After 6 months of development, the postmarketOS 25.12 project, which develops the distribution, has been released Linux for mobile devices, 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 distribution for smartphones and tablets that is independent of the official firmware support lifecycle and isn't tied to the standard solutions of major industry players. Builds have been prepared for 62 devices, including the PINE64 PinePhone Pro, Purism Librem 5, OnePlus 6, Fairphone 5, Google Nexus 10, Google Pixel 3a, Nokia N900, Lenovo A60xx, ASUS MeMo Pad 7, as well as various Samsung Galaxy and Xiaomi models. Limited experimental support is provided for over 600 devices.
The postmarketOS environment is unified and places all device-specific components in a separate package. All other packages are identical for all devices and are based on packages from the Alpine distribution. 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, GNOME Mobile, and Sxmo are offered as the primary user interfaces, but other environments are also available, including MATE, COSMIC, and Xfce.
In the new release:
- The number of ready-to-use builds has increased from 57 to 62. Support for the Lenovo ThinkSmart View tablet has been added.
- The kernel build for Qualcomm Snapdragon 410/412 (MSM8916) chips and all devices using it have been moved to the "testing" category: Arrow DragonBoard 410c, BQ Aquaris X5, Lenovo A6000, Lenovo A6010, Motorola Moto G4 Play, Samsung Galaxy A3, Samsung Galaxy A5, Samsung Galaxy E7, Samsung Galaxy Grand Max, Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Value Edition, Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0, Samsung Galaxy Tab A 9.7, Wileyfox Swift, Xiaomi Mi Note 2, Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 Pro, Xiaomi Redmi 2.
- The KDE Plasma Mobile desktop has been updated to version 6.5.3 (previously version 6.3.5). Compared to the previous release, the launcher has been improved. Android-applications using the Waydroid toolkit, faster lock screen loading, and a modernized Folio home screen. The camera app has been replaced with Plasma Camera 2.1.0 instead of GNOME Snapshot, and the maliit on-screen keyboard has been replaced with the plasma-keyboard package, based on the Qt Virtual Keyboard, a Qt-based on-screen keyboard.
- The Phosh desktop environment, based on GNOME technologies and developed by Purism for the Librem 5 smartphone, has been updated to version 0.51 (previously version 0.47). Changes include improved automatic screen brightness control, a button for quickly enabling/disabling location services, initial desktop support, the ability to write plugins in Vala, displaying thumbnails in the file selection dialog, controlling playback from the screensaver, incorporating settings from the postmarketOS tweaks app into the configurator, and expanding the capabilities of the Stevia on-screen keyboard.
- The Sxmo (Simple X Mobile) graphical shell, based on the Sway compositing manager and adhering to Unix philosophy, has been updated to version 1.18.1 (previously 1.17.1). The new version adds support for the i3 and river window managers and implements a menu for quick actions (Quick Actions), such as enabling/disabling Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and the flashlight. Support for the callaudiod background process has been discontinued and replaced with a plugin for the WirePlumber audio session manager.
- GNOME components have been updated to the GNOME 49 branch, but the GNOME Mobile user environment, which uses a GNOME Shell edition optimized for use on touchscreen smartphones and tablets, remains on the GNOME 48 branch. The GNOME Software application manager has been updated to version 49.2 (previously version 45.3). New postmarketOS installations include all GVFS backends, allowing out-of-the-box connectivity to devices via the MTP protocol.
- The mobile-config-firefox package has been updated to version 5.1.0, containing settings that enable using standard Firefox on mobile devices. The new version adds an "about:mobile" service page where you can manually change browser settings. An option has been added to position the address bar at the top or bottom of the screen. Reliability of pop-up windows within the browser interface, such as those used when opening menus and adding bookmarks, has been improved.
- The package database is synchronized with Alpine Linux 3.23. The apk 3 package manager is used.
Source: opennet.ru
