SailfishOS: A Linux-based European alternative to dominant mobile OSes

by ForHackernews • 9 months ago

355 169 9 months ago

panzi• 9 months ago

That still exists? When I first heard of it many many years ago I had hopes for it. Never heard of it again. I see it is still on Qt5.

OsrsNeedsf2P• 9 months ago

Yes, they've even come out with a phone, but it's only available in Europe[0]

[0] https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone

grg0• 9 months ago

Videos on that page have more information than the post's link.

indolering• 9 months ago

My understanding is that it met some government requirements that Android did not. Niche for sure but useful in some contexts.

saidinesh5• 9 months ago

Qt 5.6 that too. Probably so that they can keep most of their user space closed source.

cultofmetatron2• 9 months ago

there's an easy roadmap to make this popular.

make it so that I can dock it and use it as a full fat OS on a desktop. If they wanna market this as an open phone, they need to make it first class as a primary computing device. so far only samsung is willing to enter this territory with a glorified chromebook.

if I could install the rust toolchain and vscode on it and use it in a customizable desktop environemnt by plugging it into a USBC monitor, you bet I'd buy it. Id happily pay 1-2k+ euros for it.

Sadly as is, it functionally does less than my locked down iphone so whats the point?

Alive-in-2025• 9 months ago

That would be nice, plug in usb-c to a display and keyboard.

But there's another way, can't someone implement their own implementation of the core google services apis and then you can just load a regular app off the app store and run it? Google would absolutely want to block this as their control and monopoly depends on it. But it shouldn't be against the law.

It's obvious, so it means someone must have tried and it was not reasonably possible.

seba_dos1• 9 months ago

It's obvious, someone has tried it, it works and is commonly used on those more FLOSS-conscious and de-googled "ROMs" - it's called microG. It's not Play Services that are the limit, it's device attestation.

Same with the device proposed by the parent - I can plug my Librem 5 in to a display and keyboard and it runs a regular GNU/Linux distro while working well as a phone, without Halium or any other Android bits.

We had these things for many years now, just look around harder :)

fsflover• 9 months ago

make it so that I can dock it and use it as a full fat OS on a desktop.

Here you go: https://puri.sm/posts/my-first-year-of-librem-5-convergence/

poetaster9• 9 months ago

There are a number of rust developers building for SailfishOs. Rubdos maintains a Signal client in rust. The toolchain also runs on the build service maintained by Jolla (obs). I'm not sure what the editor has to do with it. I use vim for most of my SFOS development but sometimes use the SDK, sometimes I use Godot.

cultofmetatron2• 9 months ago

I have no doubt sailfish is a reliable build target. I mean, can I dock it and code in an IDE/text editor in sailfish the way I currently do in osx or linux distro

devjab2• 9 months ago

As cool as this is there won't be an European alternative as long as all the apps you'd want to use on a smartphone require either Google Play or the Apple App store.

muyuu• 9 months ago

it does run some sort of Android emulation layer

hkt• 9 months ago

It runs Android apps. Presumably, it has access to the Play store in some capacity, or a viable alternative.

rchaud2• 9 months ago

Access to the Play Store requires the proprietary Google Play Services code, so I doubt this has it. The alternative would be installing apps via APK files.

nicce2• 9 months ago

Huawei just created new OS and removed all traces of Android and Linux. Just like that. If there is will, it is possible.

fabrice_d2• 9 months ago

No, the phone variant of HarmonyOS runs on top of a Linux kernel.

kaoD• 9 months ago

...if there is will, a nice state sponsor and an already existing effective infrastructure.

Europe has none of the 3.

kelnos• 9 months ago

Can it run all of the kinds of apps that people (in the EU/US markets, which is relevant to the discussion at hand) actually want to run? SalifishOS doesn't even do that, at least not for me.

kube-system3• 9 months ago

The will to create an OS is 0.0001% of the problem. There are tens of thousands of applications that people need to use that exist only for iPhone and Android.

There are dozens of functional mobile OSes. And OS isn’t useful unless it has application support for the tasks people want to accomplish, though.

m4rtink10• 9 months ago

Aren't you basically describing a chicken and egg problem?

devjab2• 9 months ago

I think it's more of an EU problem. We have so many public apps that rely on two big American tech companies solely because the EU has yet to figure out an alternative app store with enough security to make those apps available. This likely made sense 10 years ago, but today with all the talk about digital sovereignty it's frankly a little weak. It's not the OS that is the issue though, I could use graphene or similar just fine, but they wouldn't let me run a single of the apps that are the sole reason I have a smartphone. Well.. maybe the Microsoft authenticator?

