10 ms·

Sailfish OS – Independent Mobile OS

126 points by rayascott 9y ago

anilakar 9y ago
Looks like they've dropped Android compatibility from the list of advertised features. Last time I checked, the latest supported version was still Jelly Bean 4.1 -- mostly because Alien Dalvik from Myriad doesn't support anything newer.
- raimue 9y ago
  The Jolla tablet, the Intex Aqua Fish, and Jolla C have compatibility with Android 4.4. Although that is also quite out of date, it is still supported by app developers. Oh, and note that Android support is a commercial feature. You will not get it with any third-party device.
  - distances 9y ago
    > Android 4.4. Although that is also quite out of date, it is still supported by app developers. For the time being. I'd wager many/most new applications start with minimum 5.0 unless they have an explicit reason to choose otherwise.
- satori99 9y ago
  > Moreover, Sailfish OS can be enhanced with full Android application compatibility – but only if you choose so. On the bottom of the homepage.
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    > full Android application compatibility Quite disingenuous if only Android 4.4 and below is supported.
pedroaraujo 9y ago
The "true independent mobile OS" so "private and secure" that even basic things like the calendar and the lock screen are proprietary and closed source. This brings no advantages over AOSP. And in before people pull the argument of Google Apps, Android is perfectably usable without any of the Google proprietary software.
- rihegher 9y ago
  Yes sadly it never became open source. I guess for those like me using it, it's time to move to fairphone with Android
- kirillkh 9y ago
  It's true: "The base layer source code is usually proprietary, and thus is generally not available for public access". https://sailfishos.org/wiki/SailfishOS_Source https://sailfishos.org/wiki/SailfishOS_Source
- squarefoot 9y ago
  "Android is perfectably usable without any of the Google proprietary software." In a virtual machine maybe, surely not on any phone where most device drivers are closed blobs. H4x0r5 may hide backdoors into compromised play store apps, but governments do it in device drivers, with 100% success rate because a closed source device driver is something 100% of the user base has installed, keeps running 24/7 at maximum privileges and has 0 chances to audit or examine. Today closed device drivers, binary blobs etc. are places to look for malware; until a device is completely open it cannot call itself safe or secure.
  - pedroaraujo 9y ago
    The binary blobs are not part of Android at all. And Sailfish OS doesn't solve the problem of binary blobs as well.
    - squarefoot 9y ago
      Closed device drivers aren't part of Android, but are part of any working installation of Android. Name one device which can run Android and can call itself 100% open. Of course Sailfish doesn't solve that problem, neither does Linux, BSD or whatever. I wasn't making a pissing contest between operating system (which is likely what trigger happy downvoters got) but simply stating a sad fact: closed device drivers are the best place to put spyware on and get 100% success, period. They can't be audited, they can't be uninstalled, they always run and they have maximum privileges. If I'm wrong (and trust me, I hope so) I want facts proving it.
jhasse 9y ago
This isn't fully open-source in contrast to something like Replicant: https://www.replicant.us/ https://www.replicant.us/ LineageOS is also better, but includes proprietary drivers: https://lineageos.org/ https://lineageos.org/ Sailfish has proprietary drivers AND many of the GUI components are proprietary. I don't know if this list is still up-to-date: https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/SailfishOSS https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/SailfishOSS
- g0ran 9y ago
  Check out https://www.postmarketos.org/ https://www.postmarketos.org/
sgloutnikov 9y ago
Had not recently checked up on what Jolla is doing, but it looks like they dropped future plans for devices and concentrating solely on the OS. Reminds me of when I tried to buy a Jolla phone after my N9 and that thing was nearly impossible to get in the US.
- ploek 9y ago
