding and encoding for high-performance, video-centric #Chromium applications.Read more: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/driving-a-seamless-chromium-experience-on-mediatek-socs.html#VideoAcceleration #HardwareAcceleration #EmbeddedLinux"
- NekoCWD: Day 2 of #dailydriving sdm845-nextKey changes:- 🔄 Kernel rebased to next-20251217- 🎉 Haptic now works (mailing list patches replaced with patches from sdm845-mainline tree)#linuxonmobile #mainline #testing
- erebion: "@usia @spaetz No, as this driver is not done yet: https://gitlab.com/sdm670-mainline/linux/-/merge_requestsIt can set the focus, but the dev does not know what values to set. That's the missing piece. If anyone could help out here, the Pixel 3a would make much better photos already.Maybe @linmob could mention that in the next weekly, this might then be noticed by someone with the right knowledge."
More Software News
Gnome Ecosystem
- This Week in GNOME: #229 Good Rhythm
- Engagement Blog: GUADEC 2026 will be held in A Coruña, Spain
- Allan Day: GNOME Foundation Update, 2025-12-19
- Hari Rana: Please Fund My Continued Accessibility Work on GNOME!
Phosh
- #phosh: One of the things that makes #phosh look a bit unfinished is the fact that we don't show a representation of launching apps in the overview (while they show a splash screen). We have a merge request for that now and it will hopefully land for 0.52 (or 0.53). This also fixes not being able to interact with apps while one is launching. Together with some pending activation fixes that should make things look more polished and will allow us to fix some other long standing bugs.#LinuxMobile
- Phosh (gotosocial): While you can configure the alarm clock sound in #Phosh the default isn't great atm (it's the fallback from the freedesktop.o...
- #phosh: @postmarketos systemd seem to have some issues with flatpaks on different DE. Seems confirmed atleast on sxmo-de-sway sxmo-de-dwm and lxqt. Looks like the issue is around ambient capabilities. This was fixed in #phosh upstream so systemd phosh pmos probably never ran into this issue. Seems like the fix phosh implemented is to drop it on start up so we might want to do something similar to other DEs.https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/issues/3868#sxmo #postmarketos
Plasma Ecosystem
- Nate Graham: This Week in Plasma: ambient light sensor support
- Volker Krause: KDE PIM Sprint 2025 in Paris
Sxmo
Sailfish OS
- #sailfishOS: Just before going through @jake4480 list, An ANNOUNCEMENT :) Tooter (freindly sfos masto client) 1.2.2 release:I've just done a small 'maint' release with updates to translations and an error catch. #SailfishOs #Mastodon https://github.com/poetaster/harbour-tooter/releases/tag/1.2.2 coming to chum, harbour and openrepos.Also, after refactoring, we also built a clean 'parasites' version of plaits.https://github.com/poetaster/arduinoMI ah, progress.....
- #sailfishOS: @nekohayo @Cwiiis @Yoric The #SailfishOS browser is still trying to keep some kind of embeddable Gecko variant alive (embedlite), but this is one major technical debt roadblock that causes their browser to be super outdated.Love the intent, disliking the outcome.https://github.com/sailfishos/sailfish-browser
- #sailfishOS: Had a break from work today and translated Tooter for SailfishOS to Norwegian bokmål: https://iodata.work/harbour-tooter/I don't know when the translations will be added a new version of the app released, but hopefully soon.#Tooter #SailfishOS
- #sailfishOS: @bittin @CollaboraOffice Will try to do some builds over the holidays to ensure it runs smoothly on #SailfishOS for #fosdem
Ubuntu Touch
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 180
- UBports News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 179
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: Ubuntu Touch Q&A 179 and 180 Audio and Video
- Ubuntu Touch Forums News: UBports International
- UBports - Development - Issues: uNav freezes
- UBports - Development - Issues: Headphone Microphone is ignored
- UBports - Development - Issues: Adjust for Mir 2.25
- UBports - Development - Issues: lomiri-account-polld: Migrate from qmake to cmake
- fredldotme: Good news, my employment situation has been sorted out and I'm back to working full time!Thanks to anybody supporting me over the last month, it helped.. Woohoo!
