The release of postmarketOS 21.12 has been announced, developing a Linux distribution for smartphones based on the Alpine Linux package base, the standard C library Musl, and the BusyBox utility set. The project's goal is to provide a Linux distribution for smartphones that is independent of the lifecycle support of official firmware and not tied to standard solutions from major industry players dictating the direction of development. Builds are prepared for PINE64 PinePhone, Purism Librem 5, and 23 community-supported devices, including Samsung Galaxy A3/A3/S4, Xiaomi Mi Note 2/Redmi 2, OnePlus 6, and even Nokia N900. Limited experimental support has been provided for over 300 devices.
The postmarketOS environment is highly unified and extracts all device-specific components into separate packages; all other packages are identical for all devices and based on Alpine Linux packages. Vanilla Linux kernel is used in builds wherever possible, and if not, kernels from firmware prepared by device manufacturers are used. The main user interfaces offered are KDE Plasma Mobile, Phosh, and Sxmo, but it is also possible to install other environments, including GNOME, MATE, and Xfce.
In the new release:
- The package base has been synchronized with Alpine Linux 3.15.
- The number of officially supported community devices has increased from 15 to 23. Support has been added for Arrow DragonBoard 410c, Lenovo A6000/A6010, ODROID HC, PINE64 PineBook Pro, PINE64 RockPro64, Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0/9.7, and Xiaomi Pocophone F1. The Nokia N900 PC communicator has been temporarily removed from the list of supported devices; support for it will be transitioned from the community-supported category to the 'testing' category, for which ready builds are not published, until a maintainer is found. This change is related to the departure of the maintainer and the need to update the kernel for Nokia N900 and test builds. Among the projects continuing to build for Nokia N900 is Maemo Leste.
- Builds with user interfaces Phosh, KDE Plasma Mobile, and Sxmo, optimized for mobile devices, have been created for supported smartphones and tablets. For other types of devices, such as the PineBook Pro laptop, builds featuring desktop environments based on KDE Plasma, GNOME, Sway, and Phosh have been prepared.
- Mobile user interface versions have been updated. The Sxmo (Simple X Mobile) graphical shell, adhering to Unix philosophy, has been updated to version 1.6. A key change in the new version is the switch to using the Sway window manager instead of dwm (support for dwm remains as an option) and the transition of the graphical stack from X11 to Wayland. Other improvements in Sxmo include a redesign of the screen lock code, group chat support, and the ability to send/receive MMS.
The Plasma Mobile shell has been updated to version 21.12, a detailed overview of which was provided in a separate news article.
- The Phosh environment, based on GNOME technologies and developed by Purism for the Librem 5 smartphone, continues to be based on version 0.14.0, proposed in the release of postmarketOS 21.06 SP4. It implements features such as a splash screen for indicating application launches, a Wi-Fi indicator in hotspot mode, rewind buttons in the media player widget, and playback cessation when headphones are disconnected. Among additional changes added in postmarketOS 21.12, many GNOME programs, including gnome-settings, have been updated to GNOME 41, as well as resolving issues with the display of the Firefox icon in the preview window.
- A TTYescape handler has been added, allowing switching to console mode with a classic command line on devices without an external keyboard. This mode is seen as an equivalent to the 'Ctrl+Alt+F1' screen provided in classic Linux distributions, which can be used for selectively terminating processes, diagnosing interface freezes, and other diagnostics. Activation of console mode is performed by pressing the power button three times while holding the volume up button. A similar combination is used to return to the graphical interface.
- The postmarketos-tweaks application has been updated to version 0.9.0, introducing the ability to manage the application list filter in Phosh and change the deep sleep timeout. In postmarketOS 21.12, this timeout has been reduced by default from 15 to 2 minutes to save battery life.
- The toolkit for generating boot files (postmarketos-mkinitfs) has been rewritten, improving support for scripts to install additional files related to the boot process (boot-deploy), which has significantly increased the stability of kernel and initramfs updates.
- A new set of configuration files for Firefox (mobile-config-firefox 3.0.0) has been proposed, adapted for the design changes in Firefox 91. In the new version, the Firefox navigation bar has been moved to the bottom of the screen, the reader view interface has been improved, and the ad blocker uBlock Origin has been added by default.
Source: opennet.ru
