# What is Mobian?

DevFeed: [What is Mobian?](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/what-is-mobian-34216.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2021/02/18/what_is_mobian/>)

Author: Mobian team

Published: 2021-02-18T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

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

Topics: [Debian](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/debian.md>), [Mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mobile.md>), [Software](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software.md>), [Wayland](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/wayland.md>)

Tags: [debian](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/debian.md>), [devices](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/devices.md>), [gui](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/gui.md>), [mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mobile.md>), [patches](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/patches.md>), [wayland](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/wayland.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains that Mobian integrates standard Debian with phone-specific projects and modifications to create a mobile distribution for supported phones and tablets. It describes Mobian's effort to upstream changes, its software stack, project origins, volunteer community, and funding.

## Source excerpt

Now that the Mobian CE is being sold, and Mobian becomes more popular, we are often asked in the support channel, "what and who is Mobian?" In the midst of action, we don't reflect upon this subject very often, but it is worth contemplating and summarizing. What is Mobian? Mobian aims to integrate the standard Debian distribution with Phone-specific projects and modifications in a distribution that works on certain mobile phones and tablets, such as the Pinephone, the Pinetab and the Librem 5. The idea is to minimize the Mobian specific pieces by "upstreaming" changes to the original projects as much as possible. To achieve this, we tread a delicate balance between carrying customized patches and packages that are required to make Mobian run well on its supported devices, while trying to push as many of these changes into upstream Debian. You could think of Mobian as a Debian Pure Blend, and indeed we aim at becoming one at some point in time. For the time being, we are focused on the same software stack that Purism uses for the Librem5, that is, wayland-ish, gnome-ish, modem manager-ish. Being based on the Phosh environment facilitates that, but of course it is perfectly possible to run Qt-based software. We have nothing against KDE and the plasma shell, and are contemplating whether, when and how we can support that too, but for the time being creating a single working GUI is enough of a challenge. Who is Mobian? It was founded by a-wai in order to make Debian running nicely on the Pinephone. Mobian's public outing occured on 14 May 2020 when Mobian was announced in this thread in the PINE64.org forum. a-wai is the founder and leader of the project. That having said, he has proven to be listening and acting upon the opinions of his fellow volunteers1. These volunteers are a loose and informal collection of people that have nagged @a-wai long enough until he invited them into the (not so secret) developers room, where they conspire to achieve world domination. All