I mean, I have to write exit strategies from Azure because the EU might demand our industry to leave non-EU infra. Yet ironically the digital company ID I would need to sign new contracts with within Europe aren't available without one of the two app stores. It's not that I can't sign those contracts without the ID, but I'd probably have to go to Germany in person.

dredmorbius5• 9 months ago

The EU can address that issue through regulation and competition requirements.

zb3• 9 months ago

They're about to make a new phone: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/next-gen-jolla-phone/23882

spankibalt• 9 months ago

The voting results/behavior makes one weep. "Winner was Fingerprint after 9 rounds" in the additional wishlist category.

beefnugs• 9 months ago

Damn i know we need this competition hard, but also needs so much scrutiny about who is running it. For some reason i had written this os off a few years ago i dont even remember why now

ho_schi8• 9 months ago

SailfishOS and the Jolla One were good (awesome usability) But the integration of Android was a horribly failure. It is like WINE, half working applications preventing native ports of quality. I left the boat.

After that Jolla failed with the tablet. Then they didn’t deliver a successor device for Jolla One and provided SailfishOS only as aftermarket OS. You remember the Android problem from above? The hardware of others, without official support? That is calling for problems.

And to make everything worse Jolla started a cooperation with Russia in 2015. According to Wikipedia they quit it in 2021.

Hint about compatibility and APIs

Never try to be compatible to an environment which doesn’t want to maintain interoperability with you.

mempko• 9 months ago

The android support improved a lot such that all the apps I used worked there.

ho_schi8• 9 months ago

Thanks. Jolla stopped porting newer Android APIs to the Jolla One early. Which rendered the Android support quickly useless.

pfix• 9 months ago

Funny. This is the opposite of what https://blog.hiler.eu/win32-the-only-stable-abi/ states :D

And there's a lot going on with Proton and the Steam Deck, so I don't think this is a valid argument.

ho_schi8• 9 months ago

Why games on Windows ship their own C++ Redistributable? Well, the same problem. And for the very same reason macOS app bundles come with a lot libraries and we still see a lot updates after every macOS release.

A lot of known issues can be avoided with more experience and cooperation before changes happen.

Before anybody mentions Proton. Because always somebody mentions Proton?

Proton is WINE. But maintained by Valve. Which requires a lot resources of Valve (not of the users). But the key is Steam! Valve is controlling the Steam store.

It is still bad and Valve shall press hard on native ports (e.g. Linux only Steam Awards). Reducing the long term workload for Valve. WINE is not a solution and remains a workaround. That is why we use Inkscape and not Adobe.

PS: Remember when Apple dropped iOS 32-Bit? And PPC? And the classic APIs? Microsoft is trying to remain bug compatible. The problem? They’re bug compatible! My thinking is similar to Torvalds, Linux, GNU (GLIBC/GLIBC++, Systemd and Wayland shall strive for compatibility when possible. Users love compatibility. Programmers love compatibility. But it is hard work. It becomes difficult when security implications are involved. As long only re-compilation is need for compatibility I’m fine. When we need to adapt code I’m getting unhappy.

m4rtink10• 9 months ago

Proton is based on Wine and is a major factor behind the success of Steamdeck and SteamOS.

Also Sailfish OS Android emulation is quite good, good or even the best one I used on the Android emulation front.

ho_schi8• 9 months ago

See the other comment. Because I knew somebody will mention Proton. Because always someone mentions Proton :)

PS: I'm rather sure Jolla never emulated Android.

ho_schi8• 9 months ago

Does anyone know if Jolla ever published the full source-code? The promised back in 2013.

Foobar8568• 9 months ago

Jolla made a lot of promises over the years....

usr11069• 9 months ago

Don't know 100% sure. But would dare to claim most UI apps are still closed source. All the basic libraries and probably most daemons are open source. In the HW adaptation it looks bad again, but there Sailfish is not to blame.

frm88• 9 months ago

Not openly published but they will send it to you on request.

mpol2• 9 months ago

There are plans now in 2025 to work on this slowly. A few apps have recently been opened up. More are coming. So it is underway.

In 2015 Jolla were bought by Russian owners. They didn't understand open source or free software, they just wanted something for the Russian market.

