# The road to the Mobian Community Edition (part 1)

DevFeed: [The road to the Mobian Community Edition (part 1)](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-road-to-the-mobian-community-edition-part-1-34219.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2021/04/08/road-to-mobian-1/>)

Author: Mobian team

Published: 2021-04-08T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Mobian's Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/mobian-s-blog.md>)

Topics: [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [Mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mobile.md>), [Linux](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/linux.md>), [Operating system](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/operating-system.md>), [touchscreen](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/touchscreen.md>), [Ubuntu](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ubuntu.md>), [USB](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/usb.md>)

Tags: [android](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/android.md>), [canonical](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/canonical.md>), [community](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/community.md>), [development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/development.md>), [hacking](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hacking.md>), [kernel](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/kernel.md>), [linux](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/linux.md>), [mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mobile.md>), [touchscreen](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/touchscreen.md>), [usb](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/usb.md>)

## AI overview

This article recounts the early development of the Mobian project, a Linux-based mobile operating system, and the path toward the Mobian Community Edition for PinePhone. It describes the author's initial PinePhone experimentation, the available mobile Linux ecosystem, and the project's early software limitations.

## Source excerpt

The Mobian project was officially announced on May 14th, 2020. But those who witnessed its birth surely remember it all started a few months prior to this date, a bit more than one year ago, actually. One year hacking and building both a mobile operating system and a community. One year refining our system, getting rid of the early days' hacks in favor of more mature and robust solutions. One year ending with a major milestone for such a young project: getting the Mobian Community Edition PinePhone into the hands of thousands of users. One hell of a year, indeed! It all really started on January 29th, 2020, when I received a shiny new toy: an ARM64 development system packed with a number of interesting, if not unique, features: 5.95" touchscreen removable battery integrated eMMC µSD socket USB-C port 3.5" headset jack 4G modem The PinePhone was my first "real" Linux phone: I had owned a Nexus 5 running Ubuntu Touch, but it was basically an Android phone, running an Android kernel. While it was a very fine device, definitely usable as a daily driver, I got quickly frustrated by all the things I couldn't do on this system, mostly due to Canonical's design choices: it was not a hacker's device, just a different, yet mainstream, mobile phone. Let's be honest, back when PINE64 announced the PinePhone, I had already pre-ordered a Librem 5, and I only purchased this device so I could play with Phosh and the L5 software stack while waiting for my "real" phone. But still, there was literally a world to build with the PinePhone, so why not give it a try? Unboxing and early hacking While waiting on the PinePhone, I gathered as much documentation as possible about the device itself, but also the existing ecosystem: select developers had access to an even earlier version of this phone, and there were already a few systems available. Among those, postmarketOS looked the most promising, as it allowed the user to chose various environments, Plasma Mobile and Phosh being the ones I