Contents
Mobian
The Mobian project aims to bring Debian to mobile devices. Over time, the idea is to minimize the Mobian specific pieces by “upstreaming” customization to the original projects. It is maintained by 2 distinct (but overlapping) teams:
the Mobian team is responsible for maintaining downstream packages (containing non-upstreamable patches and/or not ready for inclusion into Debian) and non-packaging tasks, such as image generation and distribution
the DebianOnMobile team maintains packages which are already part of the Debian archive.
Installation
For a list of supported devices, along with installation instructions for each one, see Supported Devices.
Mobian images can either be built locally following instructions in the README of mobian-recipes (please note, that will require internet connection for downloading needed Debian packages, plus enough memory and available disk space, therefore flat internet connection and powerful PC are recommended for building images), either official Mobian images can be downloaded from https://images.mobian-project.org/. In the latter case, images' signature can be verified using the procedure described in Mobian/FAQ#How may I check Mobian images' signature?.
Wiki pages
See our FAQ page if you have questions.
For a list of mobile-friendly apps, see the "What applications can I use for "X"?" section of our FAQ.
For instructions on how to do common things you may want to do with your Mobian device, see How-to.
For instructions on how to tweak common things you may want to tweak with on Mobian device, see Tweaks.
For information on accessibility, see Accessibility.
For instructions on how to test hardware components using Mobian software, see Hardware testing.
For information on hardware accessories for devices Mobian supports, see Hardware Accessories.
If you want to contribute to Mobian, see Contribute.
Information for Newbies
The command "lspci" doesn't work on most (all?) mobile devices as they don't have a PCI bus or a compatible mapping of their devices to the PCI interfaces. The commands "lshw" and "hwinfo" do this.
Plan backups as a first step when using mobile devices (or any embedded devices). None of the easy methods of recovering from broken systems that work on laptops and desktop PCs will work on mobile devices.
A serial console is a really good thing. The risks of making a device unbootable or having a system crash are much greater than on PCs or Android devices. You may think that you won't need such access and then get surprised by breakage.
Links
Follow us
Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@mobian
Wiki
Project wiki: https://wiki.debian.org/Mobian (Wayback archive of old wiki, deprecated since Aug 2023)
Discuss
Matrix: #mobian:matrix.org - bridged to IRC, XMPP, Telegram
Matrix: #mobian-ports:matrix.org - for porting-related discussions
IRC: #mobian on OFTC - bridged to Matrix, XMPP, Telegram
XMPP: #mobian%irc.oftc.net@irc.cheogram.com - bridged to Matrix, IRC, Telegram
Telegram: https://t.me/mobian_project - bridged to Matrix, IRC, XMPP
Report bugs
Remember a chat room isn't a bug tracker: bugs reported to the Mobian room will be ignored; such reports MUST go to https://salsa.debian.org/Mobian-team/ or https://bugs.debian.org . For the latter, an introduction to bug reporting is available at https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting.
Sources and development
Mobian vs Debian vs upstream: https://packages.mobian.org
Salsa: https://salsa.debian.org/Mobian-team/
GitLab.com (for upstream development; deprecated for the Debian level of Mobian as of 2022-07-08): https://gitlab.com/mobian1
Search all debian source code: https://codesearch.debian.net
Development pipeline overview for PACKAGE: https://tracker.debian.org/PACKAGE