Maemo Lestse update brings Tor, Wireguard, and more device support
The Linux (Debian) based OS now supports a variety of Phones (including Pinephone, Droid 4, N900 and more).
I was a huge fan of the Nokia N810 “tablet” (really, it was palmtop PDA) and N900 smartphone. Both of those amazing devices were powered by a Linux distribution, based on Debian, known as “Maemo”.
It remains, to this day, one of the most excellent ways to experience Linux on handheld devices.
Luckily a project known as “Maemo Leste” is continuing the legacy of Maemo. And they have just released a new update with all sorts of goodies.
Maemo Leste now has builds for quite a few devices, including: Nokia N900, Motorola Droid 4, Motorola Bionic, Pinephone, Pinetab, and (it appears) even the Raspberry Pi.
They have also incorporated and updated Modest (a maemo email client):
Maemo Leste also now has the ability to route all network traffic through Tor.
“Probably the most simple way to use this code is to install it from the package manager, restart the device and configuring Tor to "Enable Transparent proxying", which will cause all the traffic of the device to be transmitted over Tor. The screenshot below shows a Droid 4 with Tor with transparent proxying enabled.”
Wireguard has also been implemented:
“Wireguard is a relatively new and simple communication protocol that implements an encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN). There are many use cases, but a few examples are adding your phone to a Wireguard network that makes it possible to access your LAN from wherever you are, give your device a public IPv4 address, or otherwise tunnel traffic via another machine.
The screenshow below shows a Droid 4 with Wireguard enabled over wifi, and some interface statistics using wg show.”
This is super cool.
While Maemo Leste is certainly not the only effort currently underway on building a Linux-based smartphone system… it is one with a long history, and years of usability testing.
I truly hope the team keeps going. They’re doing good work.