postmarketOS, an Alpine-based Linux distro designed to run on smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices, has published its 25.12 release, concluding a six-month development cycle with updates to the distribution’s base system, package management, user interfaces, and device support.
At the foundation of 25.12 is an upgrade to the recently released Alpine Linux 3.23. This base includes the newly released version 3 of Alpine’s package manager, apk. Apk v3 introduces changes intended to improve reliability, including downloading packages before installation, and comprehensive logging of package operations to /var/log/apk.log.
User interface components received broad updates. GNOME was advanced to version 49; the mobile variant remains on GNOME 48.mobile. KDE Plasma Mobile was updated to 6.5.3, bringing enhancements such as improved Waydroid integration, faster lockscreen loading, and homescreen refinements.
Phosh, a Linux mobile UI built on GNOME technologies, was advanced to version 0.51, with improvements comprising adaptive brightness adjustments, enhanced portal behavior, and added thumbnail previews in the file chooser portal.
The Stevia keyboard in Phosh gained new scaling options, a typing indicator pop-up, backspace word deletion, and terminal layout shortcut configuration. Sxmo was updated to 1.18.1, adding support for i3 and river window managers, a Quick Actions menu, and migrating audio mode handling from callaudiod to wireplumber.
Additional software updates include mobile-config-firefox 5.1.0, which adds an about:mobile page that lets users control interface options such as address bar placement and improves popup handling in the Firefox mobile UI.
Device support in postmarketOS 25.12 sees kernel upgrades and fixes across platforms. Changes to community category rules have moved all legacy devices using the generic MSM8916 kernel to the testing category; images remain available for these devices. MSM8226 devices have transitioned to generic packaging, and devices using the APQ8064 kernel now use MSM8960 generic packaging.
For new installations, postmarketOS 25.12 can be installed following the standard installation guide and device-specific wiki instructions. Existing installations can be upgraded via the documented upgrade process; when moving from v25.06, the /usr merge step is performed automatically.
Post-upgrade recommendations include switching Plasma Mobile users to plasma-camera and plasma-keyboard packages, and GNOME (Mobile) and Phosh users to gvfs-full with removal of obsolete gvfs-* packages. Users should also verify that manually enabled systemd units remain active, as systemd packaging changes may disable some units.
Finally, according to devs, future plans include upgrading to systemd 259 without applying downstream musl patches and switching to greetd and phrog for launching Phosh. A blog post detailing edge changes is expected in 2026.
For more information, see the announcement.
Image credits: postmarketOS
