Mobian: A Mobile Operating System based on Debian GNU / Linux
Continuing with our publications related to the field of Free or open operating systems for mobiles, our post today is dedicated to an interesting and useful alternative known as "Mobian".
"Mobian" is an open source project whose objective is to bring Debian GNU / Linux mobile devices. And despite the fact that, to this day, said project is still in a early stage and is only supported by PinePhone mobiles, it has a good list of applications available on its platform for the use and enjoyment of users.
GrapheneOS and Sailfish OS: Open Source Mobile Operating Systems
And as usual, before we dive into today's topic of "Mobian", we will leave for those interested in exploring some of our latest previous related posts with the field of free or open Operating Systems, the following links to them. So that you can easily explore them, if necessary, after reading this publication:
"GrapheneOS is developed as a non-profit open source project, focused on privacy and security, and includes support for Android applications. Whereas, Sailfish OS is developed by a Finnish mobile phone company called Jolla, but has the support of a worldwide community that contributes to the open source base of it. And it also focuses on security and compatibility with Android apps." GrapheneOS and Sailfish OS: Open Source Mobile Operating Systems
Mobian: A Debian for Mobile
What is Mobian?
According to its developers in its Official website, "Mobian" is currently described as follows:
"It is an open source project aimed at bringing Debian GNU / Linux to mobile devices, that is, Mobian intends to integrate the standard Debian distribution with phone-specific projects and modifications in a distribution that works on certain mobile phones and tablets, such as the Pinephone. , the Pinetab and the Librem 5. The idea is to minimize the specific Mobian pieces by "uploading" the changes to the original projects as much as possible.
To achieve this, we maintain a delicate balance between bringing custom patches and packages that are necessary for Mobian to function well on its supported devices, while trying to push as many of these changes as possible into the Debian upstream. You could think of Mobian as a pure mix of Debian, and in fact we aspire to become one at some point. " What is Mobian?
How does it currently work?
As we have expressed at the beginning, "Mobian" is still in a early stage and is only supported by PinePhone mobiles for the moment. This is because its developers are currently focused on the same software stack as purism used for Freem5, that is to say: wayland-ish, gnome-ish, modem manager-ish.
On this point, the developers clarify the following:
"Be based on the Phosh graphical environment currently developed by GNOME facilitates that, but of course it is perfectly possible to run software based on Qt. We have nothing against KDE and Plasma Shell, and we are contemplating if, when and how we can support it as well, but for the moment creating a single working graphical user interface is challenging enough. "
The Future of Mobian
On this point, and referring again to its developers, they clarify in the one post arranged on your blog following:
"Bullseye will be the first Debian release to include a modern software stack targeting mobile devices, which is a major milestone in itself. However, development in this area is progressing at a rapid pace, and most packages on bullseye are already out of date, lacking important features like improved modem handling during suspend / resume cycles, or recent packages like GTK4. and libadwaita.
As Mobian is developed by a small team of already busy people, we have decided that we will not support bullseye after its release and will focus our efforts on the next version of Debian (codename bookworm). "
Top 15 free or open operating systems for existing mobiles
- / e / (Eelo)
- AOSP (Android Open Source Project)
- Calyx OS
- Graphene OS
- Kaios (Only partially open source)
- LineageOS
- MoonOS (WebOS)
- Mobian
- Plasma Mobile
- postmarketOS
- PureOS
- Repeat
- Sailfish OS
- Tizen
- Ubuntu Touch
Summary
In summary, "Mobian" is another great and useful Free and open operating system for mobile devices, which is worth taking into account, both to test and evaluate and to use, if you have a PinePhone mobile for it. Hopefully this and others will continue to develop quickly and effectively for the benefit of all of us who value not only free and open, but also privacy, anonymity and better computer security on our mobiles.
We hope that this publication will be very useful for the entire «Comunidad de Software Libre y Código Abierto» and of great contribution to the improvement, growth and diffusion of the ecosystem of applications available for «GNU/Linux». And do not stop sharing it with others, on your favorite websites, channels, groups or communities of social networks or messaging systems. Finally, visit our home page at «DesdeLinux» to explore more news, and join our official channel Telegram from DesdeLinux.