PostmarketOS February 2026 Update: Generic Kernels and AI Policy

Generic Kernel Packages

PostmarketOS now has generic kernel packages: linux-postmarketos-mainline, linux-postmarketos-stable, and linux-postmarketos-lts. These are equivalent to Alpine Linux kernels like linux-stable or linux-lts and are intended to work on a wide variety of devices. Having these kernels in postmarketOS gives the project full control over kernel configuration and build processes, enabling integration with kernel configuration checks. Aelin, Achill, and Clayton contributed to this work.

AI Policy Update

The project's AI policy has been updated to explicitly forbid generative AI. The policy was also shortened and made easier to understand (referenced as !49 in the source). Oliver was credited for this update.

Organizational Changes

PMCR 0009, which defines new requirements for the "main" device category to ensure reliability and long-term support, is still in discussion. Bhushan became a Trusted Contributor, returning to KDE Plasma Mobile upstream development and improving mainline devices like the Fairphone 5. Minecrell and Anton stepped down as Trusted Contributors but remain available for guidance. Minecrell was instrumental in bringing postmarketOS to Android phones (MSM8916 devices) and enabling voice calls with q6voiced. Anton pioneered Chromebook support with depthcharge in pmbootstrap and maintained the AYA Odin game console port.

Contributor Support Programme Highlights

In January 2026, contributors worked on various tasks:

• Stefan joined the GNOME Advisory Board, helped draft the 2026 budget, worked on a project with Waag, participated in an initramfs meeting, and reviewed pmaports and pmbootstrap while contributing upstream to GTK and Phosh Mobile Settings.
• Clayton focused on postmarketOS immutable (duranium) and worked on coldbrew, a Flatpak issue, Plymouth integration, infrastructure, zram swap, PipeWire, pmbootstrap, sensor support, and kernel commandline handling.
• Pablo moved governance topics forward, coordinated improvements, met with an accountant for budget setup, Alpine Linux maintainers, a name change selection committee, and an external entity for audio improvements, and worked on hardware CI preparations and documentation.

Other Development Highlights

Hardware CI: The phone-harness firmware received fixes, device configuration (!4), better CI checks (!3), and its documentation is now rendered at docs.postmarketos.org/phone-harness. Federico, Martin R., Pablo, and Henrik contributed.

The OpenIMSD project has a new QCOM baseband profile manager (thanks, Lynxis).

The kde-nightly repo now builds every night after successful bootstrap (thanks, Bart).

Kernel command-line generation was reworked for more flexibility and elegance (!7708, thanks, Clayton).

dint, the deviceinfo validator, linter, and documentation generator, is now used to generate documentation.