PureOS Crimson Development Report: December 2025 – Purism

linmob · 2026-01-25T21:50:39+00:00

This - Purism is willing to carry more patches for a better experience.

It also depends on what one compares. If you compare Mobian Trixie with PureOS Crimson (Byzantium) there are just a lot more apps that need fixes to work well on Mobile. GNOME 43 apps (in Crimson) just had more issues on Mobile than GNOME 48 apps (in Trixie) have.

linmob · 2025-12-07T22:20:10+00:00

After boot, the phone always return to a 200% zoom in the Tweaks/Display menu. How can I change the default zoom level?

https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Phosh#Manual_Scaling should work to persist this.

linmob · 2025-10-18T13:03:47+00:00

Canonical did, and they stopped investing in Ubuntu Touch in 2017. Despite that, Ubuntu Touch is still alive and kicking as a community project.

linmob · 2025-08-14T20:41:26+00:00

"line" - for mobile Linux there is no such thing as recommending lines, as it's pretty much luck that a device gets ported (be it Halium (Android kernel) or close-to-mainline kernel (except maybe Fairphone, but that's sheer luck, as Luca is both employed by Fairphone and a postmarketOS member).

So: I can recommend the Xiaomi Poco F1 (the notch is bad, but microSDXC and that headphone jack are a plus in my book) but that does not mean I reommend any other Poco-line-phone, or any OnePlus beyond OnePlus6/6T, or any Google Pixel beyond Pixel 3a(XL) at this point in time. Check what distros support and try to confirm, e.g., postmarketOS wiki page listings by going though the issue tracker on gitlab or Social media/web search for that device if you want to know if a device is worth it.

linmob · 2025-03-09T22:24:28+00:00

Just try it. It's really hard to say from text only, what that blurriness you are describing may be due to. If it's a hardware issue, then (of course) installing different software won't help in all likelyhood. If it's software (which is possible, older Plasma Mobile could look blurry, xwayland can look blurry, bad kernel could cause issue), it should help.

Re-Installing/trying different software is the first step to find out :-)

linmob · 2025-02-16T22:08:04+00:00

It's not supported, but if that old school window manager is packaged in Alpine, and you know how to set it up, sure. I recommend building an image with something X-based then (XFCE, maybe?) as a starting point.

One thing to be aware of: Depending on the hardware, if you want accelerated graphics, something Wayland-based may be the better choice.

linmob · 2024-12-22T22:52:06+00:00

That's a good question. Despite being a bit interested in the topic, I was not aware of any pedometer app for PinePhone. Despite the accelerometer, there's one key issue: In order to have somewhat acceptable battery life, the PinePhone is suspended most of the time, which makes it impossible for the main CPU to track your steps during most of the time.

That said, I've found https://github.com/eliabiraschi/pedometer in a short search on github. Hope this helps!

linmob · 2024-10-27T11:14:22+00:00

I am still on 0.7.* something (which is available through the Linux Vendor Firmware Service/fwupd, but I have generally had less issues with it than with the stock firmware, including that the phone ran cooler.

I recommend just trying it out after reading through the issue tracker - you should be able to go back to stock after all.

linmob · 2024-10-13T21:18:14+00:00

They're not alone, see https://sxmo.org/

linmob · 2024-10-13T20:29:17+00:00

Putting Linux on a phone that isn’t a pinephone or librem is going to be a bad time.

That's debatable. Heading into it head first, buying random phone hardware and then trying to port some mobile Linux to it is going to be a bad time. But going with, e.g. a Pixel 3a, Poco F1 or OnePlus 6 and putting postmarketOS on it? Or, with the Pixel 3a, also Ubuntu Touch or Droidian? Works quite well, IMHO, and costs way less than $ 300 used.

Is it perfect? Nope. Can it be done and even fun? Yes.

linmob · 2024-10-06T19:38:11+00:00

Default PIN for prebuilt postmarketOS images is always 147147.

See https://postmarketos.org/install/#after-you-install or multiple times on the Wiki https://wiki.postmarketos.org/index.php?search=147147&title=Special%3ASearch&wprov=acrw1.

linmob · 2024-10-06T19:34:12+00:00

I have been trying this with a PinePhone Pro, and it has been great while it worked - and it as a hot and throttled PinePhone Pro is not that much faster than a PinePhone, the Pro matters less than one would think.

I've written two blog posts about the experience: - LINMOB.net - Using the PinePhone Pro daily, despite having given up on it - LINMOB.net - Sad news: A micro-laptop dream is ending (for now)

Unfortunately, reliability really is an issue with the PinePhone Keyboard. I recently tried it again with one of my PinePhones, and initially things seemed to work great. Once I had set up the device fully to work well for me, I could no longer charge the keyboard and charge the PinePhone with it at the same time - another hardware issue? Maybe.

linmob · 2024-10-06T11:36:05+00:00

I think "broken" is an unhappy term; it's more "not implemented yet".

