The postmarketOS 21.12 project, which develops the distribution, has been released. Linux for smartphones, based on the Alpine package base Linux, the standard C library Musl and the BusyBox utility suite. The goal of the project is to provide Linux- a smartphone distribution that's independent of the official firmware support lifecycle and isn't tied to the standard solutions of major industry players that set the direction of development. Builds are available for the PINE64 PinePhone, Purism Librem 5, and 23 community-supported devices, including the Samsung Galaxy A3/A3/S4, Xiaomi Mi Note 2/Redmi 2, OnePlus 6, and even the Nokia N900. Limited experimental support is provided for over 300 devices.
The postmarketOS environment is as unified as possible and places all device-specific components in a separate package; all other packages are identical for all devices and are based on Alpine packages. Linux. The builds use the vanilla kernel whenever possible. Linux, and if that's not possible, then kernels from firmware prepared by device manufacturers. KDE Plasma Mobile, Phosh, and Sxmo are offered as the primary user interfaces, but other environments are also available, including GNOME, MATE, and Xfce.
In the new release:
- The package database is synchronized with Alpine Linux 3.15.
- The number of devices officially supported by the community has been increased from 15 to 23. Added support 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 which will be transferred from the category of devices supported by the community to the “testing” category before the appearance of the maintainer, for which ready assemblies are not published. The change is due to the departure of the maintainer and the need to update the core for Nokia N900 and test assemblies. Of the projects that continue to form assemblies for the Nokia N900, Maemo Leste is noted.
- Supported smartphones and tablets are built with Phosh, KDE Plasma Mobile, and Sxmo user interfaces optimized for mobile devices. For other types of devices, such as the PineBook Pro laptop, builds have been prepared with fixed desktops based on KDE Plasma, GNOME, Sway, and Phosh.
- Updated versions of mobile user interfaces. The graphical shell Sxmo (Simple X Mobile), adhering to the Unix philosophy, has been updated to version 1.6. The key change in the new version was the transition to using the Sway window manager instead of dwm (dwm support was retained as an option) and moving the graphics stack from X11 to Wayland. Other improvements in Sxmo include a redesign of the screen lock code, support for group chats, and the ability to send / receive MMS.
The Plasma Mobile shell has been updated to version 21.12, a detailed review of which was offered in a separate news item.
- 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 by the release of postmarketOS 21.06 SP4 and implementing such innovations as a splash screen to indicate the launch of applications, a Wi-Fi indicator in hotspot mode access, rewind buttons in the widget with a media player and stop playing when you turn off the headphones. Additional changes added in postmarketOS 21.12 include updating many GNOME programs, including gnome-settings, to the GNOME 41 state, as well as fixing issues with displaying the Firefox icon in the preview window.
- A TTYescape handler has been added, allowing you to switch to console mode with a classic command line on devices without an external keyboard connected. This mode is considered similar to the "Ctrl+Alt+F1" screen provided in classic distributions. Linux, which can be used to selectively terminate processes, resolve interface freezes, and perform other diagnostics. Console mode is activated by pressing the power button three times while holding down 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, which adds the ability to control the application list filter in Phosh and change the timeout for entering deep sleep mode. In postmarketOS 21.12, this default timeout has been reduced from 15 minutes to 2 minutes to save battery power.
- The toolkit for generating boot files (postmarketos-mkinitfs) has been rewritten, which has improved support for scripts for installing additional files related to the boot process (boot-deploy), which significantly improved the stability of updating the kernel and initramfs.
- A new set of configuration files for Firefox (mobile-config-firefox 3.0.0) has been proposed, which is adapted for changes in the design of Firefox 91. In the new version, the Firefox navigation bar has been moved to the bottom of the screen, the reader mode interface has been improved (reader view), a blocker has been added by default uBlock Origin ads.
Source: opennet.ru
