PostmarketOS 25.06: "the one with systemd" [LWN.net]

The postmarketOS project, which creates a Linux distribution for mobile devices, announced it was working on adding a version with systemd last March. That day has arrived with the announcement of version 25.06:

We considered supporting an upgrade from OpenRC to systemd in our upgrade script, but then decided against it as such an upgrade path might introduce its own bugs and we would rather spend the time improving other parts of postmarketOS. So for this one-time scenario we ask you to please reinstall postmarketOS to get from OpenRC to systemd. Thank you for your understanding!

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Looks good

Posted Jun 23, 2025 17:35 UTC (Mon) by parametricpoly (subscriber, #143903) [Link] (6 responses)

I think the choice of technologies is so good in this distro. Musl is the most suitable libc for such systems, systemd is powerful but also fast. I'd imagine pure Linux based phones would start much faster than Android. Pipewire is also great. I can think use cases like using your phone for doing live music performances with an audio interface.

There are also pull requests for Gnome that enable multiseat (e.g. gnome-shell PR 2230 & gdm PR 291). This means stuff like using your phone as a desktop computer via some USB hub would work.

Looks good

Posted Jun 24, 2025 8:04 UTC (Tue) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (3 responses)

I don't think systemd/gdm/GNOME support multiple sessions per user, so to get phone multiseat you would have to log out of your phone session and login on the desktop, or add a second user for the desktop session. Probably a single session/seat would be more useful since you could use the same set of open windows on either the phone screen or the desktop screen, or mirror windows to both maybe.

Looks good

Posted Jun 24, 2025 14:08 UTC (Tue) by rjones (guest, #159862) [Link] (1 responses)

This is what I do with GrapheneOS on Android.

I have my normal "Owner" profile that I have normally running that is "google free". No microg, no gapps, etc. Then I have my "Work" profile that has a couple work related apps that rely on gapps. That normally remains off unless I need it specifically for work, which isn't too often.

It is a pretty reasonable way to go and keeps things cleanly divided.

For extending desktops across multiple devices maybe it is something that can be done through KDE's RDP support or something like that.

Looks good

Posted Jun 24, 2025 14:09 UTC (Tue) by rjones (guest, #159862) [Link]

I mean gnome/kde's rdp support, etc.

Looks good

Posted Jun 24, 2025 17:56 UTC (Tue) by parametricpoly (subscriber, #143903) [Link]

I'm ok with having multiple users. The screen DPI and ergonomics doesn't seem to be compatible so I don't see any way to extend the desktop. Some kind of session restore would be useful though.

Looks good

Posted Jun 24, 2025 18:36 UTC (Tue) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]

Android is just as "pure Linux" as Fedora, ChromeOS or Devuan.

Looks good

Posted Jun 30, 2025 10:13 UTC (Mon) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Why multiseat? I would imagine the normal use case to be to plug in an external screen to an existing session?

systemd + musl

Posted Jun 30, 2025 13:07 UTC (Mon) by sam.thursfield (subscriber, #94496) [Link]

Well done to the postmarketOS folks for their work on a systemd+musl implementation!

Even as https://lwn.net/Articles/1025560 suggests that systemd with musl is not possible ;-)