In 2021 these ties were broken, but it took a long time since the Russian owners didn't respond in any way. It is only two years or there about that they are on their own feet again. They are still severely understaffed.

poetaster9• 9 months ago

They've been opening up bit by bit. First stuff like 'jolla-weather', recently, the notes app and numerous bits in the backend ... Currently sync for nextcloud system integration is in the works.

rzerowan5• 9 months ago

Funnily enough the only viable deployment was AuroraOS in Russia , which they cut ties with after the war started (pretty shortsighted IMO) as the equivalent US ops merely paused their operations with options for future return. I think Google only stopped monetization of play store from Visa/MC CC ban , while maintianing their operations there. Meanwhile the sailfish guys set their largest successful deployment on fire with no recourse for reapprochment once the peace returns. As im thinking the RU market would be drifting more towards Chines tech ala HarmonyOS etc if they want alternatives to Android/IOS.

throwuxiytayq2• 9 months ago

Don’t be silly, nobody wants that rep.

rzerowan5• 9 months ago

'In Europe' , as noted American ios/androis and their stores still work .At a reduced capacity yeah , but ready to restore links when the time comes around.Ditto for all other major brands (US) even though they arent issuing press releases. From a purely biz perspective they could have gone 'yeah were pausing until blah blah ..' instead of salting the earth on one of their largest/succeesful deployments.

Nextgrid• 9 months ago

Techbros are bowing down to Trump and the rise of fascism in the US. Why don’t you think they would do the same for Putin the second the geopolitical winds turn around?

Reminds me of a joke - paraphrasing: someone from the US is speaking to someone from the Soviet Union and at some point the conversation mentions Soviet propaganda. The US person asks “you have propaganda?”.

(the punchline in case my terrible paraphrasing doesn’t make it clear is that the Soviet person is aware they are swimming in propaganda, while the US person is totally oblivious to their own gov’s one).

rchaud2• 9 months ago

It's an open source project that nobody is getting rich off of, so voluntarily cutting ties with the Russian market doesn't present the sort of moral dilemma that TAM-obsessed, locked-down, for-profit OSes worry about.

rzerowan5• 9 months ago

Not fully open-source though, as far as i understood it some of the important GUI, android compat bits are propreity and thus need licensing so no easy way to function without them as opposed to the linux kernel.So i think they are in a very similar postion to android techstack wise , its just their biz model requires direct licensing rather than the ad subsidised android. On another note i think this was the rationale for risc-v moving to europe (avoid the geopolitical) so anyone regardless can utilize its designs.

veeti• 9 months ago

AuroraOS was very much a commercial errand by Jolla Oy, not some open source volunteers hacking on it in their free time.

https://www-sttinfo-fi.translate.goog/tiedote/54712711/sailf...

m4rtink10• 9 months ago

I suggest reading a bit about the brotherly relationship between Finland and Russia- it has not been exactly a Winter Wonderland.

Not to mention the most bloody war on European soil in a century - started by Russia.

spookie• 9 months ago

It is a small company in a niche, they were just by trying to survive.

I've not used their OS but have been thinking for a while, and spent some time in their forums. I remember some dev saying this along those lines.

katsura• 9 months ago

Last I heard of them they filed for bankruptcy. Are they back then?

m4rtink10• 9 months ago

I thin tjey did that twice by this point and it both cases survived. :-)

dredmorbius5• 9 months ago

Yes, article in Finnish: <https://www.is.fi/taloussanomat/art-2000010451277.html>

Via Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolla#History>

BoredPositron2• 9 months ago

I am not a fan anymore I used it for over a year on a XPERIA XA2. It's usable but barely so. The Android layer usually craps out with heavier apps or crawls to a halt. Most of the native apps are really basic I would compare them to early Windows Phone apps in functionality and UX. The UX itself is an odd mix of really intuitive and absolute horrible. It seems like they are missing focus and the felt development stalled for some years now. I hope plasma or gnome get more momentum because this isn't a viable alternative for 90% of smartphone users. Meego was better and I don't understand why they pivoted in the direction they are going now. It's certainly opinionated.

Andrex• 9 months ago

Man I wish more dev work was put into the mobile Gnome Shell. It's so, so close to being there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6vCWFleBHk

tdhz77• 9 months ago

Read this as to dominate mobile OSes, and thought that’s a different Linux attitude

zer0zzz3• 9 months ago

I thought this was vaporware?

lproven• 9 months ago

Jolla has been selling on real hardware since the Nokia N900 of which it's a direct descendant. That platform has been shipping for 20 years. It's been around longer than iOS or Android. What on Earth do you mean "vapourware"?

I have 2 handsets here currently. It is completely real.

zer0zzz3• 9 months ago

Are there any made in the last 5 years? I too was a huge fan of Maemo but where can I buy hardware made in recent years that runs this as well as my Maemo experience in 2008?

poetaster9• 9 months ago

I've also been using hardware that some of the Jolla team worked on 20+ years ago. N9, N900 to currently Sony and Volla/Gigaset devices.

pxc• 9 months ago

I used Sailfish ten years ago or more, and loved it. But I gave up hope on getting it to run on many devices, as well as access to a good Android emulation layer that I could use for "utility" apps like Uber or whatever.

