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The Debian-based Mobian Linux distribution for mobile devices is now available for PINE64’s PineTab Linux tablet in addition to the PinePhone Linux phone.
A couple of months ago, I told you about the Mobian Project, a new GNU/Linux distribution that promised to bring the many benefits of the Debian GNU/Linux operating system to mobile devices.
To achieve that, Mobian Linux leverages the GNOME-based Phosh user interface developed by Purism for their Librem 5 phone, but for other devices, such as PINE64’s very popular PinePhone Linux phone.
Until today, Mobian only supported the PinePhone, but the developers just announced on Twitter that they’ve started building their mobile-oriented distribution for PINE64’s PineTab Linux tablet too.
That’s really great news, and if you are the lucky owner of a PineTab Linux tablet, you can try the early builds of Mobian Linux right now by downloading the latest nightly images from the official website.
And it looks like some users already tried Mobian Linux on the PineTab, and they were very impressed with the build quality considering its in early stages of development.
If you want to try it yourself, make sure to follow the instructions provided by the Mobian Project here. When more testing will be done, there will also be a dedicated PineTab page on the Mobian Wiki site with specific details about what’s working and what needs to be improved or it’s non-functional.
Being a new project and all that, Mobian Linux is in its early days, but the developers are very active and they want to port their Debian-based mobile OS to more devices in the near future, so stay tuned for more Mobian news on this space.
On the same note, if you want to try something different on your PineTab, there’s now a new Arch Linux ARM build with initial support for the Linux tablet, which you can download from here.
If you try either Mobian Linux or Arch Linux ARM on the PineTab Linux tablet, do let me know what you think about them in the comments section below. Happy hacking!
Last updated 4 years ago