  They are releasing Sailfish OS for the Single-SIM version of the Sony Xperia X in September: https://blog.jolla.com/sailfishx/ https://blog.jolla.com/sailfishx/
  - kogepathic 9y ago
    > They are releasing Sailfish OS for the Single-SIM version of the Sony Xperia X in September They've announced it will be available in September. That doesn't necessarily mean it will be released when they claim. They have a history of releasing overly optimistic press releases and then failing to deliver on time or at all. [0] [0] Jolla tablet backer here, still waiting for my refund 3 years later
  - petecox 9y ago
    Partnering is probably better than trying to crowdfund another device - at least one can easily flash the phone back to Android if Jolla can no longer support it.
jackvalentine 9y ago
Control-F "baseband" > no results found
- bmn__ 9y ago
  I don't understand what you want to say.
  - bitL 9y ago
    Baseband processor is the magical chip that lives on its own, even if you "switch off" your phone and you are not allowed to tamper with it by most developed countries legislation (i.e. you can only take what is offered to you, sanctioned by government but will be punished if you make any modifications to it). See Neo 900 developers talking about it. So separating it off should allow better sleep to all paranoid users that might think they are being monitored.
    - tom_mellior 9y ago
      And what did you hope to read about the baseband processor's relationship to the OS?
      - jackvalentine 9y ago
        You're replying to someone other than me. However any mobile OS advertising itself as 'private and secure' is just lying if it is installed on a handset that hasn't dealt with the baseband issue - and none of them have or likely will.
        lunchables 9y ago
        Are we talking about binary blobs for the baseband processor?
        bitL 9y ago
        Baseband processor on most phones can access RAM/storage/IO at will even if the phone is "turned off".
TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
As other are saying, it's not open source. Ultimately, this means you're not in control. I can tolerate having some binary blobs, since it seems unavoidable in the current mobile landscape. But why would I go with Sailfish OS instead of Android? Why are "partners" the ones that get the "freedom to customize"? That's a big fuck you to users. Furthermore, the parent company Jolla, did a horrible job with their tablet fundraiser and subsequent crash. This bred a lot of badwill in many like me. For me the biggest issue wasn't even the loss of money, since I understood the risks involved with a hardware fundraiser. It's that they were not transparent or open with the community; infrequent and opaque updates were the norm. Then all of a sudden they ran out of money and we're told maybe if we're lucky we'll get a refund eventually? They'll have to do a lot better to gain my trust. For comparison, I also funded the Pyra [0], an ultra portable mini computer which runs Debian. Despite having paid more, and having already waited much longer, I have no big complaints. The team posts very detailed updates every 1 or 2 weeks. When anything goes wrong or things get delayed, they include it in the update. [0] https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/ https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/
- Brakenshire 9y ago
  I'm not really that sure of Sailfish's open source status. It seems the launcher, lock-screen, and system apps are closed source, personally I don't mind about those too much, but I do mind if the UI library is closed. Does anyone know the status of that? Edit: It seems the UI library, Silica, is sort of half open, half closed: https://github.com/dm8tbr/sailfishsilica-qt5 https://github.com/dm8tbr/sailfishsilica-qt5. Really think Jolla should look at that.
- boyce 9y ago
  That Pyra device looks fantastic. A netbook in the format of that old Motorola V Box or something
  - kutkloon7 9y ago
    Looks nice, but also horrible to type on.
- 9y ago
bitL 9y ago
We need alternatives to Android and iOS; just to have assurance we can exercise free speech in the future ("the right to read"). SailfishOS, even if not fully open sourced, might be a good hedge against big corp overreach and dystopian tendencies (together with Librem).