My impression was that this platform was only becoming less and less viable. Other problems: it's proprietary and only really runs well on any phone you've ever heard of if it's on top of an Android kernel with some kind of hardware abstraction layer.

m4rtink10• 9 months ago

The Android emulation layer is quite good and it runs on many mass market Xperia phones from Sony:

https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Supported_Devices/

It is not using Android kernel - it uses a Linux kernel with android features enabled and compile time & runs Android binary drivers for hardware that has no native Linux driver via a binary adaptation layer called libhybris (also used by some Ubuntu Touch devices).

The Android emulation layer nowadays runs in a container that talks to the Android bits in the kernel and to the blobs via libhybris.

prmoustache• 9 months ago

afaik Uber can be used perfectly with the website.

eth0up• 9 months ago

I was really excited about the Jolla, which fizzled out before I could grab one.

The deghoulgled cellphone sphere (us) is pretty depressing if affordability is a factor.

MrDrMcCoy2• 9 months ago

I would seriously consider SailfishOS if it shipped on decent (recent) hardware that was available in the US. The last good experience I had with it was on the Xperia XA2, but that hardware was turned into ewaste by the VoLTE requirements of US carriers. Although they claim to run on more recent Xperia phones, they don't have full hardware support, and aren't on the most recent models. If I'm going to pay for a phone OS and hardware to support it, I want some assurance it won't be total jank.

mouse_• 9 months ago

Gosh I miss my XA2.

not_another_hat3• 9 months ago

XA2 was the perfect fit for my hand. I cracked the screen pretty badly, but now it has a second life as a timelapse shooter :)

Recently I bought another to have a spare. Cost me 50 €.

BoredPositron2• 9 months ago

The battery life was insane for the time.

m4rtink10• 9 months ago

I have been using Xperia 10 III as my main phone for years with Sailfish OS just fine.

Looks like they also support up to Xperia 10 V & there is the Jolla C2 community device:

https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Supported_Devices/

MrDrMcCoy2• 9 months ago

I remember not too long ago seeing a similar table from Jolla that showed these devices, but also included a breakdown of specific hardware features that were not fully working. Was there a major update in the last few months that cleared that up?

izacus4• 9 months ago

Well you'll need to talk to your monopolistic carriers then. US mobile innovation is dead for the foreseeable future due to them, all new innovation is happening in China and other SE Asian markets.

You just need to be a good consumer and buy that iPhone that Verizon orders you to have with their blessing.

mardifoufs2• 9 months ago

Huh? You think that the VoLTE requirement is something unique to the US? What new innovations are you referring to by the way?

amazingman• 9 months ago

What you are describing is much more accurate of the US cell carriers before the iPhone. I remember paying $20/mo (to the carrier) for a terrible mail application on a feature phone. The iPhone's AT&T deal saved us from that situation.

What are some of the innovations you're referring to?

kube-system3• 9 months ago

Carriers in the US restricted the phones people used in the 00s and early 10s, back when there were short model whitelists, CDMA networks, and radios with only a few bands… but not so much today. Global market GSM phones activate pretty much on any US carrier just fine today.

2/3g deprecation and VoLTE is precisely because US carriers are pushing forward with new tech.

aapoalas• 9 months ago

I think you can install it on Xperia X 10 III, and IV (which I have) is in a long-toothed beta.

shmerl2• 9 months ago

They should open source their UI layer.

fractallyte3• 9 months ago

Why? It's a commercial venture - how would they feed their developers?

shmerl2• 9 months ago

I doubt that's their way of feeding them. At one point they explicitly said they'll do it, but never did.

TheAceOfHearts• 9 months ago

Many years ago I backed the Jolla Tablet, which never shipped and they never gave me a refund. At the time the company kept pretending like things were perfectly fine with every update right until they let everyone know that the project was being cancelled. There was zero transparency and accountability, and from that day I vowed to never support this company ever again. I would've been fine if the project had failed and they had been transparent and honest about their ongoing struggles with every update, but the complete lack of transparency was too much for me.

I don't know if the values and leadership at Jolla have changed since then, but it's not a company that I would trust to deliver and communicate honestly in good faith.

dredmorbius5• 9 months ago

I'm not familiar with the background here.

There was a blog post committing to refunds given sufficient cashflow, posted in 2017:

<https://blog.jolla.com/summer-2017-ceo-update/>

HN discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14637748>

It does appear that Jolla has shipped other products (SailfishOS, the Jolla Phone in 2013, some tablets, and others, see Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolla#Sailfish_OS_products>).

Since 2017 the company has gone through bankruptcy and re-launched.

