linmob

Glad you're less clumsy than I am. :-)

The accidental pasting definitely kept happening to me, likely due to my bad habit of highlighting sections while to focus on them.

As a trackpoint user, I am glad it's off by default.

Because of scrolling on Thinkpad keyboards (using the middle click), I had to turn that feature of every time, especially while working on longer documents I would otherwise accidentally paste stuff at random places.

(It's not just macOS.)

+1 - switched to Sway (and thus Wayland) in 2017 and it was okay then to only improve over time. At some point I switched xwayland off, as there were env vars to make everyhing I needed run natively on Wayland.

These days my setup is less radical/minimalistic, as I went back to GNOME (Wayland) about four years ago.

As long as new humans are still being born, there's always going to be beginners - with a few years delay, once they enter school or a work place. ;-)

Pocketblue IIUC has a A/B model and uses apps from flathub - that does not out work well with a 16GB eMMC, even 32GB is cramped.

That said, as mentioned in another thread here, work is being done to add PinePhone support.

because a lot of essential features only work in phones which are extremely expensive with less specs compared to its peers and in normal phones

I assume you are refering to the Librem 5? These days the Google Pixel 3a is coming close, as multiple people report reliable phone calls. Camera is still lacking, but once libcamera add auto-focus and the device gets a driver for the focus actuator (already in the works), it's going to be just as competent with better battery-life for less than USD/EUR 100. On the more pricey side, the Fairphone 5 has a good mind share and contributor count, making it quite likely that remaining issues are being solved soon.

With not-quite current hardware as supported by Pocketblue, performance is not that much of an issue, despite the OnePlus 6 being introduced in 2018. GNOME Shell mobile is quite smooth on it.

That said, if you want to start without the entire Linux desktop stack, you can, and there's even a project that already does something like that IIUC: https://sr.ht/~mil/framebufferphone/

Nitpick regarding apps: https://flathub.org/en/apps/collection/mobile/1 is the better link IMHO, even if not all apps in it do actually perform great on mobile [0], and some apps that work well on Mobile are not part of the collection due to lacking some bits in app metadata [1]. Help with sorting this out is very much welcome :-)

[0] https://framagit.org/linuxphoneapps/linuxphoneapps.frama.io/...

[1] https://framagit.org/linuxphoneapps/linuxphoneapps.frama.io/...

This is a really cool project, and IMHO the most important new-comer in the #MobileLinux distro space in a long time, as it takes a model proven on desktop, building upon a well-run distribution (Fedora) and applies it to mobile.

I have yet to attempt daily-driving it, but just trying it and easily switching mobile shells (e.g., from Plasma Mobile to Phosh) so easily[0] without have weird side-effects from the previous environment has been quite exciting!

[0] https://pocketblue.github.io/devices/oneplus-sdm845/#images-...

Just an aside, as a railway-nerd:

The new ICE's speed is actually lower than previous generations.

While not the fastest ICE, the new ICE-L (assuming you refer to it) with a top speed of 230km/h, is not actually slower than what it is supposed to replace on most routes: InterCity trains, topping out at 200km/h.

ICE-L, btw, was planned to be a IC train, but just like before with IC-T/ICE-T (same top speed of 230km/h), and IC X (ICE 4), DB management has a tendency to decide next-to-last minute, that new vehicles must earn money and thus get rebranded ICE, which is both more prestigious and (at least in a fictional world without "Sparpreis") pricey.

TL;DR: This would be outrageous if ICE-L was to replace ICE 3 (neo; 320km/h +) services - but it is not.

The C2 is a different device than the new one linked above, which was way more affordable (~250 Euro) with a 4G Unisoc SoC.

Please note that user reviews are only out for the FLX1, not the FLX1s, which is about to start shipping soon. That said, as they went with the same SoC, hardware enablement is hopefully going to be fine and the software will work as well as on the FLX1.

I have their FLX1 device here, but I have yet to spend more time with it (instead of my postmarketOS daily driver I am writing this on). It's humongous (the s is going to be smaller), which is holding me back - but feel free to ask questions.

What's nice is that it's 5G hardware, and as they use the (4.19 IIRC) Android kernel they have a lot of hardware working which would be a huge struggle on mainline (think photography, finger print, ...). The Android integration via a Waydroid fork is also decent (but 'basic waydroid' is IMHO fine too, the hardware just needs enough RAM), and overall, it feels quite polished and the team is responsive in adressing customer feedback where they can.

