LINux on MOBile

Hi! This is the main Fediverse account of a blog about LINux on MOBile devices – linmob.net. It's has been restarted in 2020 because of the PinePhone.

Used to be https://identi.ca/linmob. Also on the birdsite: https://nitter.net/linmobblog.

blog: https://linmob.net
app list: https://linuxrocks.online/@linuxphoneapps
peertube: https://tilvids.com/c/linmob_channel/videos
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LINMOBnet

Public Key

npub1pusprud9xdn2c4xpmu5dxtj934p9lsedr5n9zlg6d9dwnnugc4lqxuaagp

NIP-05 Address

linmob_at_fosstodon.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsq7gq37xjnxe4v2nqa72xn9ezc6sjlcvk36fj305dxjkhfe7yv2lsprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wdmksetjv5hxxmmdqyt8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgu3wvfskueqwnfu5u

Publishing to

relay.noswhere.com

relay.nostr.band

Author Public Key

npub1pusprud9xdn2c4xpmu5dxtj934p9lsedr5n9zlg6d9dwnnugc4lqxuaagp

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Last Notes

2024-09-01 20:30:02

Weekly GNU-like #MobileLinux Update (35/2024): #MaemoLeste Progress and other roundups
https://linmob.net/weekly-update-35-2024/
#LinuxMobile #Phosh #PlasmaMobile #UbuntuTouch #SailfishOS #PinePhone #Librem5

2024-08-15 19:28:17

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I think feel is always subjective, but yes, to me it feels sturdy and well built. Not old Thinkpad sturdy, but definitely sturdy enough.

2024-08-08 17:31:52

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It's a pity, as Index was the best mobile filemanager way back in 2020/2021. Whale never made it beyond WIP (https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/org.kde.whale.desktop/). Dolphin is surprisingly okay, though. If Qt6 Index won't be better, I'd be in favor of just shipping Dolphin.

2024-08-07 21:35:31

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Installing NixOS is not dead-simple, but I managed on the first attempt. Just follow it step-by-step when not too tired, and it should work ;-)

2024-08-06 19:02:05

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Edge is part of the problem, having audio stack updates break configs can't be avoided when rolling.
Yes, there are more problems, but they are intermittent and hard to debug - and an excellent opportunity to contribute 😉
Regarding the PlaMo WiFi issue: https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/issues/1049#note_825620485 That workaround solves it, and yeah, one could just package, e.g, a daily cronjob that uses sed to alter every config file and pretend to have solved the issue - I am glad postmarketOS don't do that.

2024-08-06 07:05:03

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81voltd is packaged in #postmarketOS now: https://pkgs.postmarketos.org/package/master/postmarketos/aarch64/81voltd
I am quite positive that 81voltd will land in postmarketOS 24.12 (or, maybe, before in a service pack, so that you can use stable - which does not suffer from 'breakage by upstream' as much as edge does).
Also, regarding Plasma Mobile: Plasma Mobile 6 is a lot better than previous releases, I am writing this from Plasma Mobile on OnePlus 6, happily accepting rare weirdness for a better virtual keyboard.

2024-08-06 05:33:24

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Agreed. Don't put all eggs into one basket, and collaboration can always accomplish more.
That said, I'd really like to see some 'transparency' from @Purism: Where's the PureOS subscription money going? It does not have to be as detailed as your excellent monthly posts, but something would be really nice.

2024-08-05 20:22:13

#Librem5 users waiting for #PureOS Crimson: Giving money to Purism is not the only option:
https://liberapay.com/devrtz-PureOS_crimson
I (Peter) for one definitely trust @npub13a8…am5l more than a company distracted by building a robot ;-)

2024-08-05 18:15:00

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Some devices have not been ported to 20.04, but last weeks new OTA 5 is for devices that are on 20.04 - the devices page has details: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/
Meanwhile, the team works on getting 24.04 ready, Alfred and Florian mention that in the linked video.

2024-08-05 06:21:40

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Sorry about that, was very tired and forgot to run `git push -u origin main`. The link should work by now.

2024-08-05 06:20:37

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Sorry, apparently I was so incredibly tired that I forgot to git push it. It should be there now, ready for consumption! 🙂
But hey, finally some feedback again 😉

2024-08-04 21:29:19

Weekly GNU-like #MobileLinux Update (31/2024): Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA 5 and Jolla C2 news
https://linmob.net/weekly-update-31-2024/
#UbuntuTouch #Jolla #LinuxMobile #PinePhone #Phosh #Librem5 #SailfishOS #Sxmo

2024-08-03 10:39:24

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I am not doing much with it. It's basically an music/podcasts player with Organic Maps right now, although it fares worse than expected as a mapping device as the screen does not get that bright (and is generally not very good).

2024-07-28 21:25:34

Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (28/2024): Conferences and Progress Reports
https://linmob.net/weekly-update-30-2024/
#postmarketOS #SailfishOS #JollaC2 #UbuntuTouch #PlasmaMobile #Phosh #GUADEC #Sxmo #PinePhone #Librem5

2024-07-24 05:40:12

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Just trying to be helpful.
Have a good day!