It should be remembered that kickstarter / crowdfunded ventures, as with any other, are speculative and risky. A good-faith effort to deliver on spec is itself credible, and the landscape is littered with the husks of far more failures, especially in the mobile space, including from former (and current) giants: RIM, Palm, Microsoft, Mozilla, Canonical, off the top of my head). Google and Apple are the only present significant OS options standing, Apple (again) and Samsung dominate hardware, though there's increasing competition largely from China.

not_another_hat3• 9 months ago

I can't recall how many tablets were shipped, but I was lucky enough to get mine.

dman• 9 months ago

I never got a refund or a tablet. They were very unprofessional through the entire situation.

raphman2• 9 months ago

FWIW, I actually received my Jolla Tablet (albeit delayed). Your are right that Jolla is sometimes less transparent and professional than one would expect. However, I realize that Jolla is also under much more scrutiny by the community than other tech companies, and some people demand ridiculous levels of transparency/quality/features.

mardifoufs2• 9 months ago

I don't think that expecting to get the product you pay for (even if it's just crowdfunding) is too much? Or putting them under too much scrutiny? I don't think people expect less from any other tech company? It's just really basic stuff.

raron• 9 months ago

Not just the lack of transparency, they went bankrupt after the tablet fiasco (never refunded most of the people) and bought by some investment firm connections to the Russian state (not the thing you want from a privacy-friendly product / system) what they tried to keep secret.

AFAIK they have bought by some other company (again) since then, but they have basically nothing. Most of their Sailfish OS is actually closed source (like AOSP vs all the apps from Google), they don't have any hardware, they just re-flash some phone from Sony.

I had high hopes for them, but now wouldn't even touch them with a stick. Pixel with GrapheneOS seems to be a much better choice and maybe even closer to their original ideologies.

fractallyte3• 9 months ago

And yet Sailfish is a mature mobile OS, sufficient in many cases to be a daily driver, and an essential EU-based alternative to the Apple/Google monopoly. So there's that...

On a more superficial front, the UI is far ahead of both iOS and Android. Complaining about it being closed-source misses the point: the platform is Linux, and other than the proprietary front-end, everything else in Sailfish is wide open to hacking and independent development. So there's that too...

tho234i234798• 9 months ago

I don't mean be rude, but outside the SV bubble, funding is extremely hard and when companies are on the brink "ethics" becomes a luxury you can't really afford.

That's not an argument for not complaining against what was done, but given what they're doing - fighting two Goliaths that have 10000x the resources, I just wish people would give them another chance.

https://blog.jolla.com/jolla-tablet-closure/

Soaron3• 9 months ago

They still continue to be hypocritical. They claim full commitment to free software, but their entire internal infrastructure is built entirely on proprietary solutions. Every time they invite their community to do something, such as join a Zoom meeting, the community is very surprised by the offer, but Jolla employees sincerely do not understand this reaction.

andy99• 9 months ago

I tried this briefly on a pine phone ~2 years ago as I was going through the different options trying to see if there was something viable. It was useless then, the phone barely worked, and I’m pretty low maintenance, I basically just wanted mobile date, wifi, email, and browser. I don’t really remember sailfish specifically as I was quickly cycling thought the options but I know I tried it and found it unsuitable.

P.S. unless there is a sailfish browser that ships separately with a different OS and I’m remembering that.

P.P.S. I would love a Linux phone that lets me take calls and has mobile data, wifi, web browsing and GPS/navigation. I don’t care about apps other than navigation. AFAIK there is not currently something that fits the bill and works out of the box.

m4rtink10• 9 months ago

The Sailfish browser is using Firefox rendering core BTW, so you might have used it elsewhere. ;-)

stephen_g• 9 months ago

From other comments in this thread though it seems to be stuck on quite old versions of ESR though. Seems like it took until about September 2024 to go from a mid-2020 version (78) to a late-2021 version (91) according to this [1].

I don’t have any first-hand experience but from the comment that linked that blog, and the site itself, it’s not clear whether the browser engine has been updated since…

1. https://www.flypig.co.uk/?to=gecko&list_id=975&list=gecko

all2323• 9 months ago

Ubuntu Touch does all of this. https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/

linmob2• 9 months ago

Initially, due to the PinePhone not using libhybris but a mainline kernel, the SailfishOS browser and mail app was not working at all. At least the browser was fixed; mail later on AFAIR too. Generally, judging an OS that has officially supported hardware by an unfinished community port is not something I would call fair or useful ;-)

raphman2• 9 months ago

I have been using SailfishOS phones as my main driver for ten years now. Some random, personal, possibly uninformed thoughts:

- It is not for everyone. Some Linux experience and willingness to tinker with it is helpful.

- Despite the many limitations, I love the UI, the spirit, the platform, and the community. I fear the day where I have to switch to a different OS.

- Many Android apps can be run via the AlienDalvik/AppSupport middleware. However, raw BLE is not supported. Thus, most e-scooter apps won't work. My banking app runs okay-ish.

