https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/15/postmarketos_2206/ [user] [user] Sign in The Register(r) -- Biting the hand that feeds IT [magn] [burg] [burg] Topics Security Security All SecurityCyber-crimePatchesResearchCSO (X) Off-Prem Off-Prem All Off-PremEdge + IoTChannelPaaS + IaaSSaaS (X) On-Prem On-Prem All On-PremSystemsStorageNetworksHPCPersonal Tech (X) Software Software All SoftwareAI + MLApplicationsDatabasesDevOpsOSesVirtualization (X) Offbeat Offbeat All OffbeatDebatesColumnistsScienceGeek's GuideBOFHLegalBootnotesSite NewsAbout Us (X) Vendor Voice Vendor Voice Vendor Voice All Vendor VoiceAmazon Web Services (AWS) Business Transformation CofenseOutsystemsRapid7Rockwell Automation (X) Resources Resources Whitepapers Webinars Newsletters [oses] OSes End-of-life smartphone? Penguins at postmarketOS aim to revive it Alpine-based distro runs on old mobiles abandoned by Android and their manufacturers Liam Proven in Prague Wed 15 Jun 2022 // 11:00 UTC 20 comment bubble on white --------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 comment bubble on white # reddit Twitter Facebook linkedin WhatsApp email [https://www.theregis] Copy A Linux distro for smartphones abandoned by their manufacturers, postmarketOS, has introduced in-place upgrades. Alpine Linux is a very minimal general-purpose distro that runs well on low-end kit, as The Reg FOSS desk found when we looked at version 3.16 last month. postmarketOS's - pmOS for short - version 22.06 is based on the same version. This itself is distinctive. Most other third-party smartphone OSes, such as LineageOS or GrapheneOS, or the former CyanogenMod, are based on the core of Android itself. [oses] The project is quite different. It uses the mainline Linux kernel, and a standard userland, to support a wide variety of devices. The theory is that not needing a manufacturer's outdated firmware or drivers means that pmOS can use more current components, direct from the various upstream Linux projects. The project's own wiki currently lists over 200 supported devices, including phones, tablets, and e-book readers, ranging back to the venerable Nokia N900. [oses] [oses] They're not all equally supported, though. Most of them can can boot, many have Wi-Fi support, but currently just two actual phones work as phones: the open-source hardware PinePhone and the Purism Librem 5. Even saying that, though, the ability to connect to Wi-Fi and use an old device as a pocketable terminal could make obsolete hardware useful again. As it resembles a normal desktop Linux, postmarketOS can run both X.org and Wayland, and a choice of user interfaces, including a plain text console or the Xfce desktop. [oses] These might not be terribly useful on a touchscreen-based handheld device without a pointing device, so more importantly there are a choice of phone interfaces, including the GNOME-based Phosh and the KDE-based Plasma Mobile, as well as the less-ambitious Simple X Mobile or Sxmo. The Lomiri smartphone UI, formerly known as Ubuntu's Unity 8, is also represented in an external branch of postmarketOS project. * Thunderbird is coming to Android - in K-9 Mail form * Open source 'Office' options keep Microsoft running faster than ever * openSUSE Leap 15.4: The best desktop on the RPM side of the Linux world * Apple offers improved Linux support in macOS Ventura This isn't something you can put onto an old phone and give to your grandma just yet. It's still relatively early days, but it's a promising project. It reminds in some ways of the Armbian project, which aims to keep old single-board computers usable after their manufacturers stop updating them. Mainstream Linux on phones has some way to go yet before it's as usable as it is on a desktop or laptop. (Stop heckling at the back there: it really is.) As is the open source way, there are various rival environments and applications, all working away trying to achieve the same ends - but because they're open source, they can help each other, sharing code and information and documentation. Although it has a (very old) Linux kernel right at the bottom, Android itself isn't very Linux-like: everything above the kernel, from the Bionic C library and Toybox userland up to the Java-based app runtime, are very different. [oses] Usually the hardware is quite capable, though. So long as you can unlock the bootloader and reflash it - and you know how to do that, or are willing to learn - it's great to see a viable alternative use for retired tablets. THe British Computer Society previously bemoaned the impact of product lifecycles on the environment. According to the United Nations, 53.6 million tonnes of e-waste was generated in 2019. (r) Get our Tech Resources # Share reddit Twitter Facebook linkedin WhatsApp email [https://www.theregis] Copy 20 Comments Similar topics * Android * Linux * Open Source * Smartphone * Software Broader topics * Google * Linus Torvalds * Operating System Narrower topics * AdBlock