- jhasse 9y ago
  Why do I need an alternative to Android? I can always fork an older version if it starts to restrict free speech.
  - Brakenshire 9y ago
    This is closer to an existing nexus of expertise in FOSS, because it is a Linux distribution, whereas Android is something different, and has only ever been maintained by Google, more or less behind closed doors. A fork of Android would be much more likely to die a death than a functional mobile Linux OS.
    - jhasse 9y ago
      > A fork of Android would be much more likely to die a death than a functional mobile Linux OS. Why wouldn't a fork of Android be a functional mobile Linux OS?
      - Brakenshire 9y ago
        Android is running on top of a Java VM, with completely independent UI components. It's a long way from a traditional Linux userland.
        jhasse 9y ago
        That's true, but I won't go so far and call it non-functional. Most of Sailfish's UI components are proprietary, which is a more severe issue IMHO.
nkkollaw 9y ago
What about apps? I've used a Lumia and it was pretty much worthless because I couldn't find any of the apps I normally use...
- Brakenshire 9y ago
  It comes with an Android compatibility layer, which I imagine is similar to running Android without Play Services. I've tried that in the past, and it worked quite well. There are a lot of good apps on F-Droid, then you can get access to others through APKMirror, or methods of downloading from the Play Store. Of those, I'd say about half work without complaint (including Whatsapp), a quarter complain and still work, and a quarter don't work. I also used (and still use) a few web apps for things like weather.
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    Ha, that's really smart. At this point all they'd need to do to make this whole thing make sense is to open source it...
H00tyMcOwlFace 9y ago
A OS not knowing anything about permissions and which lets apps do everything they want by default.. bold statement to say its secure. They do a decent job of patching 3rd party / CVE's though. Open source? Well not anymore than stock Android id say. Note: I used Sailfish OS for 2 years
- jhasse 9y ago
  > Well not anymore than stock Android id say. It's even less open-source than AOSP.
- raimue 9y ago
  To be fair, the permission model of SailfishOS is the same you use on your Linux desktop. Every application has full access to your home directory. Although access to some data needs special privileges by standard UNIX permissions on files like the contacts database. At least Jolla claims to test and verify behavior of applications offered in their store, but it is up to you to trust any third-party applications you run.
  - H00tyMcOwlFace 9y ago
    Well you are comparing apples with oranges here ;) True, good point about the testing!
Abishek_Muthian 9y ago
Sorry, but what's the latest on this? They got new website?
- Brakenshire 9y ago
  Latest is they're just about to roll out official support for installation on Xperia X devices. The current hardware is not so modern.
kutkloon7 9y ago
While I'm very interested in mobile operating systems, I'm not a big fan of gesture-based interfaces. They just never work well for me; I often accidentally rotate and zoom and do other weird stuff when I enable them (on the touchpad on my laptop).
bitL 9y ago
To all geeks - SailfishOS has true multitasking. The supercomputer in your pocket is no longer limited to run a 70s-style time-sharing OS ;-)
claudius 9y ago
I’ve used Sailfish OS on the original Jolla for a little more than two years from April 2015 through July 2017. Last month, I was finally fed up enough with the horribly slow and limited hardware (couldn’t play music and open OsmAND at the same time) and got a OnePlus 3T with LineageOS. Tidbits of my personal opinion: - SailfishOS is much more unixy - getting a shell, setting up a SSH server and syncing files with rsync was no problem at all. I have not yet understood the directory structure of LineageOS - The permission of apps was a problem, but not more so than on my laptop. Ideally one could solve this by only installing trusted apps, but this was unfortunately not an option (Whatsapp) - The native e-mail client actually knew about e-mail. On LineageOS, I had to install K9mail to get such simple things as proper treatment of signatures delimited by '-- ' - The user interface on Sailfish was much more usable, in particular the swipe gestures to quickly close apps as well as the tiled view from which you can directly interact with open and running apps. Feels more like a proper computer instead of a single-threaded/single-application-at-a-time thing. - I actually trusted the team at Jolla with providing decent updates etc. With LineageOS, I am using some unofficial ROM provided by a random guy on a largely random forum which may or may not work with over-the-air updates (it’s claimed to work but I haven’t tried it yet). I definitely trust my phone less now than I did before. - The hardware is of course much better on the OnePlus -- had Jolla/Sailfish sold something equally good or even only slightly worse, I would have bought that again.
- petecox 9y ago
  The default Android client for mail isn't great. Google have developed various clients available on Play but I prefer the Outlook client. K9 is probably the best FOSS client from f-droid that I tried.
- orra 9y ago
  I'd recommend Termux, which gives you a shell and apt. Termux is available from F-Droid, the free and open source app store. No need for random forums. You should have been able to download an official LineageOS build from https://download.lineageos.org https://download.lineageos.org
  - 9y ago
James_Owens_69 9y ago
Why not use Raspberry pi with Sleepy Pi 2 hardware addon, powerbank and a 3g modem? You need a smartphone for the internet, right? I always carry a dumbphone with 2 month battery life for calls + smartphone for Internet.
- James_Owens_69 9y ago
  Like this https://s26.postimg.org/n71r8vlex/20170719_191716.jpg https://s26.postimg.org/n71r8vlex/20170719_191716.jpg
  - lunchables 9y ago
    Why do I need two months of battery life? I got to sleep every night with 60% battery remaining and place my phone on a dock to charge it. That device is huge, I'd much rather carry around a smartphone in my pocket that is a fraction of the size and weight.
red023 9y ago
What really really turns me of is that proprietary crap. Why do proprietary shit on top of great open source software and then market yourself as this great new "independent" thing. Really, make it ALL copyleft and I am all in.
abbiya 9y ago
i have one device, recently bought and never going using it. regret buying it.
TootsMagoon 9y ago
ELI5: Why would a team of developers and investors work on something with such a small chance of becoming a viable market? Honest question. Not intending to be snarky. Reminds me of the many Chrome knock-offs that focused on a particular aspect of browsing. Any advancement/advantage would be quickly adopted by the mainstream market leaders.
- tom_mellior 9y ago
  There are a bunch of native Sailfish OS apps. As far as I can tell, people work on them for fun, not for the expectation of making money off of them. For users, the result is not necessarily bad: Unlike many free Android apps, there are no annoying ads. And there are actual OpenStreetMap apps that simply use the online map data, unlike OsmAnd, which makes you pay for access to maps they didn't create. An enormous amount of open source development on Linux is not driven by a "market" in the sense of making money either. This doesn't answer your question directly, but maybe the question is ill-posed. Do we want or need a "viable market" that looks like crappy ad-infested Android bloatware? (Just to be clear, no, I am not saying that all Android apps are alike.)
guuz 9y ago
Could the Firefox OS become a viable true open source alternative? I know Mozilla abandoned the project two years ago etc, but some fork can continue the work. I simply do not see how it can be done
ivan_ah 9y ago
There is also Copperhead OS in that space. It's pretty easy to install and it's supposed to be super secure: https://copperhead.co/android/docs/install https://copperhead.co/android/docs/install I've been using for past couple of months, and I can't say I miss anything from Google play services. I highly recommend if you happen to have one of the (few) supported devices.

