The release of the postmarketOS 22.06 project has been announced, which develops 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 support lifecycle of official firmware and not tied to the conventional solutions of major industry players that dictate the direction of development. Builds are prepared for PINE64 PinePhone, Purism Librem 5, and 25 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 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 is synchronized with Alpine Linux 3.16. The release preparation cycle for postmarketOS has been shortened after the formation of a new branch of Alpine — the new release was prepared and tested within 3 weeks, instead of the previous 6 weeks.
- The number of officially supported community devices has increased from 25 to 27. Support has been added for Samsung Galaxy S III and SHIFT 6mq smartphones.
- Support for system updates to the new release of postmarketOS has been added without the need for re-flashing. Updates are currently only available for systems with graphical environments Sxmo, Phosh, and Plasma Mobile. At this stage, support is provided for updating from version 21.12 to 22.06, but the unofficially developed update installation mechanism can be used to switch between any postmarketOS releases, including rolling back to a previous release (for example, you can install the ‘edge’ branch, which is developing the next release, and then revert to version 22.06). For managing updates, currently only the command line interface is available (install the postmarketos-release-upgrade package and run the utility of the same name), but future integration with GNOME Software and KDE Discover is expected.
- The Sxmo (Simple X Mobile) graphical interface, based on the Sway composite manager and adhering to the Unix philosophy, has been updated to version 1.9. The new version adds support for device profiles (different key layouts and features can be activated for each device), improves Bluetooth functionality, utilizes Pipewire by default for multimedia stream management, and revamps menus for handling incoming calls and sound control, while service management is now handled by superd.
- The Phosh environment, based on GNOME technologies and developed by Purism for the Librem 5 smartphone, has been updated to version 0.17, featuring minor visible improvements (such as a mobile network connection indicator), resolving issues with sleep mode transition, and continuing to refine the interface. Future plans include syncing Phosh components with the GNOME 42 codebase and migrating applications to GTK4 and libadwaita. Among the newly added applications in this version of postmarketOS based on GTK4 and libadwaita is the calendar-planner Karlender.
- The KDE Plasma Mobile shell has been updated to version 22.04, which was detailed in a separate news article.
- The fwupd firmware update tool now provides the ability to install alternative firmware for the PinePhone smartphone modem.
- Added unudhcpd, a simple DHCP server capable of assigning 1 IP address to any client that sends a request. The specified DHCP server is designed specifically for establishing a communication channel when connecting a computer to a phone via USB (for example, this connection is used for accessing the device via SSH). The server is very compact and not prone to issues when connecting the phone to several different computers.
Source: opennet.ru
