PostmarketOS 21.06 arrives with more device support, updates and more

Recently the release of the new version of postmarketOS 21.06 was announced in which sYou have made the system base upgrade to Alpine Linux 3.14, as well as the kernel has been updated and, above all, the compatibility portfolio of officially supported devices has been expanded.

For those who are unaware of PostmarketOS should know that this is a Linux distribution is a free and open source software operating system under development primarily for smartphones and tablets, based on Alpine Linux, Musl and BusyBox. The aim of the project is to provide the opportunity to use the Linux distribution kit on a smartphone, which does not depend on the life cycle of the official support firmware and is not tied to the standard solutions of the major industry players that establish the development vector.

The postmarketOS environment is unified as much as possible and it brings together all device specific components in a separate package, all other packages are identical for all devices and are based on Alpine Linux packages.

In compilations, whenever possible the vanilla linux kernel is used and if this is not possible, firmware kernels prepared by device manufacturers are used, plus KDE Plasma Mobile is offered as the main custom skins, Phosh, Sxmo, but it is possible to install other environments including GNOME, MATE and Xfce .

Main news of PostmarketOS 21.06

We are pleased to announce postmarketOS version v21.06, based on Alpine Linux 3.14! If you're wondering why it happened three months after the last launch, the reason is that we managed to follow Alpine's launch more closely this time. Instead of two and a half months after Alpine's launch, it only took us half a month to get this one out. The next releases can be expected every six months from now, closely following Alpine releases.

In this new version that is presented of PostmarketOS 21.06 as we mentioned the system base is synced with Alpine Linux 3.14, Besides that the number of devices officially supported by the community has increased from 11 to 15 where the new supported devices are the OnePlus 6, OnePlus 6T, Xiaomi Mi Note 2 and Xiaomi Redmi 2.

Among the changes that have been made in this new version is that all user interfaces have been updated to later versions and all device ports have been improved.

Another important change is in unlocking rootfs with osk-sdl which now disables read / write queues, increasing write performance on simple benchmarks by ~ 35% and read performance by ~ 33% on file systems with 4K block sizes, plus the username / password prompt for the Dedicated SSH user in device installer, making installation less complex.

The kernel has been optimized for the PinePhone to extend battery life. The Linux kernel for Pine64 devices is built on the basis of the linux-sunxi project.

Moreover Phosh has been moved by default to the Portfolio file manager, which is best suited for mobile screens. The Nemo supplied above can be installed from the Alpine Linux repository.

For all devices except OnePlus 6 / 6T and Xiaomi Mi Note 2, the predefined set of nftables packet filtering rules is enabled by default.

The default suggested rules allow incoming SSH connections through USB and Wi-Fi network adapters, as well as DHCP requests through USB adapters.

Of the other changes that stand out of this new version:

  • It is no longer possible to switch to standby while music is playing, even if the application does not directly block the activation of the screen saver via the inhibit API.
  • On the WWAN network interface, any incoming connection is prohibited.
  • Now a firewall is included, powered by nftables.
  • Changes have been made to improve Wi-Fi stability on the Librem 5 smartphone.
  • Smart card support has been added for Librem 5.
  • Outgoing connections are allowed for all types of network interfaces.
  • Updated versions of all user interfaces.

Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it from postmarketOS 21.06, you can check the details in the following link.


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