News/interviews/anecdotes around postmarketOS, straight from the source.
#44 INTERVIEW: Caleb and Pablo (of postmarketOS Fame) at Sustain
Caleb and Pablo had a great time as guests of Sustain Episode 255! We talk about the experience and play the original episode. Featuring @ollieparanoid, @pabloyoyoista, @caleb, @richlitt (in order of appearance). Find the original show notes below (with adjusted timestamps). Credits for pmOS podcast parts — Editing: @ollieparanoid, Music: The Passion HiFi Original Show Notes Guests Caleb Connolly | Pablo Correa Gómez Panelist Richard Littauer Show Notes In this episode of Sustain, host Richard Littauer is joined by guests Pablo Correa Gómez and Caleb Connolly to explore the development and sustainability of postmarketOS, an open-source Linux distribution designed to extend the life of mobile devices. The team dives into the project's mission, governance, and the community-driven nature of its work. They discuss the challenges related to funding, primarily through grants and Open Collective donations, and the significance of upstreaming Linux kernel support to collaborate with other communities like Alpine Linux. The conversation also highlights the growth of the postmarketOS community, encouraging contributions from both technical and non-technical supporters, and the importance of comprehensive documentation. Additionally, issues of privacy, telemetry, and user support are examined, alongside the steps towards making postmarketOS more professional and economically sustainable. Press download now to hear more! [00:04:03] Pablo explains postmarketOS and its mission to empower people to have full control over their devices and promote sustainability. [00:04:45] Caleb talks about the governance of postmarketOS that started with a few contributors working on a package repository on top of Alpine Linux and overtime more maintainers were added. [00:06:32] There’s a discussion on the structure of the team, how the community around hardware components forms sub-communities bases on common SOCs, and the focus on improving tooling and the ecosystem rather than building a product for end users. [00:09:02] Richard discusses the massive, refurbished phone market and asks about how postmarketOS fits into this ecosystem. Caleb shares their experience working on the OnePlus 6 phone and explains the technical process of making the device work on upstream Linux and the challenges of hardware enablement. [00:12:38] Pablo explains that the project is largely funded by volunteer work and Caleb describes the challenges in deciding which devices to prioritize for hardware enablement and how all hardware work so far has been done by volunteers. [00:16:42] On the importance of upstreaming, Pablo explains that postmarketOS works hard to contribute back to the Linux ecosystem rather that maintaining device-specific patches and postmarketOS is downstream to Alpine Linux but contributes much of its work upstream to maintain sustainability. [00:22:42] Richard asks about how the project builds shared context and onboards new developers and Pablo and Caleb explain how the project relies on its wiki page to provide extensive documentation and how the pmbootstrap tool makes it easier for new contributors to get started with porting new devices to postmarketOS. [00:27:34] Richard asks about telemetry and how the team tracks their impact. [00:28:12] Pablo talks about how they receive community feedback through events like FOSDEM and have seen an increase in donations, social media engagement, and community members. [00:31:22] Caleb reflects on the pros and cons of collecting telemetry, which could help guide development but may also create unwanted challenges by focusing too heavily on specific devices. [00:34:03] What are Pablo and Caleb most excited about for the next year? Pablo is excited about professionalizing the project, starting to pay contributors, and scaling the project’s growth sustainably, and Caleb jokes about looking forward to the “pre-market OS.” Quotes [00:14:33] “We are trying to grow organically, bit by bit, and be able to pay people to do core things where volunteer work doesn’t reach.” [00:17:06] “In the environment we live in, where you have X amount of code per update, it is totally unsustainable.” [00:18:41] “As a distro, we predominately put together the pieces that other people give us.” [00:21:36] “Downstream patches allow to experiment, but long term are a burden. That’s the same for every project.” [00:21:55] “The sustainability goes beyond reducing waste and also goes into the social ecosystem and how we maintain projects.” [00:33:06] “We