plasma mobile

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Plasma Mobile updates make the user interface more customizable (and a bit more Android-like)

by Brad Linder Comments Off on Plasma Mobile updates make the user interface more customizable (and a bit more Android-like)

There are several different user interfaces available for Linux smartphones, but the one that will probably feel the most familiar to Android users is KDE’s Plasma Mobile. Like Android, it has a home screen, an app drawer, navigation buttons on the bottom, status notifications at the top, and a quick settings panel that appears when […]

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Linux smartphone news roundup: Xfce for phones, browser and camera updates, and more

by Brad Linder Comments Off on Linux smartphone news roundup: Xfce for phones, browser and camera updates, and more

There’s a new Linux distribution for smartphones that’s the first I’m aware of to be based on the Xfce desktop environment, but while the first pre-release builds of ExpidusOS for the PinePhone are now available for download, there’s still a lot of work to be done to make it into a usable operating system. It […]

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Future PinePhones will ship with Manjaro and Plasma Mobile (and other updates on the keyboard, modem firmware, and more)

by Brad Linder 1 Comment on Future PinePhones will ship with Manjaro and Plasma Mobile (and other updates on the keyboard, modem firmware, and more)

After shipping five different PinePhone Community Edition models, each with a different operating system and/or user interface pre-installed, Pine64 ended the Community Edition program this month. So what’s next? A few things: Pine64 has announced that future PinePhones will ship with Manjaro Linux and the KDE Plasma Mobile user interface pre-installed. If you already have […]

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Lilbits: Ubuntu, Plasma Mobile, Snapdragon 888 dev kit, and VLC’s birthday

by Brad Linder 1 Comment on Lilbits: Ubuntu, Plasma Mobile, Snapdragon 888 dev kit, and VLC’s birthday

The first smartphones powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 processor are starting to arrive. And so are developer kits like the Lantronix Snapdragon 888 Mobile HDK. Meanwhile details about the next gaming smartphone from Asus continue to leak, the creators of the popular VLC media player app celebrate the 20th anniversary of VideoLAN, and we’ve got […]

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JingOS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distro designed for tablets (and maybe phones)

by Brad Linder 6 Comments on JingOS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distro designed for tablets (and maybe phones)

There are a plenty of Linux-based operating systems that can run on desktop computers or servers. And there’s a growing number that run on phones (although most are pretty rough around the edges at this point). But JingOS is one of the first Linux distributions that’s designed specifically for tablets. It has a touch-friendly user […]

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Lilbits: Snapdragon 888 is almost here, a 4K video editor that fits on a 1.44 MB floppy, and Linux phones are real PCs

by Brad Linder 4 Comments on Lilbits: Snapdragon 888 is almost here, a 4K video editor that fits on a 1.44 MB floppy, and Linux phones are real PCs

Qualcomm introduced the Snapdragon 888 processor earlier this month, promising big boost in CPU and graphics performance and energy efficiency. Last week the company shared some initial benchmarks that help make the case, (but which also show that Qualcomm’s next-gen chip is only somewhat competitive with Apple’s previous-gen processor). But when will you actually be […]

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Manjaro ARM Plasma Mobile Beta 1 is now available for the PinePhone

by Brad Linder 2 Comments on Manjaro ARM Plasma Mobile Beta 1 is now available for the PinePhone

The Manjaro ARM team has been rapidly cranking out new builds of their smartphone operating system in recent months, with four public beta releases of Manjaro ARM with the Phosh user interface so far. But the developers have also been working on versions of Manjaro ARM featuring different user interfaces, having released alpha builds with […]

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Plasma Mobile picks up performance, theme, and app improvements

by Brad Linder Comments Off on Plasma Mobile picks up performance, theme, and app improvements

Plasma Mobile is one of the prettiest user interfaces available for Linux phones, but when I’ve tested it in the past it hasn’t exactly been super speedy. So it’s good to know that the developers behind Plasma Mobile are working on making the software faster while also reducing memory usage, at least when it comes […]

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KDE Plasma Mobile ends Halium support, shifts focus to phones running mainline Linux kernel, en

by Brad Linder Comments Off on KDE Plasma Mobile ends Halium support, shifts focus to phones running mainline Linux kernel, en

Folks have been finding way to run GNU/Linux distributions on smartphones for years. But it’s only in the past few years that phone makers have started to produce phones designed to run operating systems that use a mainline Linux kernel. So projects like Halium arose to simplify the process of getting a Linux-based operating system […]

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Lilbits: Goodbye Galaxy Note, hello Ryzen Mobile overclocking

by Brad Linder 9 Comments on Lilbits: Goodbye Galaxy Note, hello Ryzen Mobile overclocking

Once upon a time it was pretty clear what you were getting when you bought a Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone – it would be an expensive phone with a big screen, a big battery, a fast processor, and support for Samsung’s S-Pen digital stylus. But as smartphone screens have gotten larger (and prices higher), the […]