- Google Play Store and Google Play Services can be installed by following non-trivial tutorials. I don't use them.

- The hardware abstraction layer that makes proprietary Android drivers work with SailfishOS is cool.

- QML and C++/Python/JS allow for easy, rapid app development. The custom widgets have a unique, consistent, simple style.

- As most of the UI is written in QML, it is possible to adjust and extend most of the UI shell and the base applications just by editing these resource files on the phone. For example, one can add additional widgets to the lock screen or change animation speeds.

- A nice tool, Patch Manager allows transparently and reversibly applying such modifications. This is so cool, even though the patches often have to be adapted for each major OS version.

- Jolla, the Finnish company behind SailfishOS is tiny and had to let go a lot of engineers and supporting staff a few years ago. Development has slowed down significantly.

- There are about two dozen very active developers in the community who write awesome apps. There are native clients for Discord (no voice/video), Signal, Telegram, Slack, Mastodon, Hacker News, etc.

- Unfortunately, the browser is stuck with outdated Gecko (despite heroic efforts by a developer who upgraded it from ESR 78 to ESR 91 [1]).

- Only a few smartphones are supported by SailfishOS - either officially supported by Jolla (e.g., some Sony phones and some Jolla-branded ones) or supported via community ports. Often the hardware support is a little bit buggy.

EDIT: of course, if you visit the forums, you will see quite some criticism of Jolla - and some of it is well deserved. It would be great if there were better hardware, fewer bugs, better support for Android apps, etc. Personally, I feel that Jolla is really trying to make SailfishOS better but that they lack really stable sources of income and have made some less-than-ideal decisions in hindsight. The best solution would be to get EU funding for stabilizing the platform and finding a business model that generates recurring income from large organizations. Selling to private customers without being able to extract recurring income and being dependent on badly-documented hardware is not going to work.

[1] https://www.flypig.co.uk/?to=gecko&list_id=975&list=gecko

KronisLV• 9 months ago

Jolla, the Finnish company behind SailfishOS is tiny and had to let go a lot of engineers and supporting staff a few years ago. Development has slowed down significantly.

This is so sad and unfortunate to hear.

saubeidl• 9 months ago

This feels like the sort of thing the EU should be giving grants to, especially now that digital sovereignty is something people started to care about

not_another_hat3• 9 months ago

I've been using SailfishOS since 2014. Jolla 1, Xperia X, Xperia XA2 and currently Xperia 10III. I also have used Android phones and iPhones at work.

For some people the downsides are lack of apps. The few Android apps I use work just fine with the current hardware. Sadly I still have to use WhatsApp for a while, but for Signal there is a native app, WhisperFish.

The main thing to me is that SailfishOS is a Linux on your pocket. You can ssh into it, sync stuff with rsync or syncthing, edit your stuff with vim, have cron do stuff, or what ever you like. My old phones I use as remote sensors now.

There was a point that I tried to switch to iPhone. I struggled for a long time to get on par with the usability that I had with SFOS. I came pretty close, but the card house of different apps I had to build was pretty unreliable.

My phone is also my wifi hotspot. If I turn on vpn on my phone, then all the traffic from every connected device goes via vpn. I couldn't get iPhone to do this.

The team behind SailfishOS is pretty small, and regrettably shows in many areas. But still for me the clear winner of these three. It's not for everyone, but if you know your way around Linux it's great :)

So, not an Android or iPhone killer, but a good solid platform. The newest version 5.0.0.71 came out just a few days ago.

dredmorbius5• 9 months ago

What distinguishes, say, a mobile OS from a more traditional desktop OS?

What would not be acceptable in a tuned/configured Linux / Windows OS on a smaller-form-factor touch- and voice-enabled device?

I'm excepting the obvious issue raised elsewhere of closed app stores and the tendency for ever more interactions (commercial, government, educational, institutional) to rely on these. That discussion has been had many times and is if I may suggest relevant, but stale.

poetaster9• 9 months ago

The main distinguishing feature is that you generally lack a keyboar / mouse /pointer thing. Hence, the window manager and interaction in general are tuned for touch interactions, single handed use and the like.

It's for this reason I like SFOS. I've tried android and ios. But they suck.

As a developer, I also appreciate the flexibility even within the limits. Gradle and co. suck.

dredmorbius5• 9 months ago

Thanks, that was on my list. And itself could fairly easily be addressed through a window manager or contained environment which served touch-only apps.

Other factors so far as I can read them:

- Insanely good power management, particularly relative to features. A dumb/feature phone can of course see much better battery life, but offering a small fraction of the services of a smartphone. (Whether or not this is a reasonable trade-off is another question.) Much of this is through chip hardware optimisation (meaning that emulated Android environments would perform poorly), and aggressive culling of background processes (which means that a full-featured desktop OS would perform much more poorly on its own as well).

