7 ms·

Anyone have experience using Sailfish OS? Any reason to think it wouldn't end up like Firefox OS?

ucaetano 10y ago
Government backing can make it last longer, but, as Russia should have learned during the Soviet times, consumer goods aren't commodities, it isn't how much you can produce, but how much people want it that matters.
- tetromino_ 10y ago
  I suspect that the Russian government wants an OS it can trust for its official and military mobile devices, but realizes that the project is utterly hopeless unless the devices are also sold to consumers, to help pay for the R&D and ensure competitiveness with the market leaders.
  - ucaetano 10y ago
    Indeed, but it isn't just about being sold to consumers. Consumers have to buy it too. Both blackberry and windows phone were sold to consumers, as well as the fire phone. All 3 failed miserably.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      A big thing will be dependent on Russian companies supporting it. Bear in mind, Yandex is the chief of the online services land there, not Google. If Yandex is providing top notch apps and features on Sailfish, it's going to be appealing.
    - jerbs 10y ago
      And blackberry really is a good example here, as the USG loved it and is a massive customer, but no one customer is able to keep an OS thriving
intopieces 10y ago
This is my question. I mean, not to be disparaging (and correct me if I'm off base here) but isn't the Russian market rather small? Double the GDP per capita of china, sure, but with only 143m people and an economy about the size of New York City it seems like a tall order. Being government backed, does that make it a security risk, similar to the recent issues with BLU devices calling home to Chinese servers?
- soperj 10y ago
  It's not made in Russia. It's also been around for 2 years now, and seems to be doing just fine.
  - intopieces 10y ago
    From the article: >Sailfish’s local certification in Russia also follows an announcement earlier this year that a new Russian company, Open Mobile Platform (OMP), had licensed the OS with the intention of developing a custom version of the platform for use in the domestic market. So, in other words, a Russian, strategic ‘Android alternative’ is currently being built on Sailfish. Am I misunderstanding the scope of this 'custom version'? Is the version of Android running on BLU devices not also a custom version developed by a local company?
- widforss 10y ago
  This is an OS developed by a finnish company. There is little to none risk that a finnish developer would allow malicious russian code on their plattform. The only more anti-russian people I know of is the Balts.
maheart 10y ago
> Anyone have experience using Sailfish OS? Yes, I use SailfishOS as my daily driver. I should note that I'm a Linux user, and developer, so I am technical. SailfishOS satisfies all my technical requirements. Admittedly there are things that I would like (e.g. containerising/jailing functionality), but I understand that Jolla has limited manpower. It meets all my communication requirements, and developing for it is awesome (I don't use that word lightly). > Any reason to think it wouldn't end up like Firefox OS? I don't know about FirefoxOS, but SailfishOS, thanks in a large part to Nokia before it, has a strong community from the Maemo and Meego days. e.g. https://talk.maemo.org/ https://talk.maemo.org/ and https://together.jolla.com https://together.jolla.com ; also checkout the IRC channels on Freenode. The community is very smart and dedicated. I think with a fully opensource SailfishOS, it could continue to maintain the OS without corporate sponsorship (i.e. Jolla). To give credit to Jolla, they really help accelerate development of GNU/Linux on the mobile.
- baronseng 10y ago
  So what device are you using to run sailfish? I wonder how easy to install it on snapdragon 821 devices.
  - maheart 10y ago
    > So what device are you using to run sailfish? My daily driver is a Jolla1. I also own the Intex Aquafish, which I'm keeping as a backup. > I wonder how easy to install it on snapdragon 821 devices. You can find information on ports here: https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris
    - gnipgnip 10y ago
      Sweet ! I didn't realize Intex was making phones with Sailfish. This looks like a cheap alternative to the much loved Nokia N9. (https://www.flipkart.com/intex-aqua-fish-orange-16-gb/p/itmehyg3mrmyfq9q?pid=MOBEHYG3ASSTKXBD https://www.flipkart.com/intex-aqua-fish-orange-16-gb/p/itme...)
  - 10y ago
aerique 10y ago
I've used a Jolla phone for almost a year but ditched it because the camera wasn't up to par for me. Besides that I really liked it, pretty good native apps for a lot of things and a fallback to Android that usually worked well enough for things that weren't available on Jolla (banking apps mostly). The UI looks nice and is smooth and it's easy to SSH into the phone and write your own software in f.e. Python. If you're really interested try to find a cheap second-hand Jolla phone.