know we are not ready for end users, but we need to build the structure and economic support.” Spotlight [00:35:05] Richard’s spotlight is DOSBox. [00:35:36] Pablo’s spotlight is FOSDEM and the FOSDEM team. [00:36:20] Caleb’s spotlight is processing.org. Links SustainOSS podcast@sustainoss.org richard@sustainoss.org SustainOSS Discourse SustainOSS Mastodon Open Collective-SustainOSS (Contribute) Richard Littauer Socials Caleb Connolly Website Caleb Connolly-treehouse Pablo Correa Gómez Website Pablo Correa Gómez LinkedIn postmarketOS postmarketOS (Open Collective Contribute) Gnome Shell & Mutter postmarketOS Devices Sustain Podcast-Episode 195: FOSSY 2023 with Denver Gingerich Software Freedom Conservancy FOSSY 2025:July 31-August 1 linaro postmarketOS Wiki pmbootstrap compost.party pmbootstrap v3 by Caleb Connolly DOSBox FOSDEM 2025 Processing Credits Produced by Richard Littauer Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound
#43 FrOSCon 2024 Special
As a first, we recorded with a live audience! Featuring @Adrianyyy, @ollieparanoid, @1peter10, @devrtz, @calebccff, @Fellintr, @agx, @kuleszdl, @z3ntu, @erebion (in order of appearance). Social event hacking & soldering: Adrian: "@cas and @elly hacking on the …" - chaos.social Adrian: "Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock (x04g) b…" - chaos.social Luca Weiss: "👀 [ 0.000000] Booting Lin…" - Fosstodon Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock (xiaomi-x04g) - postmarketOS Wiki Felix Urbasik: "I had an absolute blast at the…" - Fell's Mastodon Instance Talks: Luca Weiss: "My talk "eSIM management on Qu…" - Fosstodon — this talk was recorded! LINux on MOBile: "I did a talk at #FrOSCon #Linu…" - Fosstodon — @1peter10 talked about keeping linmob.net going for four years (!), an absolutely amazing website that allows to keep up with all things linux mobile through nice weekly posts, as well as his incredibly useful distro-independent app directory at linuxsmartphoneapps.org! Guido Günther: "Yesterday I had the chance to give a short #phosh…" - Librem Social — not mentioned in the episode but this was also a great talk! devrtz :debian:: "Caleb is speaking about UEFI b…" - Fosstodon waitaha: Recovery environment for Android devices with a close-to-mainline kernel main/postmarketos-initramfs: add support for multi-device btrfs (!5508) · Merge requests · postmarketOS / pmaports · GitLab Full schedule — talks in the FOSS on Mobile devroom were not recorded, but this page has further links to slides etc. Pixel 3a port to Mobian: Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 Mainline / linux · GitLab by @flamingradian pan: "Playing with the pixel 3a's camera :DD, although not ideal, they look very unique in this stage!" Got Mobian (almost) ported to Pixel 3a / 3a XL - SDF Chatter Follow-up: Mobian on the Pixel 3a / 3a XL (getting close) - SDF Chatter Apps mentioned: devrtz :debian:: "Chatty 0.8.5 has released 🚀 …" - Fosstodon Railway Satellites Other related links: FrOSCon website Colors of Noise: A short look back at the FOSS on Mobile Devroom at FrOSCon 2024 Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi
#42 INTERVIEW: verdre (of GNOME Shell on Mobile Fame)
Jonas tells us some crazy stories about how together with Tobias he started GNOME Shell on Mobile, how he found quite the important vulnerability in Apple's AirPods, running Aliendalvik from Sailfish OS and more! Featuring @craftyguy, @verdre and @ollieparanoid (in order of appearance). GNOME Shell on Mobile: Matrix room gnome-shell-mobile.git Blog post: Towards GNOME Shell on mobile Blog post: GNOME Shell on mobile: An update verdre: "Alright, I’ve finally done a new #GNOME Shell Mobile release! Time for a little thread about the updates..." — about the latest GNOME 46 based version AdrianVovk: "Just got GNOME Mobile 46 built and running in @postmarketOS on my OP6, here at #GUADEC2024 in Denver, so the folks in Berlin aren't the only ones that can try it out! ..." — with a nice photo! AirPods: Blog post: Do a firmware update for your AirPods – now Apple's security advisory MagicPairing: Apple’s Take on Securing Bluetooth Peripherals Aliendalvik: Blog post: A dive into Jolla AppSupport (Berlin Mini) GUADEC 2024: Blog post: Save the Date: Berlin Mini GUADEC 2024 Blog post: GUADEC 2024 in Denver, Colorado Videos: Berlin Mini GUADEC Videos: GNOME (has full day streams, see also timetable) Related episodes: #32 GNOME Mobile 2023 Hackfest Special Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi
#41 INTERVIEW: Guido Günther (of Phosh, Librem 5 Fame)
