The progress is not as fast as all of us hope for, but development continues steadily. Recent work includes improvements to the device lock implementation, moving the platform towards openSUSE and OBS, various fixes and cleanups across Glacier components, Qt 6–related updates, and successful testing on new hardware.
Device lock improvements
There were several fixes and improvements in the device lock implementation. Glacier Welcome is started on first boot and allows the initial setup of the device lock code. The devicelock-plugin is a daemon that handles password verification. In addition, nemo-qml-plugin-devicelock provides an API for communicating with the daemon.
Glacier Home detects whether the service is running and locks the device if it is not. The Glacier Settings application includes a plugin that allows users to change the device lock password. The entire device lock flow was reviewed and thoroughly tested.
Moving towards openSUSE
It turned out that Manjaro Linux ships some outdated components, such as Meson, GObje
... Show more...The progress is not as fast as all of us hope for, but development continues steadily. Recent work includes improvements to the device lock implementation, moving the platform towards openSUSE and OBS, various fixes and cleanups across Glacier components, Qt 6–related updates, and successful testing on new hardware.
Device lock improvements
There were several fixes and improvements in the device lock implementation. Glacier Welcome is started on first boot and allows the initial setup of the device lock code. The devicelock-plugin is a daemon that handles password verification. In addition, nemo-qml-plugin-devicelock provides an API for communicating with the daemon.
Glacier Home detects whether the service is running and locks the device if it is not. The Glacier Settings application includes a plugin that allows users to change the device lock password. The entire device lock flow was reviewed and thoroughly tested.
Moving towards openSUSE
It turned out that Manjaro Linux ships some outdated components, such as Meson, GObject Introspection, Mesa, and others. Because of this, fixing all dependencies just to rebuild Lipstick would require significant effort. Using openSUSE proved to be a more practical approach.
As part of this transition, several packages in OBS (Open Build Service) were updated, including: ngfd, libprolog, libtrace-ohm, ohm-plugin-misc, lipstick-glacier-home, systemd-user-session-target, and nemo-mobile-session, and others.
At the moment, installation is only possible manually. openSUSE provides a concept called patterns, which should eventually allow installation of all required packages and apply additional system settings automatically. Work on this is still in progress.






Currently, the installation process involves installing openSUSE JeOS (Just Enough OS), adding the OBS repository, and installing the required packages. After that, several manual configuration steps are still necessary.
These steps will likely include ensuring that the mce daemon is running, providing configuration files such as /etc/eglfs-config.json, and making sure the correct user groups exist (see
github.com/nemomobile-ux/arm-p… and
gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm…).
In the end, Lipstick was successfully brought up on openSUSE:
youtu.be/-2mEQRadVa0?si=aVOJzA…
Other fixes
There were many important changes and fixes across the stack.
A memory leak in the Glacier Home search plugin was fixed.
Maliit was updated to the latest version, and the Nemo keyboard plugin was adjusted to the new Controls naming and updated to use the Qt 6 version of Maliit. As a result, the on-screen keyboard works again.
Drawer levels were removed from shared controls and from Glacier Settings to make the interface cleaner and simpler. Glacier Settings now also shows the Bluetooth plugin only when the BlueZ daemon is enabled, and the same applies to time settings when timed daemon is not running.
Glacier Weather was split into a daemon and a UI component, and the code was reorganized and cleaned up accordingly. This allows weather information to be updated in the background.
Finally, GeoClue was replaced by a custom implementation called locationd. The new implementation is cleaner and should enable more advanced features, such as support for Mozilla Location Services.
Last but not least, Nemo Mobile was successfully started on the Beresta devkit.
jagermo
in reply to cm0002 • • •mycodesucks
in reply to cm0002 • • •I agree, and I desperately want a Linux phone, but the really problem with Linux phones gaining traction is that is the developers are DEVELOPERS.
"I make $200,000 a year... how much should a good smartphone cost... how about $700? It's a bargain!"
I get that making hardware is expensive, but asking people to jump into something with a learning curve and real sacrifices at a premium price is just guaranteeing it stays niche - especially when asking an audience that by and large has to have an Android as a backup for some apps anyway.
And this is coming from someone with no fewer than 16 machines running various Linux distros in his house. You can't ask someone to spend that much on a secondary phone to play with until they get comfortable enough with it to switch completely. You just can't. It's barely working for the Linux OS, and that's free.
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jnod4
in reply to mycodesucks • • •tiramichu
in reply to mycodesucks • • •I'm sure it's very difficult to compete with the established duopoly of Apple and Google.
How are you supposed to make a product cheap against those enormous economies of scale, all while knowing very few people will want it or buy it when it doesn't have any apps for reasons of that same duopoly?
Linux phones absolutely are a niche project with sacrifices, as you said, and the only people who can bear the cost of entry at the moment will be a niche market of engineers and tinkerers.
It would be nice to get the price down to that of the consumer market, but the whole experience is still not even ready for consumers.
ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace
in reply to tiramichu • • •tiramichu
in reply to ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace • • •No I don't.
On PC, most of what people want to do happens inside a web browser, which means as soon as you have a browser your alternative operating system - like Linux - is very functional already.
Of the remaining functionality, a lot of it are apps that work offline; CAD/CAM apps, video production, office and business. Any devs who are willing can build similar equivalents to these apps, and they can even make them interoperable with the big players like Microsoft Office.
Compare to phones, where 90% of what people do is apps, and those apps are not made by random people, but by the company who provides the service. Which means if you aren't on iOS or Android then you probably can't book a taxi, can't access your banking app, can't message your family on the platform they all use, can't access your national government healthcare app, and the list goes on - you need support from service providers.
Microsoft tried to launch an alternative operating system with Windows Phone. They made a great device with an OS that was nice to use, and although they threw
... Show more...No I don't.
On PC, most of what people want to do happens inside a web browser, which means as soon as you have a browser your alternative operating system - like Linux - is very functional already.
Of the remaining functionality, a lot of it are apps that work offline; CAD/CAM apps, video production, office and business. Any devs who are willing can build similar equivalents to these apps, and they can even make them interoperable with the big players like Microsoft Office.
Compare to phones, where 90% of what people do is apps, and those apps are not made by random people, but by the company who provides the service. Which means if you aren't on iOS or Android then you probably can't book a taxi, can't access your banking app, can't message your family on the platform they all use, can't access your national government healthcare app, and the list goes on - you need support from service providers.
Microsoft tried to launch an alternative operating system with Windows Phone. They made a great device with an OS that was nice to use, and although they threw absolutely millions of dollars at other companies to make apps for their platform it still wasn't enough. And this was over 10 years ago when people were far less dependant on apps than they are now.
erebion
in reply to mycodesucks • • •The hardware isn't expensive (I run Linux on a phone that cost me 80 euros), the software development is.
Also, SailfishOS runs on some Xperia phones that cost around a hundred euros. The main issue with SailfishOS is that the OS isn't free software as parts are proprietary and they don't use a mainline kernel, so that you will probably bot be able to run an up to date kernel after a while.
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naeap
in reply to mycodesucks • • •Magnum, P.I.
in reply to naeap • • •Valmond
in reply to mycodesucks • • •I'm a developer and i won't buy a 700€ phone lol!!
I know the specs I need/want and go hunting, which excludes all apple and so on.
My sweet spot is Xiaomi, stellar performance (it's like a developer phone but cheap IMO) and cheap. Loads of variants and price ranges, and lots of second hand where I live, got my latest for 300€ and it's a "flagship killer" with specs like a modern PC (almost) and LEICA cameras.