postmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels 6 min. read
The biggest thing in February for postmarketOS was of course FOSDEM and our hackathon, about which we wrote a whole blog post already. Because of this, and the new approach outlined in the last monthly post, the blog post here is compareatively short.
The PMCR 0009 about defining new requirements for the "main" device category is still in discussion but coming along nicely. The goal of this is to ensure that devices in main will be reliable and will be set up to stay there for a long time, once they are in that category. Thanks to everybody who has given feedback so far!
Our AI policy has been updated to explicitly forbid generative AI, and to be shorter and easier to understand (!49). Thanks, Oliver!
Bhushan is now a Trusted Contributor in postmarketOS! He has already been quite active in postmarketOS from 2018 to 2021 and has recently returned to KDE Plasma Mobile upstream development as well, which he has been doing for several years beforehand. Furthermore he is helping with improving certain mainline devices, such as the Fairphone 5 where he recently collaborated with Luca to get call audio from the speaker working for the first time!
Minecrell stepped down as a TC. Among many other things, he was one of the initial maintainers that brought postmarketOS to Android phones, maintaining many of the MSM8916 devices, and the first one that enabled voice calls developing q6voiced. Minecrell is still available to answer questions and help guide people in the community in things that are part of his expertise.
Anton stepped down as TC. He has pioneered Chromebook support in postmarketOS, implementing depthcharge support in pmbootstrap and many other things that were needed to make this possible. Furthermore he has been maintaining the port for the AYA Odin game console, and mainlining it, and worked on many other great things in postmarketOS.
A warm welcome to Bhushan and a huge thanks to Minecrell and Anton for how they have pushed postmarketOS forward over the years in their roles as TC!
The contributors in the CSP worked on the following tasks:
Stefan had a busy month with more meetings and coordination than usual. He joined the GNOME Advisory Board before FOSDEM, helped draft the budget for 2026, worked on preparations for a project with Waag, and took part in an initramfs meeting. Other than that he balanced reviewing and working on pmaports and pmbootstrap with some work upstream on GTK and Phosh Mobile Settings.
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