- Various HW phone features, particularly display quality and cameras. To a lesser extent, audio output.

- Extreme wireless data dependency, whether cellular networking (4/5G) or WiFi.

- Cloud-based storage of virtually all data, largely implemented/enforced at the app level. Corrolary is that it's quite difficult/challenging to share data or files between applications, not to mention that it's often a bad idea to do so.

- Identity attestation, including at the network (SIM) and hardware level. I'd think that an NFC chip, identity token (e.g., Yubikey), or worn identity token (e.g., NFCRing) could stand in for this.

- Generally an update/upgrade model that the mass public seems to find acceptable (though I ... have my doubts).

And, though I said I'd exclude it: the apps ecosystem, both in terms of popular social networking tools, and a rich market for developing highly-specific applications for particular niche needs, whether commercial, institutional, activity-specific, or recreational.

The touch-based environment really seems like it should be possible to meet within a desktop/laptop context, and given existence of AndroidOS (or similar/compatible) emulators / environments, I suspect is.

Battery life is probably the biggest direct technical challenge. While reading your reply the thought occurs that with SoC/SBC systems, it might be possible to run a low-power mobile module which is independently active when mobile-only services are required, with data sharing through storage to the main system.

Further offloading comms load (4/5G networking, voice comms) to external devices (mobile hotspot, dedicated feature phone) could provide yet further optimisations.

KeyBoardG• 9 months ago

I currently have hopes / am watching Apostrophy who are building on top of Graphene but at least they acknowledge that people need Google Play and are attempting to support that while not sacrificing the entire device to privacy issues. https://www.apostrophy.ch

fractallyte3• 9 months ago

Only Android needs Google Play. The thrust of this post is that there's a third alternative which is neither iOS nor Android - and that's a killer feature.

Now it's up to capricious EU leadership whether to support a sovereign OS, including mandating that banks and other institutions open up their requirements to use solely US-controlled devices.

laserbeam2• 9 months ago

This is a mobile OS, right?

I go to the homepage. Zero screenshots. I go to the User Experience page. Zero screenshots. I even go to Design Principles under the UX page. Zero screenshots.

Talking about mobile phone design is like dancing about architecture. Show the thing or bust.

usr11069• 9 months ago

I type these words on my year old Sailfish device. I had 2 other ones for roughly 10 years altogether.

The UI is astonishingly polished. It has not changed a lot for 10 years, but still nice to use. There is e.g. the tutorial video that comes installed on every device. Sorry, probably won't have time to share it later, I have a funeral to organize when I get out of bed. Maybe some other user can if it's not on Youtube.

The biggest problem areas IMHO:

- No hardware that meets my reqirements. The current one is too big for my pockets / my taste. It's not very good HW either, in the period when Sony Xperia were supported the situation was different. Even the original Sailfish phone over 10 years ago was relatively better at the time.

- Predictive keyboard is gone. I understand it's a licensing issue that they cannot offer it anymore. Blame Apple and Google for killing all small players.

- There is a severe maintenance backlog in many places and it's probably also growing. The browser is based on Firefox with a 2 digit version number. It crashes on many bloat sites and Cloudflare blocks it for being too old. I severly hope it won't crash now before I click reply. (I guess most users use a Browser on the Android compatibility environment)

laserbeam2• 9 months ago

My point is not that it’s bad UX or not, my point is the website is bad at selling me their product and could never convince me that it’s good.

m4rtink10• 9 months ago

Sony Xperia 10 series devices are still supported - including Xperia 10 V which is quite recent.

dotancohen3• 9 months ago

  > The browser is based on Firefox with a 2 digit version number.

The OS runs (probably some subset of) Android applications, no? Is Mozilla's build of Firefox not supported?

forgotpwd162• 9 months ago

Homepage has dozens of screenshots as well as descriptions. Submitted link isn't the homepage but '/info'. That said screencasts will've been even better because for long-time a distinction/advantage Sailfish had over Android/iOS was being heavily gesture-based.

madduci• 9 months ago

Are there cheap devices running it (< €250?)

usr11069• 9 months ago

I guess you could get a (not much) used C2 at that price. Many users have given up. Ask in the forum.

xaxaxa123• 9 months ago

I just watched two videos and saw multiple screenshots. lol.

seu• 9 months ago

Videos and pictures here https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone

nineteen999• 9 months ago

Love the Frank Zappa quote in there. Nice one.

willi59549879• 9 months ago

Sailfish OS looks nice. but i am not sure if their strategie for applications is the way to go. Applications need to be specifically built for Sailfish OS with their IDE which uses Qt.

