postmarketOS is now Nura: what changes for developers

postmarketOS, the Linux distribution that puts a regular Linux system on smartphones, renamed itself Nura on September 27, 2026. The project says the old name was hard to say, hard to spell and impossible to trademark. For developers the change is gradual: the old name stays in packages, documentation and tools while the switch happens.

The project's announcement says the new name came out of a search that lasted about a year and a half. The community sent in more than 300 suggestions. The team narrowed those to four finalists and voted.

Why the name changed

The project gives three reasons. The first is pronunciation. "postmarketOS" is five syllables long and, in the project's words, "can be very hard to pronounce in many languages."

The second is spelling. The name mixes a lowercase "p," a lowercase "m" and an uppercase "OS." OMG! Linux notes that people wrote it as "PostmarketOS," "Postmarketos" and "post-market OS." OMG! Linux quotes the team: "Through the years, most members of the team have experienced difficulties doing outreach for 'postmarketOS' due to the complexity of the name."

The third is legal. A purely descriptive name cannot be registered as a trademark. The project has now filed a trademark application for Nura, according to OMG! Linux and Notebookcheck.

There is also a fit problem. "Post-market" meant software you install after buying a phone. That no longer describes the whole project. PINE64 has sold PinePhones with the system already installed, Linuxiac points out.

Where the name comes from

Nura is short for "nuraghe." A nuraghe is an ancient stone tower found across Sardinia, Italy. Notebookcheck reports that these structures date to around 3000 BC and have stood for thousands of years.

That longevity is the point. The project's long-running goal is to keep old phones useful long after their makers stop updating them. Community member Davide Depau proposed the name, according to OMG! Linux and Notebookcheck.

What changes and what stays

Item	Status
Project and OS name	Nura, from September 27, 2026
Website	nura.eco; postmarketos.org redirects there
Logo	Kept, with more space between the arrows
Packages, docs, tools	Still say postmarketOS during the transition
Trademark	Application filed for Nura
Project age	Started in 2017

The logo did not get a redesign. Linuxiac says the arrows were rebuilt with more spacing so the mark reads better from a distance.

None of the sources gives a date for renaming packages or developer tools. OMG! Linux says the announcement does not spell out changes to pmbootstrap, the project's build and install tool.

What this means for developers

If you port devices or maintain packages, nothing breaks today. The old name stays in packages and documentation while the transition runs. Notebookcheck says some software components will need contributor updates to carry the new name, so expect merge requests that rename strings over the coming months.

Check any scripts, CI jobs or bookmarks that point at postmarketos.org. OMG! Linux reports that the old domain redirects to nura.eco. Redirects keep links working, but code that parses a domain or checks a certificate name may still trip on the change. Updating those references now is cheaper than chasing a failed build later.

If you write about the project, use "Nura" in new material. Mention the old name once, so readers searching for "postmarketOS" still find you. Search results and forum threads will carry the old name for years.

Watch the project's own channels for the package and tooling timeline. That is the change that would touch build scripts directly, and no date has been announced yet.