126 points by rayascott 9y ago

Looks like they've dropped Android compatibility from the list of advertised features. Last time I checked, the latest supported version was still Jelly Bean 4.1 -- mostly because Alien Dalvik from Myriad doesn't support anything newer.

raimue 9y ago
The Jolla tablet, the Intex Aqua Fish, and Jolla C have compatibility with Android 4.4. Although that is also quite out of date, it is still supported by app developers. Oh, and note that Android support is a commercial feature. You will not get it with any third-party device.
- distances 9y ago
  > Android 4.4. Although that is also quite out of date, it is still supported by app developers. For the time being. I'd wager many/most new applications start with minimum 5.0 unless they have an explicit reason to choose otherwise.
satori99 9y ago
> Moreover, Sailfish OS can be enhanced with full Android application compatibility – but only if you choose so. On the bottom of the homepage.
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  > full Android application compatibility Quite disingenuous if only Android 4.4 and below is supported.

pedroaraujo 9y ago

The "true independent mobile OS" so "private and secure" that even basic things like the calendar and the lock screen are proprietary and closed source. This brings no advantages over AOSP. And in before people pull the argument of Google Apps, Android is perfectably usable without any of the Google proprietary software.

rihegher 9y ago
Yes sadly it never became open source. I guess for those like me using it, it's time to move to fairphone with Android
kirillkh 9y ago
It's true: "The base layer source code is usually proprietary, and thus is generally not available for public access". https://sailfishos.org/wiki/SailfishOS_Source https://sailfishos.org/wiki/SailfishOS_Source
squarefoot 9y ago
"Android is perfectably usable without any of the Google proprietary software." In a virtual machine maybe, surely not on any phone where most device drivers are closed blobs. H4x0r5 may hide backdoors into compromised play store apps, but governments do it in device drivers, with 100% success rate because a closed source device driver is something 100% of the user base has installed, keeps running 24/7 at maximum privileges and has 0 chances to audit or examine. Today closed device drivers, binary blobs etc. are places to look for malware; until a device is completely open it cannot call itself safe or secure.
- pedroaraujo 9y ago
  The binary blobs are not part of Android at all. And Sailfish OS doesn't solve the problem of binary blobs as well.
  - squarefoot 9y ago
    Closed device drivers aren't part of Android, but are part of any working installation of Android. Name one device which can run Android and can call itself 100% open. Of course Sailfish doesn't solve that problem, neither does Linux, BSD or whatever. I wasn't making a pissing contest between operating system (which is likely what trigger happy downvoters got) but simply stating a sad fact: closed device drivers are the best place to put spyware on and get 100% success, period. They can't be audited, they can't be uninstalled, they always run and they have maximum privileges. If I'm wrong (and trust me, I hope so) I want facts proving it.

jhasse 9y ago

This isn't fully open-source in contrast to something like Replicant: https://www.replicant.us/ https://www.replicant.us/ LineageOS is also better, but includes proprietary drivers: https://lineageos.org/ https://lineageos.org/ Sailfish has proprietary drivers AND many of the GUI components are proprietary. I don't know if this list is still up-to-date: https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/SailfishOSS https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/SailfishOSS

g0ran 9y ago
Check out https://www.postmarketos.org/ https://www.postmarketos.org/

sgloutnikov 9y ago

Had not recently checked up on what Jolla is doing, but it looks like they dropped future plans for devices and concentrating solely on the OS. Reminds me of when I tried to buy a Jolla phone after my N9 and that thing was nearly impossible to get in the US.

ploek 9y ago
They are releasing Sailfish OS for the Single-SIM version of the Sony Xperia X in September: https://blog.jolla.com/sailfishx/ https://blog.jolla.com/sailfishx/
- kogepathic 9y ago
  > They are releasing Sailfish OS for the Single-SIM version of the Sony Xperia X in September They've announced it will be available in September. That doesn't necessarily mean it will be released when they claim. They have a history of releasing overly optimistic press releases and then failing to deliver on time or at all. [0] [0] Jolla tablet backer here, still waiting for my refund 3 years later
- petecox 9y ago
  Partnering is probably better than trying to crowdfund another device - at least one can easily flash the phone back to Android if Jolla can no longer support it.

jackvalentine 9y ago

Control-F "baseband" > no results found

bmn__ 9y ago
I don't understand what you want to say.
- bitL 9y ago
  Baseband processor is the magical chip that lives on its own, even if you "switch off" your phone and you are not allowed to tamper with it by most developed countries legislation (i.e. you can only take what is offered to you, sanctioned by government but will be punished if you make any modifications to it). See Neo 900 developers talking about it. So separating it off should allow better sleep to all paranoid users that might think they are being monitored.
  - tom_mellior 9y ago
    And what did you hope to read about the baseband processor's relationship to the OS?
    - jackvalentine 9y ago
      You're replying to someone other than me. However any mobile OS advertising itself as 'private and secure' is just lying if it is installed on a handset that hasn't dealt with the baseband issue - and none of them have or likely will.
      - lunchables 9y ago
        Are we talking about binary blobs for the baseband processor?
        bitL 9y ago
        Baseband processor on most phones can access RAM/storage/IO at will even if the phone is "turned off".

TheAceOfHearts 9y ago

As other are saying, it's not open source. Ultimately, this means you're not in control. I can tolerate having some binary blobs, since it seems unavoidable in the current mobile landscape. But why would I go with Sailfish OS instead of Android? Why are "partners" the ones that get the "freedom to customize"? That's a big fuck you to users. Furthermore, the parent company Jolla, did a horrible job with their tablet fundraiser and subsequent crash. This bred a lot of badwill in many like me. For me the biggest issue wasn't even the loss of money, since I understood the risks involved with a hardware fundraiser. It's that they were not transparent or open with the community; infrequent and opaque updates were the norm. Then all of a sudden they ran out of money and we're told maybe if we're lucky we'll get a refund eventually? They'll have to do a lot better to gain my trust. For comparison, I also funded the Pyra [0], an ultra portable mini computer which runs Debian. Despite having paid more, and having already waited much longer, I have no big complaints. The team posts very detailed updates every 1 or 2 weeks. When anything goes wrong or things get delayed, they include it in the update. [0] https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/ https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/