Guido is the main Phosh developer. He tells us how getting involved with Purism was just a happy coincidence, how he went straight from the N900 to the L5 and a lot more in this exciting interview! Featuring @ollieparanoid, @agx and @Newbyte (in order of appearance). Phosh accepts donations via Liberapay. Related links: Guido's OpenMoko setup Phosh Contributing What's a good way to contribute? Matrix room Translations Blog Build Your Own Quick-Setting or Lock-Screen Widget Don't unblank in my back pack please phosh-osk-stub & squeekboard pmaports#2628: Switch Phosh from Squeekboard to phosh-osk-stub squeekboard#244: Make sure Electron applications receive correct input phosh!1079: Split the app grid out from the overview Notches gmobile Display notch support — Caleb's LKML post FrOSCon Our request for a #FossOnMobile devroom at #FrOSCon24 (17. / 18. of August) just got accepted 🚀 .If you want to give a talk, do a BoF, round table or similar… Matrix room Bananui Lomiri on postmarketOS UnifiedPush Adventures of porting postmarketOS to the Librem 5 — Clayton's blog post from 2020 Related episodes: #35 INTERVIEW: a-wai, devrtz, kop316 (of Mobian Fame) #27 Chromebooks, … — Anton talks about pmOS on Chromebooks #21 INTERVIEW: Sebastian Krzyszkowiak (of Phosh, Librem 5 Fame) Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi
#40 INTERVIEW: Devin Lin (of Plasma Mobile Fame)
Not long after the recent Plasma 6 megarelease, we are excited to hear from Plasma Mobile's lead developer! Featuring @espidev, @ollieparanoid, @PureTryOut, @calebccff (in order of appearance). Referenced in this episode: Plasma Mobile — main website Plasma 6 and Beyond! — "Plasma Mobile joins the Plasma 6 megarelease with a new shell and apps" plasma-mobile!454 — "taskswitcher: enhance gesture with flick speed tracking and orthogonal movement tracking" by Luis Büchi Matrix channel — "most active with developers" Forum — at KDE Discuss Wiki — "konqi wants you to contribute!" Related episodes: #24 Akademy 2022 Special Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi
#39 INTERVIEW: magdesign (of Cycling the World Fame)
This time postmarketOS user @magdesign shares his amazing and inspiring story of traveling around the world for the past 1.5 years... on bike! Featuring @magdesign, @ollieparanoid, @calebccff, @craftyguy (in order of appearance). Marc and Fiona accept donations at brandisbrandisbrand.com. Referenced in this episode: User:Magdesign and Sxmo/Tips and Tricks: impressive wiki pages with lots of notes and tips! Fiona's photos at pixelfed PocketVJ: "@cas 😂 then i can bring all i own…" PocketVJ: "finally an offline translator for #linuxmobile…" PocketVJ: "Thanks to @frd @kdenlive matrix channel, i created a #linuxmobile friendly #kdenlive layout…" PocketVJ: "finally installed an offline chatbot on #linuxmobile…" GitLab blocked in Iran, but GitHub works?! #2619: VPN not routing through GSM #2620: Hotspot not available for modern Android devices micro text editor Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi
#38 FOSDEM 2024 Special
Compared to last year, we decided to do the recording inside the cafeteria instead of outside, and on Sunday instead of Saturday. Twice the amount of FOSDEM days to talk about, and with more people talking in the background. Enjoy! Featuring @z3ntu, @ollieparanoid, @pabloyoyoista, @craftyguy, @Newbyte, @dos, @PureTryOut, @linmob (in order of appearance), also @~r (sampled in the outro). Not included in the episode: a three day post-FOSDEM hackathon, read all about it on the blog! Video recordings of the talks: FOSS on Mobile Devices devroom Open Source for Sustainable and Long lasting Phones (the Fairphone talk!) Related episodes: #28 FOSDEM 2023 special #14 FOSDEM 2022 special Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi
#37 Clayton goes full-time, v23.12, smart speakers, musl locales
Clayton totally surprises us for real, with his announcement of working full-time on postmarketOS from now on. Furthermore we are super hyped about the upcoming FOSDEM 2024 (as we release this episode, only a week away!) and talk among other topics about how you could become a Trusted Contributor. Featuring @craftyguy, @ollieparanoid, @calebccff, @pabloyoyoista (in order of appearance). To support postmarketOS financially, especially now with Clayton working full-time: Check out the shiny new Open Collective page Read the announcement: postmarketOS needs your help! Referenced in this episode: Clayton: "Today I start my new job, … v23.12: The One We Asked The Community To Name FOSDEM 2024: FOSS on Mobile Devices devroom (full track listing is announced!) Stands, we'll be at Linux on Mobile How to become a Trusted