2024-07-24 05:34:07

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Regarding following back: I am sorry, but I can't do that, as I use my timeline for content discovery, specifically non-hashtagged relevant linuxmobile stuff. If I followed everybody back, my feed would be too full to do that.
So: Write about LinuxMobile regularily and don't use any of the relevant hashtags and I may follow back ;-)

2024-07-24 05:30:52

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Depends on where you are (as in: is VoLTE a hard requirement?), and which distribution/OS or device you're talking about/interested in. (I don't need VoLTE yet, calling works for me on a stable distro).
Audio regressions unfortunately happen on fast moving distros as audio configs don't magically self-update for upstream kernel/pulseaudio/pipewire changes, see
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1e05mlr/oneplus_6_daily_driver/ or https://postmarketos.org/edge/
for recent examples, so going with boring stable options is recommended.

2024-07-24 05:11:13

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I've configured my Plasma to have this button, it's awesome, and it works for text input in the iced-powered IRC app halloy (I've installed it from flathub).
So far, I have not found many convergent apps written in iced, and, it's still considered experimental and lacks features like RTL support and Accessibility. Soo.. no idea, but no matter what, if you create an app or come across apps by others that work on mobile, let @npub1l3w…lr39 know ;-)

2024-07-22 06:03:38

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Ooh, that video is only 9 years old!

2024-07-22 06:02:23

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Nice! Any details, e.g., whether this is a pure software fix or whether there will be an additional hardware SKU?

2024-07-21 12:48:51

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You're welcome!

2024-07-20 20:00:05

New blog post: Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (Weeks 28 and 29 of 2024) https://linmob.net/weekly-update-28-29-2024/

2024-07-17 14:33:40

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These days I am using nixOS on my Surface Go 2. It's fine, but I don't have the webcam working (and have not tried hard, it seems to be possible though: https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Hardware/Microsoft/Surface_Go_2). Plata wrote about using other distros on that hardware: https://linmob.net/authors/plata/

2024-07-14 16:14:54

Like last Sunday: No #WeeklyUpdate today for vacations sake!
If you can't live without it: The gitlab pipeline collecting "all the feeds" has been run: https://framagit.org/linmob/linmob.frama.io/-/commit/22b7eada44f96f96e1485878eac861cc54586a37/pipelines

2024-07-12 17:53:12

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Looks like it might be an encoding issue: https://alpaka.garden/@braid/112763616979027405

2024-07-11 21:32:35

... and the LWN article about #Sxmo (https://lwn.net/Articles/981320/) will be on July 18th, 2024, or, if you please consider subscribing: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/981320/6e1ec6b44b213e32/

2024-07-11 21:29:53

The @npub16rq…egsp article about #postmarketOS is now freely available:
https://lwn.net/Articles/979522/

2024-07-11 16:11:33

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I think what we see in Lomiri, Phosh and Plasma Mobile (supposing that your post is mainly about these) is a mix of meeting expectations, replicating familiar patterns, and doing what works on a slab of glass.
I still miss physical keyboards (I felt so much more productive with my T-Mobile G1 back in the day, and the PinePhone with keyboard and Sxmo was also a productivity boost), and remembers PDAs (with GPE and Opie), I know a more 'productive' mobile experience is possible.

2024-07-10 19:47:15

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Everything should, IMHO. ;-)

2024-07-10 15:55:43

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Thank you for the kind words :-) I simply figured: I will just use the vacation to vacation, and use the ample time on longer train rides for the Weekly Update.

2024-07-07 21:06:26

As announced last week, the Weekly #MobileLinux Update is off-schedule and will be out on Tuesday, July 9th, 2024. It's necessary to take a vacation from time to time!
If you are really impatient, you can go through what would have been the 'core material' by downloading the artifacts of this CI job: https://framagit.org/linmob/linmob.frama.io/-/jobs/2436122

2024-06-24 19:56:33

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Great post, well done!

2024-06-24 19:07:45

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Awesome! One less use-case for Android :-) (I've been using eSIM.me cards for a while.)
Phones with non-Qualcomm SoC (like Librem 5 or PinePhone (Pro) that run Qualcomm modems, are not (yet) supported, right?

2024-06-20 20:48:03

New blog post: MFC15: Two Merge(d) requests and a Pull Request https://linmob.net/mfc15-two-merged-requests-and-a-pull-request/

2024-06-19 20:59:10

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Yeah, but cross compiling is not “building natively”, IMHO. People can already make it work for flathub, and with more and more aarch64 runners and VPS being available, it's not all bad. (I also don't think the “compiling for mobile” metaphor works as well for what is essentially “adaptive desktop Linux”.)
(My main computer is aarch64 btw, so … not my problem 😉. And with Snapdragon X (and similar efforts), the landscape may slowly change — even if Flutter tooling stays as bad as it is.)