Plus * App * Asahi Linux * Audacity * CentOS * Database * Debian * Fedora * HONOR * IDE * iPhone * LibreOffice * Linux Foundation * Map * Microsoft 365 * Microsoft Office * Microsoft Teams * MySQL * OpenOffice * Programming Language * Retro computing * Samsung Galaxy Ace * Search Engine * Software License * Visual Studio * Visual Studio Code * Web Browser * Wikipedia Corrections Send us news --------------------------------------------------------------------- [oses] Other stories you might like * Linux Lite 6.0: It's quite pretty, but 'lite' it is not We took the popular Ubuntu-based Windows replacement for a test drive Liam Proven in Prague Wed 1 Jun 2022 // 15:08 UTC 30 comment bubble on white Linux Lite has been around since 2012 and version 6, codenamed "Fluorite", is one of the first Ubuntu-based distros to offer a version built on Ubuntu 22.04 "Jammy Jellyfish", released just last month. This is unapologetically a distro aimed at Windows users. For instance, unlike some distros, there are no difficult questions of what desktop you want - you get Xfce 4.16, with a trendy flat theme, but a somewhat retro default layout that reminds us of Windows XP. The Start button and window buttons have text labels, for instance. We liked that: it's simple, efficient, and welcome, but Zorin OS 16 manages a more modern Windows look. Linux Lite also isn't bashful about including non-open-source freeware: the default web browser is Google Chrome. The very long and rather rambling release announcement says this is because Ubuntu distributes Firefox as a Snap package and that the developers wanted to shield users from too many package managers. That's fair enough. Continue reading * Linux Mint adopts Timeshift from overworked original developer Team lead Clement Lefebvre takes over maintaining backup tool from UMix creator Liam Proven in Prague Thu 9 Jun 2022 // 09:46 UTC 22 comment bubble on white The Linux Mint XApps suite of cross-desktop accessories has a new member - the Timeshift backup tool. The Linux Mint blog post for June revealed that Mint team lead Clement Lefevbre recently took over maintenance of the Timeshift backup tool used in Linux Mint. Timeshift is akin to Windows System Restore in that it automatically keeps backups of system files. It's not Mint-specific and was originally developed by Tony George. That name might sound familiar as we recently mentioned his company TeeJeeTech as the creator of the original Unity-based remix, UMix. Continue reading * Open source 'Office' options keep Microsoft running faster than ever LibreOffice, Collabora, KDE Gear all updated their Microsoft alternatives - whatever your OS Liam Proven in Prague Mon 13 Jun 2022 // 16:30 UTC 63 comment bubble on white Fresh versions of three of the bigger open-source application suites just landed for those seeking to break free from proprietary office apps. LibreOffice is the highest profile of them, and the project recently put out version 7.3.4, the latest release in the Community version of the suite. The Document Foundation maintains two versions of LibreOffice; the other is the Enterprise branch. Continue reading * Good news for GNOME fans as Adaptive Sync displays come to Mutter It may sound like a trivial feature, but this sort of thing matters, and not only to gamers Liam Proven in Prague Thu 9 Jun 2022 // 07:31 UTC 1 comment bubble on white In a sign of how display handling is evolving, the GNOME desktop's 3D-compositing Mutter window manager is gaining support for variable refresh rate (VRR, also known as Adaptive Sync) displays. Mutter is an important chunk of code. As the project page says, it's "a Wayland display server and X11 window manager and compositor library." It's the basis of GNOME Shell, which is implemented [PDF] as a Mutter plug-in, but other desktops use it as well. Continue reading * SUSE releases Service Pack 4 for Linux Enterprise 15 Update should help users combat software supply chain issues. openSUSE Leap 15.4 to follow a day later Liam Proven in Prague Tue 7 Jun 2022 // 13:00 UTC 4 comment bubble on white The new version of SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) is compliant with version 4 of Google's SLSA framework, which should help users combat vulnerabilities such as Log4j and upstream JavaScript library issues. The company's online conference, SUSECON, is under way, and the first big announcement was SLE 15 SP4, an incremental change to this relatively slow-moving, business-friendly distribution. SLE 15 appeared in 2018, and the company puts out a new version about once a year. For its enterprise distro, it calls this a "service pack," but for the free distro it's just a simple point release. Continue reading * openSUSE Leap 15.4: The best desktop on the RPM side of the Linux world The Reg FOSS desk takes the latest stable distro for a spin Liam Proven in Prague Fri 10 Jun 2022 // 16:44 UTC 39 comment bubble on white Review The Reg FOSS desk took the latest update to openSUSE's