Most Linux distributions designed to run on smartphones use the Phosh, Plasma Mobile, or Lomiri user interfaces, although there are a few other options… and now there’s one more. Pangolin Mobile is an open source mobile shell designed for dahliaOS, a dual-kernel operating that’s intended to combine “the best of GNU/Linux and Fuchsia OS,” with […]
Ubuntu Touch OTA-16 released with improved browser, video recording, Android app support and more
The latest update to the Ubuntu Touch operating system for smartphones and tablets is here, and it’s a big update, with changes to more than a third of all binary packages in the operating system. With official releases available for 26 different phones and tablets, Ubuntu Touch OTA-16 includes a number of updates to core features of […]
Now you can make video calls on a PinePhone (but it’s very much a work in progress)
When the PinePhone began shipping to early adopters, it had all the hardware you’d expect from a smartphone, but it lacked the software needed to make some of that hardware work. If you were one of the first people to get your hands on a PinePhone, you had a Linux-friendly phone with a camera that […]
Plasma Mobile updates make the user interface more customizable (and a bit more Android-like)
There are several different user interfaces available for Linux smartphones, but the one that will probably feel the most familiar to Android users is KDE’s Plasma Mobile. Like Android, it has a home screen, an app drawer, navigation buttons on the bottom, status notifications at the top, and a quick settings panel that appears when […]
Open Source phone news roundup: FreeBSD, Google-free Android, and Ubuntu Touch
The next version of Ubuntu Touch is scheduled to launch on March 10, and the folks at UBPorts are looing for testers willing to check out the latest features, bug fixes, and more. The developers of the ExpidusOS smartphone Linux distribution that uses the Xfce desktop environment have outlined a roadmap for the next six […]
Linux smartphone news roundup: Xfce for phones, browser and camera updates, and more
There’s a new Linux distribution for smartphones that’s the first I’m aware of to be based on the Xfce desktop environment, but while the first pre-release builds of ExpidusOS for the PinePhone are now available for download, there’s still a lot of work to be done to make it into a usable operating system. It […]
F(x)tec Pro1-X will ship in August with a Snapdragon 662 processor rather than March with an SD835 chip
The F(x)tec Pro1-X is a smartphone with a slide-out keyboard and support for running Android, LineageOS, or Ubuntu Touch operating systems. The phone went up for pre-order through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in late 2020 and it was scheduled to begin shipping in March. But now the ship date has been pushed back to August. […]
Future PinePhones will ship with Manjaro and Plasma Mobile (and other updates on the keyboard, modem firmware, and more)
After shipping five different PinePhone Community Edition models, each with a different operating system and/or user interface pre-installed, Pine64 ended the Community Edition program this month. So what’s next? A few things: Pine64 has announced that future PinePhones will ship with Manjaro Linux and the KDE Plasma Mobile user interface pre-installed. If you already have […]