That means you can't run just any linux software on it.

usr11069• 9 months ago

You can run any CLI software in the terminal emulator ;) You might need to build it, if it is so rare that no binary is readibly available.

Yeah, with GUIs thats a different story...

poetaster9• 9 months ago

Nope. You can use SDL2, which is behind the Godot port for Sailfish (3.5 still). Supertuxcart, Openlara a bunch of games stuff is viable. There is an active Lua Love porter and and and ...

tipst• 9 months ago

Ah, SailfishOS; the zombie of mobile device OS. Even longtime supporters (endusers) turned away b/c of little supported HW. And even if, then not all features. It's Maemo and webOS all over again.

The main thing to me is that SailfishOS is a Linux on your pocket. You can ssh into it, sync stuff with rsync or syncthing, edit your stuff with vim, have cron do stuff, or what ever you like. My old phones I use as remote sensors now.

I don't use the cron part, but you can deffo do all things w/o hassle on a regular Android thingy. These arguments for "Linux in your pockets" have long, umm, sailed?

There was a point that I tried to switch to iPhone. I struggled for a long time to get on par with the usability that I had with SFOS. I came pretty close, but the card house of different apps I had to build was pretty unreliable.

IMHO iOS is for mongos / simpletons that just use apps casually. Just look at their keyboard implementation, the cursor positioning and where characters / digits are accessed drives me crazy! Don't know if Apple permits 3rd party keyboards to be installed, i have to live with this shitbox as-is as it's a company device.

remix2000• 9 months ago

Mhm, this is a proprietary OS developed by a dilapidated company… Here is another OS sharing the Nokia/MeeGo heritage, except fully open source and actively developed (not ready for general use either, AFAICT [yet]): https://nemomobile.net/

mrbn100ful2• 9 months ago

Comparing Jolla to Nemo with the argument 'actively developed' is a huge stretch.

Nemo is a great project, but only build by one guy (neochapay) in his spare time.

Jolla still has ~5 full-time engineers and a super active community.

kosolam• 9 months ago

Why did it cost nokia and intel 1B to build the original os? Or does this figure actually include hardware dev as well?

Paianni• 9 months ago

After the tablet fiasco in 2015 they've never been able to afford to staff their OS properly; the web browser engine still lags behind Firefox by a long way (using Gecko 91 currently).

grigio• 9 months ago

a bet on GNOME mobile + PostmarketOS would be less risky

Soaron3• 9 months ago

Gnome on mobile? Are you serious? It’s not particularly stable or optimized on desktops either.

fithisux• 9 months ago

Is it running on Raspberry Pi 5?

stuaxo• 9 months ago

Given Android closing itself down I can see myself revisiting this relatively soon.

lejalv• 9 months ago

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned yet the (seemingly) functional Linux mobile OS/device: the FLX1s from furilabs (https://furilabs.com/).

User reviews seem very compelling, does anybody here have experience with it (especially if you can compare with unofficial Android ROMs, Sailfish OS, or Postmarket OS)?

linmob2• 9 months ago

Please note that user reviews are only out for the FLX1, not the FLX1s, which is about to start shipping soon. That said, as they went with the same SoC, hardware enablement is hopefully going to be fine and the software will work as well as on the FLX1.

I have their FLX1 device here, but I have yet to spend more time with it (instead of my postmarketOS daily driver I am writing this on). It's humongous (the s is going to be smaller), which is holding me back - but feel free to ask questions.

What's nice is that it's 5G hardware, and as they use the (4.19 IIRC) Android kernel they have a lot of hardware working which would be a huge struggle on mainline (think photography, finger print, ...). The Android integration via a Waydroid fork is also decent (but 'basic waydroid' is IMHO fine too, the hardware just needs enough RAM), and overall, it feels quite polished and the team is responsive in adressing customer feedback where they can.

ktosobcy• 9 months ago

Huge problem (for me) with SaifishOS is… annoying UI. I know that a lot of people swear by swipe navigation but it's just darn inconvenient and imprecise (or rather - require a lot of precission to select desired option)… I tried to get used to it for a long time and I simply couldn't. Having to pay effin lot of attention each time I tried to do anything with the phone was simply to much…

hecturchi• 9 months ago

I used Sailfish.

Then I discovered that "encryption" for them was using Luks with the numeric unlock pin as encryption key (which most people sets to 4 digits). They marketed themselves as a secure OS.

No passphrase option. I brought up that it was trivially brute-forceable in the forums and they vehemently fought the idea. My post eventually disappeared.

They were doing government contracts in Russia etc. Iirc. I put some dots together and phone rests in a drawer ever since. I have no idea how things are now though.

Soaron3• 9 months ago

Nothing has changed.

SailfishOS: A Linux-based European alternative to dominant mobile OSes

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