this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
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Linux Phones

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The Discussion on Linux-based Phones.


Benefits:

  • Hardware freedom.
  • Perfect operating-system competition.
  • Full utilization of specs.
  • Phone lifespan raises to 10+ years.
  • Less e-waste.

Linux Mobile Distros:

  • Sailfish🇫🇮
  • FuriOS🇺🇸
  • Ubuntu Touch🇩🇪
  • Postmarket OS🇨🇭
  • Mobian
  • Pure OS🇺🇸
  • Plasma Mobile🇩🇪
  • LuneOS
  • openSUSE Mobile🇩🇪
  • Nemomobile
  • Droidian
  • Mobile NixOS
  • ExpidusOS
  • Maemo Leste
  • Manjaro Arm
  • Tizen
  • WebOS

Linux Mobile Hardware:

  • Jolla Phone🇫🇮
  • Shift Phone🇩🇪
  • FLX1🇺🇸
  • Fairphone 5🇳🇱
  • Volla Phone🇩🇪
  • Librem 5🇺🇸

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I have returned, this time with a fully working fingerprint sensor!

But TheMightyCat i hear you say, we already had a working fingerprint sensor made by nick!

And you're right, that's why i specified fully while maybe nick's one is also fully working he doesn't show enrollment or a negative control, so either way it isn't confirmed or not confirmed from his video alone.

Detecting if any finger is on the sensor is the easy part, enrolling and checking if its the right finger is the hard part.

But while it has taken longer then i would have liked it is now fully working!

And it even has a party trick!

As you can see in the video, using my index finger does a regular unlock, my middle finger unlocks and opens the camera, and my ring finger is a duress and removes the super secret file. (the removal of the file is instant, the delay comes from updating the desktop entry)

this is done trough fingerprintd, for root scripts this file is used:

/etc/fingerprintd/actions.conf
right-index-finger /etc/fingerprintd/duress.sh

While for user scripts its published on the net.catcrafts.Fingerprintd1.FingerMatched dbus

expect this to land in fp6-img somewhere this weekend, i was already fighting for my life trying to make the recording and don't have the mental energy left to publish it.

Recording something that requires 2 hands is the biggest pain in the ass ever, these were all the attempts:

ALSO I HATE TEE. THERE IS NOTHING MORE ANTI USER THEN A CHIP WHERE THE MANUFACTURER CAN GO "erm akshually ERROR_ELF_SIGNATURE_ERROR"

See this girl? This is Mia.

She has hacked this computer and jailbroken its TEE

Be like Mia.

~~hey look the sun has come up, time to go to bed.~~

News roundup

imsd issues

Thanks very much to 2 members of the community for their patience of me asking them to run scripts, i'm trying to be the least of a bother possible.

If you find any issues with imsd please let me know! the current known issues are:

No call audio on carriers that only support VoLTE (alteast that is the hypothesis for this issue)

Getting called from a landline doesn't work.

I'm working hard to fix these issues, they will hopefully be fixed somewhere next week.

catcrafts.net shop

Ive been thinking hard about this, but there is no business case to be made to sell pre flashed units on my website, its more expensive for the people buying them, it puts a huge administrative burden onto me. and for people that want to finacially support me its much better for the both of us to purchase a unit at your local retailer and then donate on the website instead of purchasing as then it isn't taxed because its a donation, while if its a sale it is taxed. so i don't think im going to do this unless anyone has a good case for it.

RISC-V phone

This project has been low priority while working on the FP6 but i think i have settled on a chip, its probably going to be the spacemiT k1, not the best, but the best for this purpose. Finding a risc-v chip with a low power consumption and good peformance is slim pickings, and while the k1 is not exaclty great its as far as i know the pest peformance per watt.

What's next

Just the camera and laser rangefinder, then the fp6 is officially 100% hardware complete

Mental health

Don't want to make this too personal but it's important, take care of yourselves out there.

Bonus question

One lemmy thing i don't understand

According to the metrics !linuxphones@lemmy.ml should be more active then here, but that place is completely deserted!

Are all those subscribers just dead accounts?

top 20 comments
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[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 3 points 55 minutes ago

The hero returns!

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 9 points 2 hours ago

According to the metrics !linuxphones@lemmy.ml should be more active then here, but that place is completely deserted!

The lemmy.ml community is much older and has lots of subscriptions from dead accounts. Also people are generally unhappy with lemmy.ml and moved to other communities like this one here.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 7 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Amazing work. Donated to the project. This is exactly what we need.

[–] TheMightyCat@ani.social 8 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Thank you!

Just to clear up any confusion I am not associated with postmarketOS if that's what you ment with the project, they definitely deserve the financial support for their amazing work but my donation page is on my website at: https://catcrafts.net/shop/donation

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 7 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Yep, that's what I used. (I also donate regularly to postmarketOS).

