Open Hardware/Modding With Linux, and Phones With Lineage OS

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 02, 2025

• CNX Software ☛ Sakura Pi RK3308B SBC offers RGB LCD interface, supports mainline Linux

  Sakura Pi RK3308B is a small SBC powered by the Rockchip RK3308B quad-core Cortex-A35 SoC that I saw when I covered the GNU/Linux 6.17 release at the end of last month. The board comes with 512 MB of DDR3 memory, a microSD card slot, an optional 4 GB or 8 GB eMMC flash, an RGB LCD interface to connect an LCD, two USB-C ports (one host, one OTG), a WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2 module, and the usual 40-pin GPIO header.

• It's FOSS ☛ Raspberry Pi Users Should Not Miss This

  Pay $8 for 3 books or $18 for the entire collection.

• Hackaday ☛ Speech Synthesis On A 10 Cent Microcontroller

  Speech synthesis has been around since roughly the middle of the 20th century. Once upon a time, it took remarkably advanced hardware just to even choke out a few words. But as [atomic14] shows with this project, these days it only takes some open source software and 10-cent microcontroller

• CNX Software ☛ ESWIN EBC7702 Mini-DTX motherboard offers EIC7702X RISC-V SoC, up to 64GB RAM, Ubuntu 24.04 support

  ESWIN Computing, in collaboration with Canonical, has launched the EBC7702 Mini-DTX motherboard, a RISC-V development platform with ESWIN’s new EIC7702X dual-die RISC-V SoC. This board can be considered an upgrade from the previous EBC7700 SBC and is designed for more demanding AI and data processing tasks.

  The motherboard features an 8-core 64-bit dual-die RISC-V CPU with an integrated AI accelerator delivering up to 40 TOPS (INT8) and 20 TFLOPS (FP16) performance. It supports up to 64GB LPDDR5 memory, 32GB onboard eMMC flash, and multiple storage interfaces, including M.2, SPI Flash, and MicroSD. Connectivity options include four Gigabit Ethernet ports, Wi-Fi, two HDMI outputs, two PCIe Gen3.0 x16 slots, USB 3.0/2.0 ports, and four fan headers. With support for AI, display, and camera modules, the board is designed for video analysis and edge AI workloads.

• Liliputing ☛ Lilbits: A new handheld Linux PC, Google opens up the Play Store (a little), Samsung’s web browser comes to PCs

  In many ways, handheld gaming PCs are the modern descendants of the UMPCs (ultra mobile PCs) from twenty years ago. But with a few exceptions, most don’t have the keyboards or long battery life that you’d want for general purpose computing.

  Fortunately for fans of handheld computing, we’ve also seen a number of DIY solutions in recent years, often built around Raspberry Pi hardware or similar single board computers. Redditor stopdesign is showing off an early prototype of a new model that’s a Linux handheld that looks like a tiny laptop designed for thumb typing… for “coding in the bed/bathroom/wherever without distractions.” You can’t buy one yet, or download the designs to build your own. But stopgap once the design is finalized, stopgap is hoping to run a crowdfunding campaign to produce a batch of the little computers and make them available to backers.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Kevin Boone ☛ Kevin Boone: No more Lineage OS on Samsung cellphones

    My strategy for evicting Google from my technological life includes running alternative operating systems on my cellphones. I’ve used several of these ‘custom ROMs’, but mostly I’ve settled on Lineage OS or, occasionally, /e/OS. Nearly all of my drawer-full of cellphone handsets are Samsung devices. I like them because the have SD card slots, and many still have proper headphone jacks. They can also be great value to buy second-hand.

    Sadly, the days of running Lineage OS – and any non-vendor firmware – on Samsung handsets appear to be drawing to a close, at least in the UK. Most likely other regions will soon be affected, if they aren’t already. Data services seem to be OK for now, but voice services are becoming increasingly erratic.