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Welcome to the January FOSSphones News Roundup, the first of 2025!
We've got quite a bit to get through this week, including the return (and open-sourcing!) of Pebble, a new FuriOS update, Flathub now showing mobile-friendly apps, an update on the new PureOS, and more! Let's get right into it and see what's new this month in the world of free and open-source on mobile.
Flathub has sort of become the de-facto "app store" for GNU/Linux distributions, and that's not just talking about desktop machines - it's also referring to the Linux phones and tablets out there, as well. For those who might not know about it, Flatpak is a way to containerize applications so that they can run on almost any Linux distro, and Flathub is currently the largest source for Flatpak applications. You can either visit the Flathub website in a web browser to browse through its software selection, or you can look through it using something like GNOME Software or KDE Discover.
Recently, Flathub began providing a new section to showcase mobile-friendly Linux applications, so you can more easily discover them on your phone or tablet. Labled On the Go on the main Flathub page, this new section will make it easier than ever for users of Linux phones and tablets to easily find a curated selection of mobile-friendly applications for Linux.
This is great news for both folks who are new to the mobile Linux space and looking for an easy-to-discover app store, as well as veteran users who just want a quick glance at the latest and greatest in mobile Linux software in one place.
If you remember the original smartwatch that gained massive traction and a cult following after a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, you already know the name before you read it - Pebble!
PebbleOS, the software that powered the original Pebble watches, has been open-sourced (aside from some proprietary bits that will have to be rebuilt, which we will cover below). Another exciting thing: there are new Pebbles coming.
Pebbles had great features, such as a very long battery life, a simple UI that was easy for anyone to understand, physical buttons, easily hackable, and more. The Pebble 'app store' was awesome and very community-oriented as well, with loads of community-made watchfaces and other things you could use to make your Pebble your very own!
While PebbleOS is now open-sourced, it is important to remember that a good bit of stuff is going to have to be re-implemented by the community in order to make certain things work - this is because some bits of source code were removed, which includes code for chipset support and the Bluetooth stack. This proprietary code has been removed from the repository, and the rest of the code is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.
I currently use (and love) my PineTime running InfiniTime, and will continue to use it. However, I am excited to get a new Pebble when they happen, and re-live that original experience I had with my old Pebble and Pebble Time Steel. The original Pebble platform had a lot of community around it, and PebbleOS being open-sourced will expand that even further. They were great little watches, and I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the future with them.
As soon as new Pebbles or updates on the newly open-sourced PebbleOS is announced, I will be sure to share it in a future roundup!
You can see the source code for PebbleOS in this repo.
PureOS, the operating system powering Purism's line of devices, is in the home stretch for a new update, named Crimson.
While the final version of Crimson is not out yet, it is ready for testing (so long as you know it isn't stable, and you are encouraged to test it out on a device that is not your daily driver). If you have a spare Librem 5, or your current Librem 5 is not your 'main phone', you can test out this current development image of Crimson on your device.
In order to flash this testing image to your device, please follow the instructions from Purism on flashing your Librem 5. Be sure, when running .scripts/librem5-flash-image that you also add the --variant plain --dist crimson flags, which selects Crimson and disables encryption (this is because encryption is not currently working on these images).
The full command you should be running to achieve this is ./scripts/librem5-flash-image --stable --variant plain --dist crimson. This should get you good to go on testing this new image of Crimson.
Remember if you decide to test it out, the image is still very much in-development and you might see some issues! If you do, be sure to report it to Purism so that they can get it sorted out before the final version of Crimson is released!
The Purism Team notes in this update that there are still some things to go before hitting the next big milestone, including:
If you run into any issues, you can let the team know by sending a message to their mailing list or their issue tracker. If you want to read the full update from the Purism Team, you can also check out this link for the full scoop.
FuriOS, the operating system powering the FuriPhone, has a new update! Let's take a look at some of the highlights you can expect if you have a FuriPhone of your own.
These are some of the smaller highlights for now, and you can expect more when the FuriOS Team returns from FOSDEM. You can check out these updates right now if you have a FuriPhone of your own, and you can also read the full scoop from the team here if you'd like the low-down.
Always consistent, the mobile Linux GNOME-based desktop environment, Phosh, has another release for us to cover in this update.
This time around, we're covering the Phosh 0.44.1, released on January 17. Here are the highlights:
~ Phosh updates
wwan-mm.You can read the full changelog for Phosh here.
~ Phoc updates
You can read the full changelog for Phoc here.
Run Phosh on your Linux mobile device and haven't updated in awhile? These new bits are waiting for you! Just follow the usual update procedure on your mobile distro of choice. If you want to read the entire update from the Phosh Team, you can also find it here.
There's a brand new update from the Pine64 crew, and while there wasn't any new stuff on PinePhone and PineTab, there were a few things I wanted to highlight, including one I'm looking forward to using myself, the PineNote.
Let's take a look at some of the highlights from the latest Pine64 community update:
These are just some of the main points from this update, and if you want to go even deeper on some of these new announcements, I definitely encourage you to check out the community update in its entirety from Pine64.
As usual, we like to shine the spotlight on some FOSS mobile apps we like to use or have recently discovered. These are always either free and open-source Android applications, or Linux Phone applications.
If you have some cool open-source mobile applications you want us to take a look at (or you are building such apps yourself), be sure to give us a shout about it, and we'll make sure it gets highlighted in a future roundup!
We've reached the end of our first FOSSphones news roundup of the year. These were some great updates to start the year off with, and we're already seeing some cool new updates on software and expecting some new hardware this early in the year.
2025 is already looking good for another year of free software on mobile. As usual, we will be keeping an eye on highlights for the next roundup (including things going on at FOSDEM '25), and will see you again next month! Until then, have a great February!
Also, if you are going to FOSDEM, have a great time! I hope to be able to make it next year if everything pans out well.