The postmarketOS project has released version 26.06, codenamed “Alpen Avocado”. This is the Alpine Linux-based mobile operating system that aims to keep phones and tablets useful for ten years, and the new build brings fresher components, support for more devices, and a couple of under-the-hood changes you notice from the moment a device powers on.
The base moves up to Alpine Linux 3.24, pulling in that branch’s kernel and package stack. On top of it sit four touch-oriented environments. GNOME 50 is available, though the mobile variant stays at GNOME 48.mobile.0 with crash fixes. Plasma Mobile climbs to 6.6.5 from the previous 6.5.6. Phosh goes to 0.55.0, up from 0.51.0, and swaps its login manager from tinydm to greetd with phrog. Sxmo holds at 1.18.1.
Changes under the hood
Two decisions define this release. The first is the jump to systemd 261, from 257. The second is that fresh installs now default to sudo-rs instead of doas; sudo-rs is the Rust rewrite of sudo, which the project adopts for privilege escalation. On systemd images, the Plasma desktop switches to plasma-login-manager.
Boot looks different too. postmarketOS drops pbsplash in favor of Plymouth, with a logo animation split into three segments. Compatible devices now vibrate on boot, and pressing ESC reveals the boot log on screen. ModemManager has been updated to add cell broadcast support, the emergency alerts that carriers push out.
Devices
The testing category now holds 254 devices. New arrivals include the Radxa Dragon Q6A and the PINE64 PineNote, the latter an e-ink reader. Five devices dropped from community to testing because their kernels were unmaintained or out of date, a reminder that support here depends on whoever maintains each board. Plasma Bigscreen returns as well, the TV mode that had been removed back in version 24.06, and the generic kernel packages linux-postmarketos remain available in their mainline, stable and lts variants.
Who should care
If you own a PinePhone, a PineTab, a Librem 5, or one of the many Android phones with a maintained kernel, this release gives you more current desktops and a cleaner boot. The PineNote as an e-ink target opens the door for anyone after a reader running real Linux. And if you come from Alpine, you’ll find familiar ground, since postmarketOS shares that base; see our distribution entry to understand how it differs from a conventional desktop at Linux.
The update is available to download and install from the project’s site. As always, read the list of known issues before moving your daily device to the new version: the team documents six open items, including storage capacity concerns and audio or display problems on certain models.