Brakenshire 9y ago
I'm not really that sure of Sailfish's open source status. It seems the launcher, lock-screen, and system apps are closed source, personally I don't mind about those too much, but I do mind if the UI library is closed. Does anyone know the status of that? Edit: It seems the UI library, Silica, is sort of half open, half closed: https://github.com/dm8tbr/sailfishsilica-qt5 https://github.com/dm8tbr/sailfishsilica-qt5. Really think Jolla should look at that.
boyce 9y ago
That Pyra device looks fantastic. A netbook in the format of that old Motorola V Box or something
- kutkloon7 9y ago
  Looks nice, but also horrible to type on.
9y ago

bitL 9y ago

We need alternatives to Android and iOS; just to have assurance we can exercise free speech in the future ("the right to read"). SailfishOS, even if not fully open sourced, might be a good hedge against big corp overreach and dystopian tendencies (together with Librem).

jhasse 9y ago
Why do I need an alternative to Android? I can always fork an older version if it starts to restrict free speech.
- Brakenshire 9y ago
  This is closer to an existing nexus of expertise in FOSS, because it is a Linux distribution, whereas Android is something different, and has only ever been maintained by Google, more or less behind closed doors. A fork of Android would be much more likely to die a death than a functional mobile Linux OS.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    > A fork of Android would be much more likely to die a death than a functional mobile Linux OS. Why wouldn't a fork of Android be a functional mobile Linux OS?
    - Brakenshire 9y ago
      Android is running on top of a Java VM, with completely independent UI components. It's a long way from a traditional Linux userland.
      - jhasse 9y ago
        That's true, but I won't go so far and call it non-functional. Most of Sailfish's UI components are proprietary, which is a more severe issue IMHO.

nkkollaw 9y ago

What about apps? I've used a Lumia and it was pretty much worthless because I couldn't find any of the apps I normally use...

Brakenshire 9y ago
It comes with an Android compatibility layer, which I imagine is similar to running Android without Play Services. I've tried that in the past, and it worked quite well. There are a lot of good apps on F-Droid, then you can get access to others through APKMirror, or methods of downloading from the Play Store. Of those, I'd say about half work without complaint (including Whatsapp), a quarter complain and still work, and a quarter don't work. I also used (and still use) a few web apps for things like weather.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  Ha, that's really smart. At this point all they'd need to do to make this whole thing make sense is to open source it...

H00tyMcOwlFace 9y ago

A OS not knowing anything about permissions and which lets apps do everything they want by default.. bold statement to say its secure. They do a decent job of patching 3rd party / CVE's though. Open source? Well not anymore than stock Android id say. Note: I used Sailfish OS for 2 years

jhasse 9y ago
> Well not anymore than stock Android id say. It's even less open-source than AOSP.
raimue 9y ago
To be fair, the permission model of SailfishOS is the same you use on your Linux desktop. Every application has full access to your home directory. Although access to some data needs special privileges by standard UNIX permissions on files like the contacts database. At least Jolla claims to test and verify behavior of applications offered in their store, but it is up to you to trust any third-party applications you run.
- H00tyMcOwlFace 9y ago
  Well you are comparing apples with oranges here ;) True, good point about the testing!

Abishek_Muthian 9y ago

Sorry, but what's the latest on this? They got new website?

Brakenshire 9y ago
Latest is they're just about to roll out official support for installation on Xperia X devices. The current hardware is not so modern.

kutkloon7 9y ago

While I'm very interested in mobile operating systems, I'm not a big fan of gesture-based interfaces. They just never work well for me; I often accidentally rotate and zoom and do other weird stuff when I enable them (on the touchpad on my laptop).