Government backing can make it last longer, but, as Russia should have learned during the Soviet times, consumer goods aren't commodities, it isn't how much you can produce, but how much people want it that matters.

tetromino_ 10y ago
I suspect that the Russian government wants an OS it can trust for its official and military mobile devices, but realizes that the project is utterly hopeless unless the devices are also sold to consumers, to help pay for the R&D and ensure competitiveness with the market leaders.
- ucaetano 10y ago
  Indeed, but it isn't just about being sold to consumers. Consumers have to buy it too. Both blackberry and windows phone were sold to consumers, as well as the fire phone. All 3 failed miserably.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    A big thing will be dependent on Russian companies supporting it. Bear in mind, Yandex is the chief of the online services land there, not Google. If Yandex is providing top notch apps and features on Sailfish, it's going to be appealing.
  - jerbs 10y ago
    And blackberry really is a good example here, as the USG loved it and is a massive customer, but no one customer is able to keep an OS thriving

intopieces 10y ago

This is my question. I mean, not to be disparaging (and correct me if I'm off base here) but isn't the Russian market rather small? Double the GDP per capita of china, sure, but with only 143m people and an economy about the size of New York City it seems like a tall order. Being government backed, does that make it a security risk, similar to the recent issues with BLU devices calling home to Chinese servers?

soperj 10y ago
It's not made in Russia. It's also been around for 2 years now, and seems to be doing just fine.
- intopieces 10y ago
  From the article: >Sailfish’s local certification in Russia also follows an announcement earlier this year that a new Russian company, Open Mobile Platform (OMP), had licensed the OS with the intention of developing a custom version of the platform for use in the domestic market. So, in other words, a Russian, strategic ‘Android alternative’ is currently being built on Sailfish. Am I misunderstanding the scope of this 'custom version'? Is the version of Android running on BLU devices not also a custom version developed by a local company?
widforss 10y ago
This is an OS developed by a finnish company. There is little to none risk that a finnish developer would allow malicious russian code on their plattform. The only more anti-russian people I know of is the Balts.

maheart 10y ago

> Anyone have experience using Sailfish OS? Yes, I use SailfishOS as my daily driver. I should note that I'm a Linux user, and developer, so I am technical. SailfishOS satisfies all my technical requirements. Admittedly there are things that I would like (e.g. containerising/jailing functionality), but I understand that Jolla has limited manpower. It meets all my communication requirements, and developing for it is awesome (I don't use that word lightly). > Any reason to think it wouldn't end up like Firefox OS? I don't know about FirefoxOS, but SailfishOS, thanks in a large part to Nokia before it, has a strong community from the Maemo and Meego days. e.g. https://talk.maemo.org/ https://talk.maemo.org/ and https://together.jolla.com https://together.jolla.com ; also checkout the IRC channels on Freenode. The community is very smart and dedicated. I think with a fully opensource SailfishOS, it could continue to maintain the OS without corporate sponsorship (i.e. Jolla). To give credit to Jolla, they really help accelerate development of GNU/Linux on the mobile.

baronseng 10y ago
So what device are you using to run sailfish? I wonder how easy to install it on snapdragon 821 devices.
- maheart 10y ago
  > So what device are you using to run sailfish? My daily driver is a Jolla1. I also own the Intex Aquafish, which I'm keeping as a backup. > I wonder how easy to install it on snapdragon 821 devices. You can find information on ports here: https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris
  - gnipgnip 10y ago
    Sweet ! I didn't realize Intex was making phones with Sailfish. This looks like a cheap alternative to the much loved Nokia N9. (https://www.flipkart.com/intex-aqua-fish-orange-16-gb/p/itmehyg3mrmyfq9q?pid=MOBEHYG3ASSTKXBD https://www.flipkart.com/intex-aqua-fish-orange-16-gb/p/itme...)
- 10y ago

aerique 10y ago

I've used a Jolla phone for almost a year but ditched it because the camera wasn't up to par for me. Besides that I really liked it, pretty good native apps for a lot of things and a fallback to Android that usually worked well enough for things that weren't available on Jolla (banking apps mostly). The UI looks nice and is smooth and it's easy to SSH into the phone and write your own software in f.e. Python. If you're really interested try to find a cheap second-hand Jolla phone.