Fedora 38 Looking At A Phosh Image For Mobile Devices

It looks like Fedora could be taking on more mobile ambitions with a Phosh image now proposed for running that Wayland shell focused on smartphones and tablets while delivering a good GNOME-based experience. Separately, a change proposal is expected for also introducing a Fedora Linux image with KDE Plasma Mobile.

A change proposal sent out today is for Fedora 38 to provide a Mobility Phosh Image. The proposal still needs to be voted on by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) but would amount to Fedora's mobility special interest group (SIG) to provide AArch64 and x86_64 install images that run Phosh and the relevant GNOME applications.

Fedora's Mobility SIG already created the Phosh shell package and other related packages into the "phosh-desktop" package group while this proposal is about offering that as a downloadable install image. Separately, KDE Plasma Mobile is also being packaged and will be submitted for a new image as part of a separate change proposal.

The Phosh "Phone Shell" started by Purism.

The rationale for a Fedora Phosh mobile image is promoted as:

There's a number of x86_64 and aarch64 tablets and other mobile devices that could use a more mobile centric interface/desktop than traditional Fedora desktops/labs/spins. Having Fedora images for these devices will make it easier to install and use them. Having a image will also help remix efforts, allowing them to reuse userspace packages and metadata (kickstarts, etc) with a modified kernel.
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These images will spread Fedora to mobile devices and bring more users into the Fedora community as well as showcasing upstream work to provide a 100% open source phone interface for devices once they are workable from vanilla kernels.

See the change proposal for more details on this possible feature with Fedora 38 next spring.