nikodunk

What a fantastic article. As someone who has contributed to Phosh and Nura (prev. postmarketOS), I was always sad that Linux phones didn't take off. This article describes very well how difficult the firmware/hardware side is, which as a software guy I hadn't quite understood.

The software side (Phosh, KDE, etc) is now improving fast (both IMO because the obscure frameworks they're written in are easier to contribute to with AI, but also just thanks to time and maturity).

And if the firmware/hardware side can graduate the treadmill of endless bring-up and instead work on performance and fun stuff, that would be fantastic. We need our Raspberry Pi moment. First the Librem and Pinephone were our hope, then the OnePlus 6, but they all stayed 80% usable. Currently it was the Fairphone, but now tbd which the savior device will be. Exciting!

Not available to me yet. I'll re-download and switch from Brave when it is.

Was just about to say Roomba too! Next up IMO is Philips Hue, which don't support Matter and cost $25, vs. Matter-enabled Amazon brands that cost $7.

Somewhat negative tone, but I like lobste.rs for HN page 2 style content.

Nice piece, very cool product! This is smart home tech that would actually improve my home. Congrats on the launch!

I use Bazzite for development bc it works like a Mac with sane defaults and a just works approach:

- IDEs are no problem. Editors will "just work" for anything you type into the app store - Bazzite handles the special cases for you and installs them through brew taps or Flatpaks.

- For development it's basically just like a Mac where you also can't install system-level packages: Node, Python etc work through brew / nvm / uv same as on Mac. Development that involves containers will be unchanged from a Mac. For compilers specifically, same as on Mac: Install it through brew, or if you need a Debian or Fedora base you do `distrobox create` and you can apt-install in a transparent podman container.

The Home Assistant integration mentioned in the video: https://github.com/PilaEnergy/pila-home-assistant

The product: https://pilaenergy.com

Having read above article, I just gave llama.cpp a shot. It is as easy as the author says now, though definitely not documented quite as well. My quickstart:

brew install llama.cpp

llama-server -hf ggml-org/gemma-4-E4B-it-GGUF --port 8000

Go to localhost:8000 for the Web UI. On Linux it accelerates correctly on my AMD GPU, which Ollama failed to do, though of course everyone's mileage seems to vary on this.

It's a new-ish project FYI. But to answer your questions:

- Apps: It's Linux (like desktop or server), but "image-based" so you install apps in containers like iOS or Android do (and therefore OS updates basically-never break). https://flathub.org is generally the main app store for Linux containerized phone apps.

- Screenshots: It'll look the same as other Linux-on-phones, so like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostmarketOS for instance. It's just built differently.

I'm sure PRs would be welcomed if you have those devices to test on.

Updating without worries has made it much more daily-drivable for me on a Oneplus 6 (ie. it has rollbacks and image-based updates), despite being so new. It's fun that image-based OSs - which were arguably popularlized by phones - are now coming back to phones on the Linux side too.

This is based on bootc (bootable containers), so note that the OS build is described in a normal Dockerfile: https://github.com/pocketblue/pocketblue/blob/main/Container... which is then run by the Github action (or locally).

Very similar to how Universal Blue, Bazzite, Bluefin etc. build at https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite (see their Containerfile), but for mobile.

Has a similar mission to https://postmarketos.org, but with a different build system AFAICT

I really hope _this_ quote is not fabricated - because what a fantastic quote!!

Fascinating repo, thank you for sharing!

Hot take from an AI skeptic: between this, Nano Banana and generative AI integrated into Gmail for repetitive emails, I’m starting to actually use Google’s AI for tasks I hate most.

Google appears to have their AI product game together!

Agreed! It's my default recommendation now for a "just works" Linux system nowadays.

It's also really great for development btw - been doing all of my development on it with Homebrew and Flatpaks for over a year now.

Boeing?

If you’re big, invest in this. If you’re small, slap Dokploy/Coolify on it.

You’d need a bigger kit. WIll Prowse has many guides on these. https://youtube.com/watch?v=rRqV8BHE8lY

I'm working on a super-simple budgeting app called https://4keynumbers.com, which is based on Ramit Sethi's Conscious Spending Plan. It currently syncs my expenses from Plaid and cooks it down into a single chart, with only savings, investments, bills/fixed, and "safe to spend" as categories.

As soon as Fedora/Centos updates their images (pretty much immediately usually as it's upstream of EL), and the CI runs to re-layer the Bluefin changes. They also have Dependabot set up. https://github.com/ublue-os/bluefin/actions

It's just OCI images, like any web-scale project.

Yes! I used to use Silverblue too. Things like Tailscale, Docker, Davinci Resolve, nvidia drivers, and all codecs are a button-click away or already properly set up for you out of the box on the universal blue projects.

Same here! Been developing embedded, server and frontend stuff all fron Bluefin/Bazzite for 2 years now. Having Homebrew and Tailscale all set up for me is super clean, and the system is just set-and-forget. Gaming works great too.

Great article. Loved the bit where they decided to split off their desktop OS from their phone OS.

Very well written and reasoned article. I’ve struggled with a lot of the same issues with SQLite prod deployments. They appear simple, but then after you’ve ensured your file is on non-ephemeral storage, sorted out backups, and thought about vertical scaling or having separate dbs for jobs and models, a lot of the benefits over psql disappear IMO.

The main benefit over psql of course being that you don’t need to pay for a hosted db like RDS, or have a separate database server.

I’ve found a happy middle ground in simply self-hosting psql and my apps on the same VPS with something like dokploy. Local development is still easy enough, and remote deployment in containers is 1-click with Dokploy, and ends up being simpler to reason about IMO. My take below, if anyone’s interested.

https://nikodunk.com/2025-06-10-diy-serverless-(coreos-+-dok...

Hey! Your words echo this IMO! If not, strongly recommended :) https://www.notboring.co/p/the-electric-slide

I also hate obligatory mobile apps, especially when they’re linked to hardware: At the battery company I work for - pilaenergy - we’re aware that our hardware may well outlive our software, so we’re providing a mobile app that’s accessible over an WiFi access point or over your local WiFi, as well as the traditional mobile apps. This way - the software comes bundled with the hardware and can’t be sunset. Something that has long been an issue with IoT products.

Same! Just signed up and will be following tangled and this repo. I like how tangled is built on atproto (bluesky).

Looks great, and smart differentiation!