news
Free/Libre Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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The New Leaf Journal ☛ Building and Running PumpkinOS
The 2025 edition of Halloween is here. Halloween means pumpkins, a subject that I have covered extensively here in these pages. For this Halloween, I decided to tackle a pumpkin that is both inorganic and non-decorative, specifically PumpkinOS. PumpkinOS is a free and open source implementation of PalmOS which can run as a program on both Linux and Windows. I had a specific reason for testing it out which turned out to not bear fruit in the first instance, but I did successfully install PumpkinOS and give it a brief test-drive. While I had to squash the expectations of readers, this article focuses on compiling and running PumpkinOS on Linux, but not much on using it or exploring everything it is capable of. This post focuses on compiling and running PumpkinOS, surveying its default applications, and
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F-Droid ☛ What We Talk About When We Talk About [Installation]
We recently published a blog post with our reaction to the new Google Developer Program and how it impacts your freedom to use the devices that you own in the ways that you want. The post garnered quite a lot of feedback and interest from the community and press, as well as various civil society groups and regulatory agencies.
In this post, I hope to clarify and expand on some of the points and rebut some of the counter-messaging that we have witnessed.
Google’s message that “Sideloading is Not Going Away” is clear, concise, and false
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Thunderbird ☛ Mobile Progress Report: September-October 2025 - The Thunderbird Blog
Hello community, it’s a pleasure to be here and help take part in a product I’ve used for many years, but now with the focus on Mobile. I am Jon Bott, and am the new Engineering Manager for the Thunderbird Mobile teams. I am passionate about native mobile development and am excited to be helping both mobile apps moving forward.