2024-06-19 20:50:09

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When was that? My initial Librem 5 experience in 2021 was not great, either. That Redpine WiFi got hot... :D @npub18pw…yr8q @npub1huw…c5x7

2024-06-19 18:16:51

The new appMenu.css issue in #MobileConfigFirefox introduced with Firefox 127 (see https://linmob.net/mcf14-almost-128/) was surprisingly easy to tackle: https://codeberg.org/1peter10/mobile-config-firefox/commit/bd6c5828d5881b45cc25676a91029f9189b47607
With this, I also made room for the Translate button, so that the appMenu does not show a scroll bar by default.
This needs some testing (help welcome!), and if it turns out to be fine, I'll open a merge request.

2024-06-19 11:45:42

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If you want a device that is close to the weight and battery life of mainstream phones, I recommend you to go with an Android phone well supported by https://postmarketos.org/ (currently, the Poco F1 looks good, as camera support is incoming) - or, if you can live with an Android kernel, https://droidian.org/.

2024-06-19 11:42:40

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Aside from the fact that this is a comparison between elephants (Nokia) and mice (Purism and PINE64) in terms of resources, part of the deficiencies are just due to hardware choices. These phones are basically SBCs with LTE Modem and touchscreen, they don't use SoC that are made for the phone use case. Purism targeted the FSFs RYF certification (https://ryf.fsf.org/), hence all these choices you would not otherwise make. It's amazing that these devices work as well as they do.

2024-06-19 11:37:22

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I use mine daily, and it works for me (these days with postmarketOS 24.06, which is not yet quite as polished on it as polished in hardware adaptation as PureOS, but close enough).
I can't answer the question though. What does "reasonable" mean? My 'reasonable' is one call + like 5 text chats, zero music, because I need silence to focus and the battery life is good enough for that. Please quantify.
For Camera quality, just check what @npub18pw…yr8q has posted, they match what I've been getting.

2024-06-19 05:54:33

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I am happy to inform you that this is false, plain false: It's totally possible to build flutter apps for aarch64 GNU/Linux. I have managed to run all apps listed on https://linuxphoneapps.org/frameworks/flutter/ on pocketable aarch64 Linux phones to evaluate them, some (e.g. Goguma) straight from source, others from flathub or distribution packaging (deb, alpine apk).

2024-06-18 21:16:03

New blog post: MCF14: Almost 128 https://linmob.net/mcf14-almost-128/

2024-06-18 05:50:57

Something exciting from Xitter: #Lindroid, a new way to run Linux-y software on Android.
Quote:
"Kinda looks like a reverse waydroid, but you can have full hw accelerated Linux on your Android as an app"
Read more about in this thread:
https://nitter.poast.org/Khode_Erfan/status/1802331845633212554#m
https://x.com/Khode_Erfan/status/1802331845633212554

2024-06-16 20:45:35

Weekly GNU-like #MobileLinux Update (24/2024): #postmarketOS 24.06 and other developments
https://linmob.net/weekly-update-24-2024/
#LinuxMobile #SailfishOS #UbuntuTouch #FrOSCon2024 #PocoF1 #PinePhone #Librem5

2024-06-16 09:09:01

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I don't know much about benchmarking and don't really care - it did not throttle and it kept charging, which both happened before, without the cooling. And the phone had some load: Web browing in Firefox and some compiling even.

2024-06-15 21:40:14

I have just used my #Librem5 (with #postmarketOS Phosh) as little desktop for a few hours, and it has been surprisingly smooth.
I am pretty sure at least part of the reason was that I have attached one of these ridiculous phone fans for gaming.
(I have got a random one from Amazon, don't ask for the model, it's not a good fit - attaching it I struggled with the kill switches and volume rocker.)

2024-06-15 19:52:39

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Wow, this is awesome! Congrats!

2024-06-09 21:58:20

Weekly GNU-like #MobileLinux Update (23/2024): It All Adds Up
https://linmob.net/weekly-update-23-2024/
#LinuxMobile #Phosh #Sxmo #SailfishOS #UbuntuTouch #FuriLabs #Droidian #postmarketOS

2024-06-02 20:46:37

Weekly GNU-like #MobileLinux Update (22/2024): Multiple layouts in #libadwaita and an Update on #NemoMobile progress
https://linmob.net/weekly-update-22-2024/
#LinuxMobile #PinePhone #MauiKit #postmarketOS #Librem5 #UbuntuTouch #Mobian

2024-05-30 19:17:40

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It won't need all of KDE, see https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=libdeltachat-git @npub1rtv…ugrn @npub1l3w…lr39 @npub17gp…nrxn

2024-05-30 18:04:41

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Oh, that looks like it got considerably worse than when I added it to @npub1l3w…lr39 ... reminds me of Gajim :-( (which used to be fine accidentally, but is not anymore). I recommend kdeltachat instead - it's not in Alpine, sadly. @npub17gp…nrxn

2022-06-27 17:18:46

Quick update on #SurfaceGo2 battery life with #kdeneon User Edition (stock 5.13.* kernel):
It had 71% battery today at 10:15,
- standby -
68% at 12:38
- light webbrowsing -
60% at 13:15
- standby -
56% at 19:15.
No idea how Windows 10/11 compare, but this is fine in my book!