TuxPhones - Linux phones, tablets and portable devices

Using a Linux phone as a secondary monitor

As a software developer on the go, one of the very first use cases that I started investigating after installing Linux on my first tablet was that of using a portable device as a secondary display for another Linux machine. Ideally, this would happen wirelessly (or wired, if that involved

Flashes

AVMultiPhone is a peculiar MATE-on-phone desktop spin

After SXMO, the DWM-on-phone mod that became popular for its practical minimalism with the PinePhone, and the lesser known ExpidusOS XFCE-based shell, many of the traditional lightweight Linux desktops are receiving touch-friendly adaptions. A relatively new project, AVMultiPhone, is loosely based on the popular MATE desktop, which continues the GNOME

Purism Librem 14 review (part 2): The ethical flagship

The second part of our in-depth review of Purism's latest ultraportable: How does the king of libre hardware compete with the premium laptop market?

Purism Librem 14 review (part 1): The ethical flagship

Our in-depth review is all about Purism's latest ultraportable: How does the king of libre hardware compete with the premium laptop market?

Linux Handhelds

The PocketReform is a made-in-Berlin Linux handheld

In the last year, we have seen an unexpected revival of handheld computers (or PDAs) with hardware keyboard, all of which based on Linux: the PinePhone with its keyboard case, the GPD series of mini-laptops and several others which we covered here last month. For those wondering, the main difference

Linux Handhelds

Two new Linux handhelds with nostalgic vibes

Our long-time followers will know how much we love PDAs, be them Linux evergreens, radical RISC-V experiments or somewhat esoteric Android/Linux hybrids. Not one, but two new homebrew PDAs were presented in these last weeks, the former based on a RISC-V design, the latter on the new Raspberry Pi

Linux on Chromebooks

What the new PowerVR driver means for mobile

Much to the suprise of many people, Imagination created a merge request for an open source PowerVR vulkan driver to Mesa.

Picture of the PINE64 PinePhone with the Tow-Boot installer running

Linux Smartphone

Booting ARM Linux the standard way

A deeper look in the new Tow-Boot firmware project for ARM devices.

Convergence

A new wave of Linux applications

With the start of the new year, we can see a new trend delineating Linux software. Phosh with its newbord libadwaita, KDE's Kirigami and Maui Shell show that – like it or not – the era of convergent Linux applications has just started. After all, even laptop screens are not too big

Linux Tablets

CutiePi Tablet review: The open-hardware Linux tablet

IntroductionOver the last years, we have seen many Linux-powered tablets, all of which developed with different approaches to "openness". For instance, the PineTab trades performance and a somewhat conservative design for a very low selling price and full Linux support, which made its demand high to the point of becoming

postmarketOS

You can now live-boot postmarketOS on Android phones

To spread awareness of the Linux ecosystem, the very first "Live CDs" played a crucial role: by taking away most of the fear of overwriting their hard drives, they allowed more people to test and effectively use any spin of the Operating System, and by keeping the filesystem in RAM,

Automating the little things

As the mainline porting workflow becomes more streamlined, we found ourselves able to automate and simplify a lot of things that previously required a lot of manual work. A great example of this is the mdss-panel-driver-generator which is able to convert vendor devicetree panel control sequences into a driver which

Flashes

PinePhone modem gets easy OTA update support via fwupd

As most readers will know, the PinePhone is essentially considered to be the reference mobile Linux hacker's playground. And while this achievement may be for the most part thanks to its flexible software, its hardware structure, and the Quectel EG25-G baseband in particular, are no exception. The modem firmware can

A picture of the back of a SHIFT6mq with the back cover and battery removed, a pry tool and ifixit screwdriver are resting

A SHIFT in perspective, is this the next step for Linux phones?

You have most likely heard of Fairphone, who iFixit claim to be "the world's most repairable phone", and certainly lives up to it. But now, there's a new kid on the block, and they have a different approach. SHIFT are a very small phone manufacturer based in Germany, they produce

Software

Short guide to Linux phone desktops

If choosing a graphical environment for traditional Linux computers is already confusing for some users, deciding one for Linux phones is twice as hard. Most mobile interfaces still lack the maturity and usability of their traditional counterparts, also because integrating all kinds of desktop applications without keyboard can be tricky,

Linux Smartphone

The best Linux phones you can buy right now

⚠️ Hi Hacker News! The devices linked in this article are not yet suitable for daily use. If you are not familiar with terminals, kernel panics, disappointing battery life, or a lack of mobile-friendly applications in general, do not take one of these devices as anything like your "daily driver" phone.

Linux Smartphone

A look at Popcorn Computer's new Pocket P.C.

The Pocket P.C., short for Pocket Popcorn Computer, is a handheld created by the independent hardware manufacturer Popcorn Computer, and originally announced in the fall of 2019. This PDA comes with an integrated keyboard, and runs a pure Linux OS based on the Allwinner A64 platform. The specifications for

The world's first RISC-V phone might be just around the corner

The RISC-V ISA is commonly divided into two architectures, namely RV32 and RV64, covering 32-bit and 64-bit register sizes respectively. And although the RV64 standard is not yet fully RV32-compatible, the two are, except from some minor divergences, closely associated products of the same family. In fact, it took some

Opinion

Freedom and phone advice

A closer look at the smartphone advice from the Free Software Foundation

PinePhone

Doubling the PinePhone storage perf with a soldering iron and a steady hand

There have been some recent waves in the Pine64 community thanks to a new mod which can drastically improve eMMC speed!

Linux on Android smartphones

Another Xiaomi device platform is getting Linux support

By now, most readers will be aware of the quick progress of Qualcomm phones in the mobile Linux ecosystem. This became especially true with the SDM845 platform, powering the near-stable Linux ports of devices like the Oneplus 6/6T and Poco F1 which we often mentioned in the past. However,

Flashes

postmarketOS + mainline for the OnePlus 5/5T!

The OnePlus 5 is a popular high-end phone from 2017, featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC and Adreno 540. It has a 1080p display and up to 8GB of RAM. Mainline support for the device has been around for a while, since early 2020 in fact. Unfortunately, the Snapdragon 835

Flashes

Kupfer is a postmarketOS-like Arch Linux spin for phones

In the last years, the number of Linux distributions aimed at smartphones and tablets has grown considerably. What was initially a land of projects like UBPorts, Armbian and postmarketOS has grown to interest projects like Manjaro, and several Debian and Arch spins. However, the newborn Kupfer does not look like

Flashes

More support for UNISOC and Spreadtrum chips lands in the Linux kernel

UNISOC (and formerly Spreadtrum) chips have always been a very popular choice for Android device manufacturers. However, they were not commonly known for having wide mainline compatibility. Similarly to Rockchip and AllWinner, these chips became popular for their fast performance and relatively low prices, to the point of being used

PinePhone Pro released: specs, pricing and very first impressions

It was not three years ago that the PinePhone was announced. With entry-level, but relatively modern specifications, video output through Type-C, and full openness to custom software and mainline Linux, the device grew to be possibly even more popular than expected. Name it, and most Linux enthusiast will either know