Mobian's Blog

The non-free-firmware repository Mar 11, 2023 - 2 min read

PinePhone and PinePhonePro Owners (and others), please change your config

PinePhonePro users might get nagging messages about packages being held back right now…

TL;DR: Please add the non-free-firmware section to the Debian repository line in /etc/apt/sources.list.

These months in Mobian: February/March 2023 Mar 10, 2023 - 3 min read

March isn’t even over yet and we are already summing up what has happened in both February and March. Dang, are we fast…

Porting Mobian to New Devices Mar 7, 2023 - 5 min read As Mobian (and Mobile Linux in general) has gotten more popular, many folks have started to ask if Mobian supports their particular phone. While we wish we lived in a world where installing Mobian to a new phone model was just as easy as installing Debian to a new laptop, things are (unfortunately) much more complicated than that. Read more...

Off-topic: The importance of efficient tooling Jan 25, 2023 - 6 min read

You’re probably aware of the existence and hopes tied to the rise of the RISC-V architecture, which means we should prepare for future (yet hypothetical) RISC-V Linux-based mobile devices.

The first step in this journey being the ability to build binary packages for this architecture, we purchased a StarFive VisionFive v2 SBC with the goal to turn it into a (Debian-powered, of course!) GitLab CI runner. And that’s exactly where the tools developed to build Mobian came in really handy!

A look back in the mirror... And a glimpse of the future! Jan 8, 2023 - 9 min read

2022 has been an extremely busy year for Mobian developers, and a lot has happened throughout this period. As we’re entering a new ~~development cycle~~ year, now is a good time to look back at what we achieved in 2022.

These... past 4 months in Mobian: July - October 2022 Nov 1, 2022 - 6 min read

As ~~we’re reaching the end of the month~~ we slightly overshot the month, it’s time to look back at what happened since July.

This month in Mobian: June 2022 Jun 30, 2022 - 4 min read

The end is near! The end of June at least, and that means it is time for our monthly recap of what has happened.

This month in Mobian: May 2022 May 31, 2022 - 3 min read

This is the first in a (hopefully) series of short blog posts summarizing what has happened in Mobianland. Given that Mobian integrates much of the ecosystem not developed by us, this report could reiterate many of the things being said somewhere else.

Moving to Tow-Boot: Towards Device-Independant Images Mar 30, 2022 - 5 min read

Mobian (and most of the Arm Linux ecosystem) have been dealing with device-specific boot sequences since our inception. However, recent changes have made it possible to standardise these. This blog post will discuss how these changes affect Mobian and the long term goal of creating a universal image for Mobian devices.

Script kiddy strikes back Feb 11, 2022 - 11 min read

As you may be aware, a malicious person tried to spread malware through many Matrix rooms used by mobile Linux users and developers, partly taking advantage of a known vulnerability in the stock modem firmware. Here’s a quick analysis of how this malware was supposed to operate.