bitL 9y ago

To all geeks - SailfishOS has true multitasking. The supercomputer in your pocket is no longer limited to run a 70s-style time-sharing OS ;-)

claudius 9y ago

I’ve used Sailfish OS on the original Jolla for a little more than two years from April 2015 through July 2017. Last month, I was finally fed up enough with the horribly slow and limited hardware (couldn’t play music and open OsmAND at the same time) and got a OnePlus 3T with LineageOS. Tidbits of my personal opinion: - SailfishOS is much more unixy - getting a shell, setting up a SSH server and syncing files with rsync was no problem at all. I have not yet understood the directory structure of LineageOS - The permission of apps was a problem, but not more so than on my laptop. Ideally one could solve this by only installing trusted apps, but this was unfortunately not an option (Whatsapp) - The native e-mail client actually knew about e-mail. On LineageOS, I had to install K9mail to get such simple things as proper treatment of signatures delimited by '-- ' - The user interface on Sailfish was much more usable, in particular the swipe gestures to quickly close apps as well as the tiled view from which you can directly interact with open and running apps. Feels more like a proper computer instead of a single-threaded/single-application-at-a-time thing. - I actually trusted the team at Jolla with providing decent updates etc. With LineageOS, I am using some unofficial ROM provided by a random guy on a largely random forum which may or may not work with over-the-air updates (it’s claimed to work but I haven’t tried it yet). I definitely trust my phone less now than I did before. - The hardware is of course much better on the OnePlus -- had Jolla/Sailfish sold something equally good or even only slightly worse, I would have bought that again.

petecox 9y ago
The default Android client for mail isn't great. Google have developed various clients available on Play but I prefer the Outlook client. K9 is probably the best FOSS client from f-droid that I tried.
orra 9y ago
I'd recommend Termux, which gives you a shell and apt. Termux is available from F-Droid, the free and open source app store. No need for random forums. You should have been able to download an official LineageOS build from https://download.lineageos.org https://download.lineageos.org
- 9y ago

James_Owens_69 9y ago

Why not use Raspberry pi with Sleepy Pi 2 hardware addon, powerbank and a 3g modem? You need a smartphone for the internet, right? I always carry a dumbphone with 2 month battery life for calls + smartphone for Internet.

James_Owens_69 9y ago
Like this https://s26.postimg.org/n71r8vlex/20170719_191716.jpg https://s26.postimg.org/n71r8vlex/20170719_191716.jpg
- lunchables 9y ago
  Why do I need two months of battery life? I got to sleep every night with 60% battery remaining and place my phone on a dock to charge it. That device is huge, I'd much rather carry around a smartphone in my pocket that is a fraction of the size and weight.

red023 9y ago

What really really turns me of is that proprietary crap. Why do proprietary shit on top of great open source software and then market yourself as this great new "independent" thing. Really, make it ALL copyleft and I am all in.

abbiya 9y ago

i have one device, recently bought and never going using it. regret buying it.

TootsMagoon 9y ago

ELI5: Why would a team of developers and investors work on something with such a small chance of becoming a viable market? Honest question. Not intending to be snarky. Reminds me of the many Chrome knock-offs that focused on a particular aspect of browsing. Any advancement/advantage would be quickly adopted by the mainstream market leaders.

tom_mellior 9y ago
There are a bunch of native Sailfish OS apps. As far as I can tell, people work on them for fun, not for the expectation of making money off of them. For users, the result is not necessarily bad: Unlike many free Android apps, there are no annoying ads. And there are actual OpenStreetMap apps that simply use the online map data, unlike OsmAnd, which makes you pay for access to maps they didn't create. An enormous amount of open source development on Linux is not driven by a "market" in the sense of making money either. This doesn't answer your question directly, but maybe the question is ill-posed. Do we want or need a "viable market" that looks like crappy ad-infested Android bloatware? (Just to be clear, no, I am not saying that all Android apps are alike.)

guuz 9y ago

Could the Firefox OS become a viable true open source alternative? I know Mozilla abandoned the project two years ago etc, but some fork can continue the work. I simply do not see how it can be done

ivan_ah 9y ago

There is also Copperhead OS in that space. It's pretty easy to install and it's supposed to be super secure: https://copperhead.co/android/docs/install https://copperhead.co/android/docs/install I've been using for past couple of months, and I can't say I miss anything from Google play services. I highly recommend if you happen to have one of the (few) supported devices.