Contributor Part 2 Amazon Echo Dot 2nd gen (thanks to Ben Westover!) iFixit guide Rooting the Amazon Echo Dot !4532: amazon-biscuit: new device !49: add_mtk_header: Replace hardcoded MediaTek header labels with deviceinfo variables pmbootstrap: parse.bootimg: Separate kernel and ramdisk MediaTek headers New maintainers for PINE64 devices (!4529, !4736) Thanks to Jan Jasper de Kroon for taking over PinePhone Pro! Thanks to Arnav Singh for taking over PinePhone! And not in the recorded episode since it just happened a week ago, but also huge thanks to Quade Curry for taking over the PineBook Pro! musl: setlocale() again mailing list thread mrtest: allow to select multiple packages and use ranges (thanks to Petr Hodina!) Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi
#36 INTERVIEW: Konrad Dybcio (of SoMainline Fame)
"Why am I running Linux on my desktop, but not on my phone?" is what Konrad asked himself at the beginning of this amazing story that ends up with him becoming a maintainer for Qualcomm support in Linux. Featuring @ollieparanoid, @konradybcio, @craftyguy, @calebccff (in order of appearance). Konrad accepts donations, preferrably in form of tea ☕. Referenced in this episode: SoMainline B4 ("before") - tool for dealing with kernel patches docs source linux-arm-msm mailing list Asahi Linux speakersafetyd #1922: Feature request: 'devbox setup' The issue Konrad created about having a minimal image for doing kernel development. Reply there if interested, contributions welcome! !4420: Add initial on-device CI support Caleb's new initramfs hook for running the postmarketOS initramfs in a testing environment (QEMU, CI, or manual testing). Linux on A7-A8X checkra1n Project Sandcastle Channels: IRC: #linux-msm on irc.oftc.net Matrix: #mainline:postmarketos.org Related episodes: #08 INTERVIEW: Caleb Connolly (of OnePlus 6 / SDM845 Mainlining Fame) Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi
#35 INTERVIEW: a-wai, devrtz, kop316 (of Mobian Fame)
In a somewhat chaotic and much longer recording session than what ended up in the final episode, we had a very good time talking to our friends from Mobian. As you can guess from the name, Mobian brings Mobile and Debian together, similar to what postmarketOS does on top of Alpine Linux. Featuring @kop316, @ollieparanoid, @devrtz, @calebccff, @PureTryOut, @a-wai (in order of appearance). Mobian accepts donations via Liberapay. Referenced in this episode: Mobian: A Debian derivative for mobile devices. DebianMaintainer - Debian Wiki DebianDeveloper - Debian Wiki FOSDEM 2024 King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Related episodes: #11 INTERVIEW: kop316 (of mmsd-tng Fame) #28 FOSDEM 2023 special Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi
#34 Events, Fairphone 5, FF UA, SDM845 CI & Camera, MSM8953, Initramfs
Luca did it again! On the day the Fairphone 5 was released, he added it to postmarketOS. How exactly that is possible and a whole lot more about recent developments and Linux Mobile related events we followed in this episode. Featuring @calebccff, @ollieparanoid, @z3ntu, @pabloyoyoista (in order of appearance). Referenced in this episode: Free Silicon Conference 2023 Luca's talk: Open Source for Sustainable and Long lasting Phones (PeerTube, YouTube) Akademy 2023 GUADEC 2023 Keynote: Global collaborative communities to empower cutting-edge technologies Pablo's lightning talk: Booting GNOME in 150+ phones FrOSCon 2023 devrtz's talk: The year of Linux On Desktop^WMobile LINMOB.net blog post: Hello, FrOSCon 2023 Affe Null's slides: FOSS on Feature Phones Crossdirect + Rust improvements: cross/crossdirect: improve rust handling (!4234) cross/crossdirect: partially use sccache for rust (!4310) pmbootstrap: sccache for rust, refactor /mnt/pmb (patches/43386) Tow-Boot Open call for help and contributions 2022.07-006 released in 2023-07 Fairphone 5 fairphone-fp5: new device (!4359) Initial support for the Fairphone 5 smartphone (patches/44172) A sign of DisplayPort over USB-C (external display) working with the #mainline kernel … Fairphone 5 source code release mobile-config-firefox fix: add mobile to user-agent (!35) History of the browser user-agent string SDM845 Recent Qualcomm camera development on the mailing lists, likely applies to SDM845 if anyone wants to try it: (1), (2) Also new version of IMX519 sensor, the one in the SHIFT6mq and OnePlus 6: (3) mtkclient pmbootstrap: Add mtkclient as a flasher option (patches/42621) MSM8953 qcom-msm8953: move devices to community (!4381) Initramfs main/postmarketos-initramfs: simplify and improve the boot process (!4204) oneplus 6 userdata not expanded during install (#2235) Merch 3 new designs for our shirts site Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi
#33 INTERVIEW: Anjan (of Sxmo Fame)
This time we did a mix of an interview and an event report with Anjan from Sxmo who just was at FOSSY 2023 in Portland, OR, USA. Sxmo is a minimalist environment for Linux mobile devices, allowing you to run a tiling window manager on your smartphone. Featuring @ollieparanoid, @anjan (in order of appearance). Referenced in this episode: Anjan's talk: Thoughts after daily driving postmarketOS for 3 years Video is not up yet, but Anjan said he'll post it on his Mastodon when it is Software Freedom Conservancy Contribute to Sxmo sxmo-utils: sxmo_modem.sh: retry if failed to delete sms WIP Sxmo lockscreen: peanutbutter Related episodes: Sxmo: Interviews with @proycon (E05) and Miles Alan (E15) SDM845: Interview with @calebccff (E08) / pretty much any episode with Caleb Editing by: @MartijnBraam, Music by: The Passion HiFi
#32 GNOME Mobile 2023 Hackfest Special
Featuring @ollieparanoid, @MartijnBraam, @calebccff, @jsparber, @tbernard, @verdre, @z3ntu, @jane (in order of appearance). Upcoming events (close dates, there are many more): July 13-16 — Portland, OR: FOSSY 2023 @anjan from Sxmo will hold a talk: Thoughts after daily driving postmarketOS for 3 years July 15-21 — Thessaloniki, Greece: Akademy 2023 July 26-31 — Riga, Latvia: GUADEC 2023 Threadiverse: Update from Lemmy after the Reddit blackout How to find /c/postmarketOS on Lemmy and kbin https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration GNOME Hackfest: v23.06: From the GNOME Mobile 2023 Hackfest Berlin Mobile Hackfest (great blog post with a photo of recording this episode) postmarketOS on the LG G Watch R GNOME Shell running out of the box on postmarketOS 23.06 Video call on Librem 5 Stickers Behold the power of mainline Linux phones! Consider taking over some GNOME Mobile MRs Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi
#31 Testing Team, KDE6, SDM845 Sensors, ALIT, PineNote, L10N
You rotate your phone and the UI rotates as well. Sounds simple, right? In this episode Caleb explains us why implementing it for SDM845 requires far more complexity than one may think - among many other topics. Featuring @ollieparanoid, @PureTryOut, @calebccff, @pabloyoyoista (in order of appearance). Referenced in this episode: Testing Call For Testers Testing Team KDE kde-srcbuild Akademy 2023 SDM845 Qualcomm Snapdragon Sensor Core support for SDM845 devices (pma!4050) Wakeups - if you would like to look into this: "joining matrix would be a a good place to start. That being said, it might be worth noting that folks should already have some familiarity with the kernel suspend/resume process and with WoWLAN/TCP/push notifications" Fedora Mobile Remix for OnePlus 6 Augsburger Linux-Infotag 2023 LINMOB.net - Having a stand at Linux-Infotag 2023 nice blog post with photos Handout Can My Phone Run Linux? TT173 Augsburger Linux-Infotag 2023 - TechnikTechnik Linux-Smartphones - FOCUS ON: Linux - Podcast PineNote Initial MR (pma!3778) Wiki page Localization Ping @pabloyoyoista if you would like to get involved Default file sorting (pma#1446) Translating postmarketOS pmos-base-ui-networkmanager: set up dnsmasq for filtering lookup (pma!3823) postmarketos-mkinitfs changes Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi, @ollieparanoid
#30 INTERVIEW: Natanael Copa (of Alpine Linux Fame)
Natanael Copa joins us to talk about Alpine's story. From being dead scared to fork the initial version off from Gentoo to Alpine becoming bigger than himself and making sure it stays around with a good bus factor. If you ever wondered how exactly apk is so incredibly fast, that is also covered - and what plans there are to make it even faster in the future. Also what would be necessary to get reproducible builds in Alpine and more. Enjoy! Featuring @ollieparanoid, @calebccff, @MartijnBraam, @pabloyoyoista, @ncopa (in order of appearance). Referenced in this episode: Alpine Linux apk-tools v1 on sourceforge: "A shell based package manager for embedded *nix systems similar FreeBSD pkgtools." Reproducible Builds — a set of software development practices that create an independently-verifiable path from source to binary code Cross compiling in pmbootstrap crossdirect (thanks to @zhuowei for contributing the initial version!) previously using distcc, inspired by alarm k0s | Kubernetes distribution for bare-metal, on-prem, edge, IoT Upcoming event on Saturday, April 29th: Augsburger Linux-Infotag 2023 Editing by: @ollieparanoid, Music by: The Passion HiFi, @ollieparanoid