• Mudita Pure OS is going open source

  The company stated that MuditaOS operating system will be publicly available on the GitHub platform, under a GPL (GNU General Public License) license. In the initial phase, MuditaOS will be available as a Developer Preview, during which, Mudita will work with the growing community to fine-tune the documentation and deal with the first reported issues.

  [...]

  The Mudita phone has been delayed numerous times this year, it was supposed to have come out in April, and was slated for release in October and now has been pushed back until Spring of 2021. It will eventually come out, it is a vanity project of Michal Kicinski, who created the Witcher/Cyberpunk games.

• A Librem 5 Video Made on a Librem 5

  When it comes to making a video, there are a lot of workflows involved. From writing, planning, to local screen capture, all the way to editing raw 4k footage with proxy clips. Even with all that workflow complexity, the following video was made completely on the Librem 5 phone.

  [...]

  Ultimately the Librem 5 phone lets you take your regular workflow with you while also keeping you in contact with your friends and family.

• Specify Form-Factors in Your Librem 5 Apps

  While more and more applications are being redesigned to take smartphones like the Librem 5 into account, PureOS still offers lots of desktop applications which are not ready to run on such devices yet.

  As a user you want to know which applications are relevant to install, so PureOS Store will by default only present mobile-ready applications, while still letting you opt-into showing all applications to take full advantage of the Librem 5’s convergeant docked mode. As a user you also want to know which applications are relevant to run at a given time, so Phosh will let you run desktop-only applications only when the phone is docked.

  This requires the applications to provide some information on which form-factors they can handle, if you are an application developer and you want your applications to work as expected on the Librem 5, please provide the relevant information as shown below.

  To make your application appear in PureOS Store, add the following lines to your AppStream metainfo...

The need for device sharing has become increasingly important for our partners. And it’s easy to understand why: imagine a scenario where a mobile device is required for executing certain actions during a business process. Each workstation has a mobile device and when a work shift changes the previous shift logs out of it and the new shift logs in. In this case the mobile device is more of a shared resource than a personal device.

One of the major new features that we’re excited to have included in the latest 3.4 Pallas-Yllästunturi release is the ability to have multiple users on the same device that can be switched between in this way. For regular everyday use of Sailfish OS this doesn’t have any impact, the device owner (the primary user) works just as it used to. However, release 3.4 will have a new ‘defaultuser’ (devices flashed prior to 3.4.0 keep ‘nemo’ user, but it’s only the name that’s different). The new ‘defaultuser’ name is mostly visible behind the scenes for application developers; end users can ignore this detail.

When the PinePhone began shipping earlier this year, it was only available in one configuration: with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. But this summer Pine64 began selling a 3GB/32GB model as part of PinePhone Convergence Packs, which also come with a USB-C dock that lets you connect a keyboard, mouse, and monitor to use the company’s Linux smartphone like a tiny Linux desktop.

Now Pine64 says customers who already have a 2GB PinePhone and want to upgrade without buying a new device will be able to purchase a new mainboard starting in November.

The F(x)tec Pro1-X is certainly not your typical Android smartphone, as it offers the choice of LineageOS or Ubuntu Touch operating systems out of the box.

The LineageOS is essentially a refined Android that has advanced controls and privacy permissions, whereas the Ubuntu Touch offers users capabilities of a fully-fledged Linux PC. The smartphone has a landscape-optimized launcher and supports customizable shortcut, but since far not all Google Android applications are optimized for hardware keyboards, not all programs will be able to take full advantage of the device.

The F(x)tec Pro1-X can be connected to a display using a USB Type-C cable and be used like a regular Linux personal computer. The touchscreen display can act like a trackpad, whereas the keyboard can be used to input text.