postmarketOSMar 17

New blog post introducing the WIP Duranium project (immutable postmarketOS), some of its major features, and explaining why some design decisions were made.  

> Either the new image works, or the system falls back to the previous one automatically. No partially-applied state. No debugging audio when you need to make a phone call and no fussing with a broken web browser when you just want to doomscroll cat photos. It also means developers can reproduce the exact state of a user's device, making it much easier to track down and fix issues.

https://postmarketos.org/blog/2026/03/17/introducing-duranium/

#linuxmobile #postmarketos #duranium

Introducing Duranium: a more reliable postmarketOS

Aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphones

postmarketOS
Show threadJens Finkhäuser2d ago

@postmarketOS Ah, Duranium implies solidity, but it's based on AI slop.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/systemd-260-rc3

No thanks.

"Vibanium"

systemd 260-rc3 Released With AI Agents Documentation Added

The first release candidate of systemd 260 arrived in late February with the new mstack feature, dropping System V service scripts support, and other changes

Show threadkcxt2d ago

@jens crazy take considering it's been less than 2 months since systemd started using AI for code review. Critique all you like but at least don't disrespect us by doing it in blatant bad faith

we switched to systemd over 18 months ago! if we wanted to avoid it we would be setting our progress back half a decade at least.

at the end of the day there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, it's a constant battle between harm reduction and moral principles, the pros did (and imo still very much do) outweigh the cons. but by all means give us an alternative that meets your standards

Show threadKestral

@cas @jens

A lot of people are understandably scared, disinfranchised, or afraid of AI-written code. I don't think this was as bad faith as it may have come across.

Engage. Discuss. Please don't slap people down for showing a very human reaction in very awful times.

Be a community leader.

Mar 27 at 5:14pmWeb
Show threadkcxt2d ago

@kestral @jens i am too, i hope to god the bubble pops. i have a lot of patience for people who have concerns or questions, im more than happy to talk through my thought process because this is something i care about deeply.

but at the end of the day ive learnt that it's often a waste of time to try and reason with people who are making sweeping dismissive statements of a project i have poured my soul into just because of its dependency on a project they dislike. This goes especially for systemd, we had and continue to have a lot of discussions with them about the state of the ecosystem and how we want to use their software, if we didn't align with them on a technical level we wouldn't have made the switch.

our goal is to build a mobile OS that actually respects the user without compromising on being accessible to non-technical folks or on security. If your priority is to not use systemd then i just have nothing else to say because you clearly aren't taking the utilitarian approach and we have a fundamental misalignment.

we are right now trying to seize the moment that the current geopolitical landscape has provided us, we aren't going to succeed in making it to production in a reasonable timeframe if a large part of our focus is reinventing the wheel (and having to get all our security code audited). There are just more important issues for us like figuring out how to enable secureboot on Android devices with pmOS, making the UX and telephony functionality actually reliable, collaborating with vendors, etc...

I have no doubt that once we actually get Linux Mobile in production with at least acceptable levels of security that the devices we support will be able to run whatever systemd-free OS you want, I welcome that era with open arms. But we have to pick our battles and there is no world where it makes sense for that to be our priority.

I think out original announcement blog post explained things pretty well, i should probably just link to that when people post comments like this

https://postmarketos.org/blog/2024/03/05/adding-systemd/

Adding systemd to postmarketOS

Aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphones

postmarketOS
Show threadKestral2d ago

@cas thanks for taking the time to respond. Have removed the OP as I don't want to inadvertantly speak for anyone else.

In an imperfect and - frankly - dangerous tech landscape, getting people off of corporate-controlled ecosystems and onto any kind of open mobile OS is not just important, it's nessecary.

I think your words around getting the groundwork laid so that the community can use the things they want to is a good way to think about it.

Got to crawl before we can walk.

Show threadKestral2d ago

@cas I also really hear your exhaustion with the barage of communication that comes from building things in the open. I think that's especially hard in this age of social media, and I'd imagine that puts anyone on edge when getting replies.

So, thank you for engaging.

Show threadJens Finkhäuser2d ago

@cas @kestral The conclusion is: ditch the toxic dependency.

I have zero fucks left for fascist AI slop.

Don't like it? Fine, do your thing.

But do not for one second expect me to be reasonable about it.