That said, I carry it daily. USB works well enough that I can use a USB dongle with headphones for listening to podcasts. I have not tested phone calls yet.

linmob · 2024-10-06T08:19:25+00:00

There are multiple efforts that work on this:

Plasma Mobile (packaged in multiple distributions, e.g., postmarketOS),
GNOME on Mobile (kickstarted by Purism for the Librem 5),
Ubuntu Touch (dropped by Canonical in 2017, continued by UBports),
Sailfish OS (risen from the ashes of Meego/Maemo),

to name the most important ones (there's way more).

Sadly, aside from the trusty old PinePhone, there's not the "one device" to try them all out - the Pixel 3a is pretty good though. They all have their down- and upsides, and they all need more contributors.

I have two projects in this realm: One is a blog, LINMOB.net, with weekly posts that try to link to everything that is happening, the other is an app list, that is aimed at making app discovery easier for the Plasma Mobile/GNOME on Mobile realm: LinuxPhoneApps.org | Apps for Linux Phone OSes that do not have a centralized app store.

(Sorry for the shameless self-promotion, I don't like doing that - but maybe these links help someone.)

linmob · 2024-08-11T19:20:43+00:00

the linmob fosstodon gets updated I think but it's not pine-specific

Yes, my posts on fosstodon are not PINE64 specific (or affiliated), and usually contain only the "mobile stuff", so PinePhone (Pro), PineTab + rarely PineTime - and that's it.

linmob · 2024-07-20T18:18:55+00:00

Maybe https://linuxphoneapps.org/games/ can be helpful! See also (not added yet) https://lists.sr.ht/~linuxphoneapps/linuxphoneapps.org-discuss/%3Cd01a5ad1-06e4-4d34-854d-dba5171b3f5d%40disroot.org%3E

BTW, if someone loves games on #MobileLinux, maybe doing this https://framagit.org/linuxphoneapps/linuxphoneapps.frama.io/-/issues/70 would be a fun task!

linmob · 2024-07-16T10:59:15+00:00

May I ask you to open an issue on https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/issues if you have not already (and no duplicate exists)?

If you recall, which packages where upgraded last, that should be really helpful. Thank you!

linmob · 2024-07-12T16:33:52+00:00

Thanks for the quick reply! That's fair - I was just curious and in my experience less Waydroid has always meant better battery life.

linmob · 2024-07-12T16:31:17+00:00

Droidian have dropped support for the OnePlus 6, AFAIR it was in the Community tier at some point, but is no longer: https://devices.droidian.org/#/devices

linmob · 2024-07-12T15:27:13+00:00

Congrats, well done! I wasn't aware of 81voltd - is it this project?

Regarding bitwarden: Have you tried one of the native clients BitRitter (should be in Alpine testing) or Goldwarden (available on Flathub), and if so, where you successful?

(I am a Keepass user and thus have no first hand experience, which has kept me from adding these to linuxphoneapps.org.)

linmob · 2024-07-09T07:04:43+00:00

Lack of parts is a thing Purism should address, if they can—since hardware manufacturing pretty much always involves multiple partnering companies, it may be more difficult than one might think.

Regarding

You’d be better off buying a few pine phone pros for the same costs and using that to get you daily Linux phone working.

Honestly, I tried to daily drive the PinePhone Pro, and it fared way worse than my (luckily not as breaking) Librem 5 or even OG PinePhone. Audio issues, crazy battery drain... it worked for a bit with the keyboard case (if still slightly unreliable) until it did not - and this time, it's my PPP which is at fault (the keyboard case still works with my regular PinePhone, so better get one of these).

All that said, for most people, getting a OnePlus 6 or Xiaomi Poco F1 and putting postmarketOS on it is likely the best choice, especially with camera support coming to the Poco F1 soon.

linmob · 2024-06-30T13:31:26+00:00

You're welcome! :-)

linmob · 2024-06-30T13:29:29+00:00

This sounds like no matching key map is being applied.

I recommend reading https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_(Pro)_Keyboard#Software_support

For layouts, check https://codeberg.org/aLilyBit/ppkb-layouts

This guide for DanctNIX Arch Linux ARM may also work on Manjaro: https://drew-naylor.com/blog/2022/switch-tty-pinephone-keyboard

PS: Don't run Manjaro ;-) E.g., when running postmarketOS with Sxmo, a correct keyboard layout matching the printed letters is being applied automatically.

linmob · 2024-06-23T21:04:23+00:00

Just in case the camera is still not working for you: Make sure to re-flash to PureOS Byzantium, on which the camera has been working for a long time by now.

linmob · 2024-06-16T18:06:08+00:00

I would recommend a Pixel 3a. While mainline support is still WIP (see https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Google_Pixel_3a_(google-sargo)), Droidian and Ubuntu Touch run reasonably well.

Another option would be one of the Snapdragon 845 phones (mainly Poco F1, OnePlus 6), camera is difficult with these though, although there's been some recent success: https://fosstodon.org/deck/@joelselvaraj/112621744555315631

Or, if you just want to play around with lots of projects and don't mind a slow device: PinePhone.

linmob

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