Out of curiosity, are you cooperating with postmarketOS or Fairphone on this in any way? I'm wondering why they didn't manage to do anything like this with all the resources they have? I assumed it's simply not possible because of locked drivers and that we will have to wait for something like the next version of Pineophone to get fully working Linux phone.

[–] TheMightyCat@ani.social 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Out of curiosity, are you cooperating with postmarketOS or Fairphone on this in any way?

Sort of, i have contact with Luca Weiss via email mostly on the linux mailing list, he is part of the pmos core team and works at fairphone but i don't have offcial contact with both organizations. I tried to become a fairphone partner but thus far they haven't responded and i don't think they will. Which is quite a shame.

I’m wondering why they didn’t manage to do anything like this with all the resources they have?

I don't have the knowledge to make a conclusion on that so i won't, but in keep in mind i'm not starting from 0, the fact that it even boots linux in the first place is work done by Luca.

I assumed it’s simply not possible because of locked drivers and that we will have to wait for something like the next version of Pineophone to get fully working Linux phone.

Unless its cryptographically signed its always possible, it just becomes alot harder. Fairphone is pretty good in this aspect as they publish alot of usefull sources.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I tried to become a fairphone partner but thus far they haven’t responded and i don’t think they will. Which is quite a shame.

It is a shame. I guess they won't care unless this project gets actual users that can push for this. Let's hope once this is fully working people will start migrating. I sure will try.

[–] TheMightyCat@ani.social 4 points 1 hour ago

Well many people have said in the comments here that they are buying an fairphone because of my work, so I would assume that's an interesting business proposition for them then right? But apperantly not I guess then?

[–] MxRemy@piefed.social 7 points 5 hours ago

Whoa this is so cool, I never considered tgat different fingers could do different things. Neat!

[–] remo@feddit.org 19 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Wow! First postmarketOS device with workimg fingerprint! Thank you, all your work is amazing! Maybe you could document the fingerprint mechanism on the postmarketOS wiki?😉

[–] erebion@news.erebion.eu 0 points 3 hours ago

LLM generated, this is not allowed by the postmarketOS project.

[–] passenger@sopuli.xyz 10 points 10 hours ago

Thank you so much for this!

[–] sunnyjim@lemmy.zip 34 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Amazing work! I'm on an FP5 but I hope by the time this one dies that Linux phones are a genuine alternative

[–] TheMightyCat@ani.social 18 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I do hope some of my work trickles down to the FP5 aswell, but I'm not sure how compatible they are.

[–] paper_moon@lemmy.world 14 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I also have a Fairphone 5, and hoping the work will trickle down, if not, it would be super helpful to kinda have your thoughts for how you did your work for each piece of rhe FP6 so people can try it themselves with their own hardware. I've been meaning to start digging into getting more stuff working on my FP5 but haven't had the time, or honestly expertise yet.

[–] TheMightyCat@ani.social 12 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

My biggest tip is to run trough the full sequence of whatever you want to make on rooted android first, and then capture everything.

Then when making it work on Linux you can compare against those captures.

[–] remo@feddit.org 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Interesting. And with which tool is this possible? I would also love, if you could document your work a little bit, for new-comers🥳

[–] TheMightyCat@ani.social 5 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I used logcat aswell as just reading form /proc/tzdbg/qsee_log for this.

the general steps go as follows:

  1. Decide on what part to bring up
  2. Go into the manual and find what pins it is on for the fingerprint sensor that is these:

  1. Poke these pins to see if i can bring up the sensor, see if i can talk to it. The power rail worked fine, but the data pins were blocked behind the TEE. So started a whole new adventure.

  2. I flashed android again as i needed more information, capturing the logs. Which i didn't really do great as i had to flash android several times over again but oh well.

  3. Then its a ton of work comparing against the android logs, adjusting your linux code, looking at the logs that come out of that. This part is not especially hard, its just pulling threads until it works pretty much, but its really boring. What made this process 10x more annoying is that i couldn't attach a debugger because it was running in the TEE.

  4. Then test it, record the video, make the post.

  5. If its going to the kernel export the patch and write the messages and cover letter. Run it trough the AI review, fix any issues that comes out of that, and finally send.

This the general process, i would suggest starting with an easy part first.

For me, as long as i have a thread to pull on then its not really hard, just a ton of work.

The nightmare scenario is that it doesn't work and you have no idea why. Then it gets hard.

[–] inari@piefed.zip 20 points 13 hours ago

Take care of yourself! Thanks for the regular updates.

[–] rolandlo@fosstodon.org 11 points 13 hours ago

@TheMightyCat

Wow, even the fingerprint sensor works! That's amazing! I also love the party trick. :-)