The release of the postmarketOS 23.06 project has been published, 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 typical solutions from major industry players that define the direction of development. Builds have been prepared for the PINE64 PinePhone, Purism Librem 5, and 29 community-supported devices, including Samsung Galaxy A3/A5/S4, Xiaomi Mi Note 2/Redmi 2, OnePlus 6, Lenovo A6000, ASUS MeMo Pad 7, and even Nokia N900. Limited experimental support is provided for more than 300 devices.
The postmarketOS environment is maximally unified and moves all device-specific components into separate packages; all other packages are identical across devices and based on Alpine Linux packages. Where possible, vanilla Linux kernels are used in builds, and if that’s not feasible, kernels from the firmware prepared by device manufacturers are utilized. The main user interfaces offered include KDE Plasma Mobile, Phosh, GNOME Mobile, and Sxmo, but there is also the option to install other environments, including MATE and Xfce.
In the new release:
- The number of officially supported community devices has not changed — as in the previous release, support for 31 devices is declared, but one device has been removed and one added. The PINE64 PineTab tablet has been excluded due to a lack of maintainer. Nevertheless, the components for supporting the PINE64 PineTab remain in the developer branch and can be returned to the stable branch if a maintainer appears. A new device on the list is the Samsung Galaxy Grand Max smartphone.
- The possibility of using the GNOME Mobile user environment has been implemented, which utilizes the GNOME Shell shell edition adapted for use on smartphones and tablets with touch screens. GNOME Mobile components are based on the GNOME Shell 44 branch from Git. A mobile version of the GNOME Software application has been prepared for managing application installations.
- The Phosh environment, based on GNOME technologies and developed by Purism for the Librem 5 smartphone, has been updated to version 0.26. Compared to the previous release of postmarketOS, Phosh now includes a new plugin for displaying user and emergency call information, plugins now allow for custom settings, the quick launch menu has been redesigned, icon animations in the status bar have been implemented, and the configurator has been improved. By default, the mobile version of the Evince application is used for document viewing.
- The KDE Plasma Mobile shell has been updated to version 5.27.5 (formerly version 5.26.5 was supplied), with a detailed review published earlier. The SMS/MMS sending program interface has been changed.
- The Sxmo (Simple X Mobile) graphical shell, based on the Sway compositor and adhering to the Unix philosophy, has been updated to version 1.14, which features redesigned handling of sleep mode, uses the sxmobar for the status bar, replaces the icons in the status bar, and rewrites components for working with MMS and logs.
- By default, the installation of translation files is implemented, and the base locale has changed from C.UTF-8 to en_US.UTF-8.
- The capability to share the internet with other devices via USB port (USB tethering) has been brought to a working state.
- In the installation images, the minimum password length has been reduced from 8 to 6 characters.
- Out of the box support for sound and background backlight control on the PineBook Pro smartphone has been implemented.
Source: opennet.ru
