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Lilbits: Amazon to drop Android (for Fire TVs), Fossil to drop smartwatches, Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 released, Lichee Console 4A reviewed

Seven years after Ubuntu developer Canonical stopped supporting a mobile version of the GNU/Linux distribution designed for smartphones, the folks at UBPorts continue to keep Ubuntu Touch alive and ticking. This week the team rolled out Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 with support for over two dozen smartphones and tablets. In other recent tech news, it looks […]

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Ubuntu Touch OTA-3 released with support for over two dozen devices (including the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro)

Ubuntu Touch is a mobile Linux distribution designed to run on smartphones and tablets. And this week a new version is starting to roll out for more than two dozen supported devices. Ubuntu Touch OTA-3 is based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and includes the latest Ubuntu security updates, as well as a number of mobile-specific […]

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Lilbits: The cheapest Apple Pencil, an OpenWrt update, and 13.3 inch E Ink Kaleido 3 devices

The original Apple Pencil that launched in 2015 can be charged with a Lightning cable. The 2nd-gen Apple Pencil came out as Apple was moving away from Lightning ports on iPads, so Apple added wireless charging and removed wired charging. Now Apple has unveiled a new Apple Pencil that’s the company’s first to charge via […]

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Lilbits: Google Podcasts and Gmail’s Basic HTML head to the Google Graveyard

Google announced this week that it’s pulling the plug on two services: Google Podcasts and the Basic HTML version of Gmail (which lets you read your email like it’s 2004). While some folks may have preferred the classic Gmail experience for its simple, lightweight design, Google says users have had more than a decade to […]

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Lilbits: Amlogic’s new chip could power next-gen TV boxes, and MS Paint is getting… good?

Microsoft is adding a bunch of new features to Paint, a graphics editing app that had been pretty barebones up until recently. The company is also rolling out experimental new updates to the Windows Subsystem for Linux. And the first performance notes about a new Amlogic processor that could power next-gen Google and Android TV […]

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Librem 5 Linux phone gets a $300 price cut, now costs $999 for a phone with 2017 specs

The Purism Librem 5 is an unusual smartphone, because it’s made from a company that sells Linux hardware with an emphasis on privacy and security. It ships with a GNU/Linux distribution called PureOS, has hardware kill switches to disable the mic, cameras, and wireless hardware when you’re not using it. And it’s expensive: when the […]

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Purism’s Librem 5 Linux smartphone now takes just 2 weeks to ship (but costs $1,299)

The Purism Librem 5 is a smartphone that ships with PureOS, the same free and open source GNU/Linux distribution that ships on Purism’s laptop and desktop computers. The company first began taking pre-orders for the phone through a crowdfunding campaign that launched in 2017, began shipping hardware more than two years later, and then spent […]

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Lilbits: Asus NUC products are official, iPhone 15 will feature USB-C, and closer look at two new handheld gaming PCs

A year after first going up for pre-order, the AYN Loki began shipping to customers last week. Was it worth the wait? According to a 30-minute video review from Retro Games Corps, the answer seems to be… definitely maybe? While the Loki isn’t the most powerful handheld gaming PC around, at $250 it’s one of […]

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Lilbits: Meta Portal’s slow demise, Microsoft’s Fall 2023 Surface hardware event, KDE goes double-click by default, and Bodhi Linux 7.0 released

The Meta Portal line of products are smart displays that launched in 2018 when Meta was still called Facebook. With support for Amazon’s Alexa voice service, they were kind of the company’s answer to an Amazon Echo, but with the added bonus of Facebook Messenger support, making them one of the easiest ways to place […]

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Rhino Linux is a rolling release, Ubuntu-based Linux distro with PC, PinePhone, and PineTab support

Rhino Linux is a new GNU/Linux distribution that’s based on Ubuntu, but which handles some key things differently from Canonical’s operating system. Unlike Ubuntu, Rhino is a rolling release operating system, which means that updates are delivered frequently, and whenever they’re available rather than saving everything up for a major OS update that comes only […]