Initially, due to the PinePhone not using libhybris but a mainline kernel, the SailfishOS browser and mail app was not working at all. At least the browser was fixed; mail later on AFAIR too. Generally, judging an OS that has officially supported hardware by an unfinished community port is not something I would call fair or useful ;-)

UniSoc maybe? It appears to be reverse-engineerable [0].

[0] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Jolla_C2_(jolla-c2)

That's their US made patriot phone, the regular less than half of that. Also, please read up on the concept of economies of scale.

If you go with postmarketOS (good!), and don't want to touch anything that touched Purism, better avoid anything GTK (Phosh, GNOME Mobile and related apps). While Purism did not make a competitive phone, their investments into libre software went great and keep paying off.

I am pretty sure that it's not going to be the Librem 5, despite Purism's efforts to get it RYF certified (which, thinking of the Redpine WiFi card) went so far that they seriously impacted user experience.

Why? There's no Android port for that device and they keep mentioning LineageOS.

Even the PINE64 PinePhone would be more likely, as that has Android support and even some LineageOS 22 support [1]. The Replicant project had eyed it as a target device [2].

That said, I'd expect a different device, and, assuming LineageOS supports one, and I would not be suprised to see a device that's not powered by a Qualcomm, Mediatek or Samsung SoC.

[1] https://github.com/GloDroidCommunity/pine64-pinephone/releas...

[2] https://blog.replicant.us/2024/03/replicant-status-and-repor...

Climate crisis and WW2 do not compare. Many people died in WW2, but entire animal and plant species were not wiped out.

We're killing what we eat (and what we eat is nurtured by) at a rapid speed, at scale. This will first show in bearable price increases (as it already does with coffee and cocoa) and only get worse from there, think famine (in regions where this has not happened in a lifetime).

Good luck with keeping a civilization 'stable' when people are hangry at scale.

And the worst part is: While war can be ended, un-extincting is not a solved problem at all.

Fair point!

That said, Google Play is not really the thing to compare this too. F-Droid could be. Summing up the "Show all ..." counts, F-Droid clocks in at 6147 apps, and it started way earlier (2009? 2010?).

Some of these F-Droid apps (specifically those created in QtQuick or Flutter) should also run with very minor tweaks on #MobileLinux.

Also, there's more than these 720, some are just very hard to evaluate (because they are for hardware or services I don't have/use), which then keeps me from adding these apps.

Honestly, given my experience from distro hopping, I am certain that collecting solutions across distributions and implementing them in one can go very far. It's almost as if distributions contributors too rarely try out other distributions to then steal what the other distribution does better.

Small enthusiast distributions with a bit of a hype can gain good features in by just pulling in knowledgable users missing things from their previous distro - and they can move a lot faster than the Debians or Fedoras of the world can, no committee decisions to be made first.

Looking at commit histories, I'd say:

The Furilabs people are literally former Droidian people.

"USB-C 2.0" in the specs reveals that. DisplayPort Alt Mode requires at least USB 3.0, the PinePhone Pro would be a Linux phone supporting that.

That's not quite accurate IMHO, as the OG PinePhone also supports the feature, despite being USB 2.0. The fact that PINE64 only got it working in PinePhone hardware revision 1.2a maybe also reveals why few phones (whether they support USB 2 or 3.*, e.g., the Pixel 8 was the first Pixel phone to support the feature) actually support DisplayPort Alt Mode: It does not just add cost for parts, but also makes the design more complicated (and may require multiple design iterations to get right, which are expensive).

So: If DisplayPort Alt Mode or somthing like "USB-C video out" is not mentioned, you can usually safely assume that the device does not support it.

close to zero Linux programs that are actually usable on a small touch display

Beg to differ: https://linuxphoneapps.org/

(And no, that does not list all of them. Only all I got around to adding.)

You're partially correct. Ubuntu Touch was discontinued by Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) in April 2017.

However, Ubuntu Touch was picked up by the UBports project (that by now has their own foundation) and has been continued to this day. Currently they are preparing a Ubuntu Touch release based on Ubuntu 24.04 (moving on from Ubuntu 20.04). See https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/ for more.

Regarding the FLX1(s): FuriLabs worked on a way to support Ubuntu Touch apps (that can be found at https://open-store.io/) natively on FuriOS. It's also possible to boot Ubuntu Touch on their FLX1 hardware.

