postmarketOS 2024-09 brings systemd integration, PCB for automated testing, and more

postmarketOS has announced several key updates in its 2024-09 release, focusing on system integration, automated testing, and software enhancements. One of the major advancements is the integration of systemd, where substantial progress has been made with the finalization of the service enablement design. Additionally, a new PCB for automated testing has been introduced to streamline testing processes.

The release also brings updates to GNOME and Plasma Discover, with the apk plugins for GNOME Software (GNOME 47) being updated and upstreamed to Plasma Discover. Efforts are ongoing to add Alpine/musl CI for the entire KDE software stack. The pmbootstrap v3 staging branch is now actively used by pmaports CI and build.postmarketos.org to ensure no regressions. Moreover, over 10 Merge Requests for the "/usr merge" in Alpine have been approved, focusing on relocating libraries and files.

Kernel updates have been applied to 11 different kernels, including upgrades to Linux 6.11, and a formal process for applying kernel config changes across multiple kernels has been established. Non-Latin language fonts are now included by default with minimal impact on font size. New installations will default to using doas instead of sudo, with updates to streamline root user password handling. For more information, you can check the official release notes here.