stable distro for a spin around the block and returned pleasantly impressed. As we reported earlier this week, SUSE said it was preparing version 15 SP4 of its SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution at the company's annual conference, and a day later, openSUSE Leap version 15.4 followed. The relationship between SUSE and the openSUSE project is comparable to that of Red Hat and Fedora. SUSE, with its range of enterprise Linux tools, is the commercial backer, among other sponsors. Continue reading * To cut off all nearby phones with these Chinese chips, this is the bug to exploit Android patches incoming for NAS-ty memory overwrite flaw Jeff Burt Fri 3 Jun 2022 // 18:06 UTC 28 comment bubble on white A critical flaw in the LTE firmware of the fourth-largest smartphone chip biz in the world could be exploited over the air to block people's communications and deny services. The vulnerability in the baseband - or radio modem - of UNISOC's chipset was found by folks at Check Point Research who were looking for ways the silicon could be used to remotely attack devices. It turns out the flaw doesn't just apply to lower-end smartphones but some smart TVs, too. Check Point found attackers could transmit a specially designed radio packet to a nearby device to crash the firmware, ending that equipment's cellular connectivity, at least, presumably until it's rebooted. This would be achieved by broadcasting non-access stratum (NAS) messages over the air that when picked up and processed by UNISOC's firmware would end in a heap memory overwrite. Continue reading * Murena and /e/ Foundation launch privacy-centric smartphones De-Googled Android phone does the job, has a few rough edges Liam Proven in Prague Thu 2 Jun 2022 // 07:01 UTC 35 comment bubble on white First Look The /e/ Foundation's de-Googled version of Android 10 has reached the market in a range of smartphones aimed at the privacy-conscious. The idea of a privacy-centric version of Android is not new, and efforts to deliver are becoming friendlier all the time. The Register interviewed the founder of the /e/ Foundation in 2020, and reported on /e/ OS doing rather well in privacy tests the following year. Back then, the easiest way to get the OS was to buy a Fairphone, although there was also the option of reflashing one of a short list of supported devices. Now there's another option: a range of brand-new Murena phones. The company supplied The Register with a Murena One for review, with a pre-release version of the /e/ OS installed. Continue reading * GitHub drops Atom bomb: Open-source text editor mothballed by end of year Embrace, extend technology into other products ... and extinguish Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Wed 8 Jun 2022 // 19:16 UTC 56 comment bubble on white On December 15, Microsoft's GitHub plans to turn out the lights on Atom, its open-source text editor that has inspired and influenced widely used commercial apps, such as Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Slack, and GitHub Desktop. The social code biz said it's doing so to focus on cloud-based software. "While that goal of growing the software creator community remains, we've decided to retire Atom in order to further our commitment to bringing fast and reliable software development to the cloud via Microsoft Visual Studio Code and GitHub Codespaces," GitHub explained on Wednesday. Continue reading * Apple offers improved Linux support in macOS Ventura Penguin fans will be able to use Rosetta 2 to run x86 binaries in forthcoming update Liam Proven in Prague Thu 9 Jun 2022 // 20:00 UTC 7 comment bubble on white Apple is extending support for its Rosetta 2 x86-64-to-Arm binary translator to Linux VMs running under the forthcoming macOS 13, codenamed Ventura. The next version of macOS was announced at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference on Monday, and the new release has a number of changes that will be significant to Linux users. The company has disclosed the system requirements for the beta OS, which you can read on the preview page. One level of Linux relevance is that macOS 13 still supports Intel-based Macs, but only recent ones, made in 2017 and later. So owners of older machines - including the author - will soon be cut off. Some will run Windows on them via Bootcamp, but others will, of course, turn to Linux. Continue reading ABOUT US* * Who we are * Under the hood * Contact us * Advertise with us MORE CONTENT* * Latest News * Popular Stories * Forums * Whitepapers * Webinars SITUATION PUBLISHING* * The Next Platform * DevClass * Blocks and Files * Continuous Lifecycle London * M-cubed Situation Publishing The Register - Independent news and views for the tech community. Part of Situation Publishing SIGN UP TO OUR DAILY NEWSLETTER Subscribe Twitter Facebook LinkedIn feeds Security Scorecard no-js Biting the hand that feeds IT (c) 1998-2022 Do not sell my personal information Cookies Privacy Ts&Cs