Distributions
- Lemmy - postmarketOS: #46 Summer Events Special (DEFCON 33, WHY 2025, FrOSCon 2025)
- postmarketOS Blog: Getting sustainable work done in postmarketOS thanks to your donations
- Lemmy.ca - linuxphones: Getting sustainable work done in postmarketOS thanks to your donations
- postmarketOS (Mastodon): The testing phase for v25.12 has officially begun! If you want to give the new postmarketOS release a try early and help with finding bugs on your device, find the instructions here:https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/issues/4169Happy testing! 🧪
- postmarketOS pmbootstrap tags: 3.7.0
- postmarketOS mobile-config-firefox tags: 5.0.1
- postmarketOS Wiki Recent Changes: HiSilicon Kirin 650 (Hi6250)
- Mobian mobian-recipes Issues: qcom: Enabling Encryption leads to build failure
Apps
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Tomatillo
- LinuxPhoneApps.org: Apps: Brief
- LinuxPhoneApps: Contributing to LinuxPhoneApps.org often means contributing to other projects, too:https://framagit.org/linuxphoneapps/linuxphoneapps.frama.io/-/issues/100 and crtl-f for 'PR pending'#LinuxMobile #MobileLinux #AppStream #MetaInfo
- LinuxPhoneApps: Contributing to LinuxPhoneApps.org often means contributing to other projects, too - also monetarily:Since we're hosted on framagit.org by @Framasoft, contributions to framasoft's 2026 campaign are highly appreciated: https://soutenir.framasoft.org/en/#LinuxMobile #MobileLinux #Framagit #Framasoft
- gnome: "Top 5 #accessibility improvements in #GNOME Calendar 49:1. Focus indicators were added in various places2. Events are focusable with a keyboard3. Year/month spin buttons are navigable with arrow keys4. Calendar grids are skippable with Tab, and cells are wrapped via keyboard focus5. Calendar list box now behaves like a check boxFor screen readers: events and year/month spin buttons have proper semantics!https://donate.gnome.org/#a11y #GNOMECalendar #FOSS #OpenSource #FreeSoftware"
- Lemmy.ml - linuxphones: What event schedule software do we have?
- pi_crew: RE: https://mastodon.social/@MailtemiApp/115367964787095455Probably one of the first native #GTK4 mail apps on #Gnome 😉 Would be great for #LinuxMobile 😊
Kernel
- phone-devel: Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] dt-bindings: media: camss: Add qcom,sm6350-camss
- phone-devel: [PATCH RFC 0/6] Attempt to bring up display on Milos SoC
- phone-devel: [PATCH] arm64: defconfig: Enable options for Qualcomm Milos SoC
- phone-devel: Re: [PATCH] arm64: dts: qcom: sdm845-oneplus: Enable known blocks and add placeholders
- phone-devel: Re: (subset) [PATCH v4 0/5] arm64: dts: qcom: Introduce Kaanapali platform device tree
- phone-devel: Re: [PATCH] arm64: dts: qcom: sdm845-oneplus: Enable known blocks and add placeholders
Releases
- lwn: Systemd v259 released
- Phoronix: Vulkan 1.4.337 Debuts With Long Vector & 3D ASTC Compression Extensions
- Phoronix: GNU Debugger 17.1 Released With CET Shadow Stack Support, New DAP Features
- Phoronix: Cryptsetup 2.8.2 Released With BitLocker Clear Key Support
Matrix
- Matrix.org: This Week in Matrix 2025-12-19
- Matrix.org: FOSDEM Update
- Matrix.org: Matrix v1.17 specification released
- Matrix.org: Sharing a safety tool: announcing policyserv
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!