I think seba_dos1 refers to PureOS [0] (for the Librem 5; PureOS is essentially a FSF-endorsed Debian) and Mobian [1]. Both use a close-to-mainline kernel, Mobian's goal is to "bring Debian to mobile devices. Over time, the idea is to minimize the Mobian specific pieces by “upstreaming” customization to the original projects."

[0] https://pureos.net/

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/Mobian/

I maintain a project [1] that tries to collect and track them all, and ... at least for keeping track of how they all develop, there's not a few apps. ;-)

[1] https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/

I think that's because Sebastian develops software for the Librem 5 and thus is likely not running a stock PureOS Byzantium.

I managed to get similar results in my holidays in late August(on postmarketOS 25.06 with Millipixels 0.23.0 and a patched kernel [1]).

Please note that I just used the Librem 5 as my "mainline Linux camera" and have not had a SIM in it in a while, and thus can't comment on how well postmarketOS 25.06 would work for daily driving.

[1]: Based on the APKBUILD in postmarketOS (https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/blob...) with https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/linux/-/merge_requests/816.pa... added on top.

Mind sharing which two apps you went with?

When installing just two apps, even if both are in the same (KDE or GNOME) realm, you can very easily end up with 8 flatpaks (including runtimes) or more. This is due to a variety runtimes and their versions: One for KDE or GNOME Platform release (about two a year) plus a yearly freedesktop base) and not all apps being updated to the latest runtimes constantly.

You then have to add at least 6 locale flatpaks to these hypothetical 8 flatpaks.

Especially with Debian, locales matter, of you don't do a `sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales` and pick what you need before installing flatpaks on a default install, you will get everything and thus gigabytes of translations you don't even understand, wasting your disk space.

I follow the ecosystem for two projects [0], and the app ecosystem keeps getting better. Also, there's always Waydroid (LineageOS equivalent of Android 13 in a Container) and Android Translation Layer [1].

The best way to experience #LinuxMobile is IMHO on former Android Devices like the OnePlus 6 or Pixel 3a, as these are well designed devices with SoCs intended for phones. While having native hardware would be great, it's really hard to produce relatively bug-free hardware from scratch. With mainline, the SoC is always going to be older, and small-scale production leads to high prices. The economics just don't work out for non-enthusiasts who then ideally are also up for paying a software support subscription. Also, as a manufacturer you'll want to somewhat control the experience, leading to 'yet another small scale device-specific distribution, which has it's downsides.

Across devices audio issues are unfortunately still somewhat common, in part caused by the Pipewire transition (things that had been figured out for PulseAudio need to be figured out again). But it's on people's radar, and funds are invested to solve this [2].

VoLTE is another challenge, as it allows to carriers to become more gatekeepy with their stupid device support lists - of course there are workarounds like using a SIP account, but that's too inconvenient for many. Also, RCS support is not yet there, but as long as SMS/MMS fallbacks are still around, this not a dealbreaker.

[0] https://linmob.net, https://linuxphoneapps.org

[1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Android_Translation_Layer

[2] https://postmarketos.org/blog/2025/08/17/callaudiod-wireplum...

"No one was working on it for year" is both untrue and unfair. There have been continued improvements (both PinePhone and PinePhone Pro), and I know that there are people who have put in the midnight oil to make them happen.

What that work was not is 'paid for by PINE64'. It's also not been enough to raise the bar enough to make the phone work well enough; but if you consider what's involved there, it makes sense.

You don't just need to write/fix a driver, you need upstream (or at least a distribution) to accept it and include it for that work to make a meaningful difference for anyone else.

It did not get far in market share, sure, but it never stopped going like Big Screen did and made the transition to 6 at the same time as Plasma Desktop.

Here are some recent developments:

1. https://plasma-mobile.org/2025/07/08/releases-25-07/ (also explaining that most software is part of 'Plasma Gear', which makes sense as it is software for both mobile and desktop, but has the downside of making Mobile less visible)

2. https://blogs.kde.org/2025/07/05/this-week-in-plasma-chuggin... and look for Plasma Keyboard in this post. (Personally I am a bit sad that they are seemingly abandoning Maliit, which is also used in Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch and is IMHO fine, but hey, at least it shows that Mobile is not dead.)