Sxmo: Simple X Mobile
“minimal. mobile. hackable.”
Sxmo is a minimalist environment for Linux mobile devices
Note: Your old Android phone/tablet may work with Sxmo with some minor configuration!
For example, Sxmo works great on the Oneplus 6 and Poco f1. For demos on these more powerful devices, watch -
Thoughts after daily driving postmarketOS for 3 years.
For information about device support click here
Simple menu-driven interface
- Uses suckless tools (dwm, dmenu, st, etc) or Wayland tools (sway, bemenu, foot, wvkbd, etc.)
- Augmented touch and gesture support
- Menu-driven interface that can also be controlled with hardware buttons
- Community sourced context menu that changes according to the active application (CLI or GUI)
“I really like this; I've been using this for about a week now. I appreciate the developers' willingness to design something with a slight learning curve that works very well, and in part because of this. This demonstrates a level of respect for their end users which I value. I am not saying that this mobile computing environment is hard to use, I am saying that it is highly efficient and effective, and that I have learned things by using it because the people who made this do not condescend through oversimplification.”
— KoryMac
SSH as a first class citizen
- Send texts via ssh using your favorite text editor (vis, emacs, vim, etc.)
- Read notifications, texts, etc.
- Access bluetooth, wifi menus
“Being able to SSH into my phone and treat it just like any other Alpine Linux machine adds a tremendous amount of value. Leaving it in my pocket and using it from my computer is very convenient. I don't have to treat my phone like an alien in my otherwise uniform computing setup anymore.”
— Drew Devault, FLOSS pioneer and creator of Sourcehut and Sway
Everything is Scriptable
- Launch user defined scripts at phone calls, texts, etc.
- Bind certain scripts to gestures using lisgd
- Bind device's physical buttons (single/double/triple click) to trigger scripts
- Plain text modem logs, contact list, and sms texts
“Phone calls and text messages are routed through shell scripts, a feature I didn’t know I needed until I saw it in action. Sxmo probably is the killer app for running an actual Linux distribution on your phone.”
— Ariadne Conill, Alpine Linux Security Team Chair
Use the same FOSS apps you use on the desktop
- No locked-down app ecosystem
- Runs on traditional Linux distributions like Alpine Linux and postmarketOS optimized for mobile devices
- Use terminal-based applications on a smartphone
“Running a tiling WM on your phone sounds like a stupid idea... until you discover #Sxmo. The whole thing is simple but amazing - it takes one or two days to get used to it, but then you know it inside out. Thanks to the built-in extensibility and simple codebase, you can change everything to your liking. This interface and its skilled community have become a great asset in the wider #linux smartphone ecosystem!”
— Oliver Smith, Creator of postmarketOS
