The postmarketOS Project Celebrates a Major Milestone as It Passes 250 Supported Devices
While features will vary, postmarketOS v24.06 — which brings new life to abandoned smartphones, tablets — offers the broadest support yet.
The postmarketOS project, which aims to keep end-of-life smartphones, tablets, and laptops out of landfill by providing a custom Linux distribution based on Alpine Linux, is celebrating a major milestone this week: its latest release, postmarketOS v24.06, covers more than 250 different devices.
"People are interested in running Linux on their devices for various reasons," the project's maintainers write. "We don't force you to set up an account on first boot. You are not urged to store all your private data in a cloud that you don't control."
"We don't pre-install or recommend software that tries to extract as much attention or money from you as possible," the team continues. "We don't follow AI [Artificial Intelligence] hype trends that violate your privacy even further, implemented at the cost of a high environmental impact. What we do believe in is free software, giving you control over your device, and allowing you to use it way past the original vendor's support cycle!"
PostmarketOS began back in 2017 as a replacement operating system for Android smartphones, which had reached the end of their software support lifecycle. Designed primarily for Linux enthusiasts, initial support was basic — but in the years since the number of fully-supported devices, capable of running native Linux and Android applications, connecting to Wi-Fi networks, and even connecting to cellular networks and making calls — has grown.
The project's latest release is dubbed The One With Over 250 Devices, for obvious reasons: it supports more than 250 individual devices, a major milestone for postmarketOS. "Support," however, doesn't necessarily mean all a device's features will be available: many of the new devices have come straight from the bleeding-edge version of the operating system, and capabilities vary. "With a lot of them you can only barely boot Linux," the project's maintainers admit, "but still it allows for some amazing use-cases."
In addition to the new devices, the latest postmarketOS comes with a "generic" device — designed to be compatible with any PC or laptop based on a 64-bit x86 processor. Those with hardware featuring NVIDIA's Tegra ARMv7 processors, meanwhile, can also find a generic build with support for gadgets including the Google Nexus 7, various models of Asus Transformer, and Microsoft's ill-fated Surface RT.
The new builds are now available to download for all supported devices on the postmarketOS website.