4 ms·

Jolla / Sailfish is a 13 year old project and through all this time they couldn't make a foothold, or even sustain some small motivated community around them. D

Jolla / Sailfish is a 13 year old project and through all this time they couldn't make a foothold, or even sustain some small motivated community around them. During this time: - company folded and changed hand multiple times, including russian ownership - the tablet scandal leaving users with lost funds - closed source parts - locked bootloader - charging a $50 device reset fee - not much change in Sailfish OS since ages - buggy Android compatibility and near zero native devs, all jumped ship At this point I think they are just one of the grifters preying on naive "EU first" supporters shoveling whatever they still have in a new casing. I'd love the idea of a greenfield EU Linux mobile OS, but I don't think it should come from this company.

embedding-shape 7mo ago
> but I don't think it should come from this company. Could*, maybe than should, unless you believe that all those things will apply to the phone they plan to release in September. Otherwise I don't see the issue with a company keep trying until they get something right (or give up). Why not?
- poisonborz 7mo ago
  True, but I also wanted to signify that I find any user trust (eg as a result of this new marketing campaign) is misplaced and steals air from a better alternative.
  - fsflover 7mo ago
    Which is?
    - poisonborz 7mo ago
      See my reply above
tpoacher 7mo ago
on one hand you're not wrong on the other, I really, really loved my original jolla phone back in the day. I happily used it as my daily driver and only phone for 2 years. Until it had a hardware fault which I could no longer repair via the company.
dijit 7mo ago
> Jolla / Sailfish is a 13 year old project Realistically building a production quality database takes 10 years. Building a production quality game engine takes 10 years. They're building a mobile operating system and the hardware it runs on; that's harder and a moving target. How long do you think it takes to build a supply chain of hardware that doesn't suck (if it takes 2 years to get moving: you need to start with hardware specs for 2 years from now) and an operating system that doesn't suck when you're also trying to catch up to a major duopoly cranking out devices at an unfathomable volume, with more money than most nation states? Your standard is "succeed against Google and Apple within 13 years on a shoestring budget with no volume discounts." How can any project clear that bar? What would you do?
- poisonborz 7mo ago
  > Your standard is "succeed against Google and Apple within 13 years..." Absolutely not. My standard is the many other AOSP-based ROMs communities and companies that were founded around them, having success within a few years - yes, they could lean on the ecosystem compatibility and didn't produce their own hardware, but maybe that's a more viable way to start? "shoestring budget with no volume discounts" does not explain the points of criticism above.
  - dijit 7mo ago
    AOSP is just a totally different destination, it's not a faster route to the same one. Sailfish is spiritually MeeGo: actual Linux on the phone, not a custom skin on Google's foundations. Obviously it's faster to build a kit-car than a car factory, I don't see how that's a rebuttal, it's an entirely different conversation. An AOSP fork on Qualcomm hardware isn't independence. Jolla are actually trying to build the factory. The $50 fee and tablet scandal are fair hits- but fuck-ups don't make you a grifter, and we've forgiven larger players far worse. You still haven't said what you'd actually do.
    - poisonborz 7mo ago
      Why is AOSP a wrong path? Why would it be "tainted"? Any large enough entity can fork. Hundreds already did, successfully. Even China couldn't do otherwise - via Huawei they mutated it to HarmonyOS (becoming much different from its roots, and incompatible to it, structurally becoming superior in many ways). Why throw away 20 years of development and a sea of dev experience? But even if you insist on a non-AOSP way: Supporting any other, more well regarded projects and initiatives? Random top of my head idea: motivate Fairphone (Denmark) to adopt some non-android OS like Ubuntu Touch?
toast0 7mo ago
> Jolla / Sailfish is a 13 year old project and through all this time they couldn't make a foothold, or even sustain some small motivated community around them. Sure, but somehow RCS is viable in 2026. Old projects can come back!
badgersnake 7mo ago
I got burned with the tablet too. Still have the phone and the first one t-shirt that went with it, as well as a Nokia N9. And I agree, it’s turned into a bandwagon grift. They’re also selling AI boxes that do who knows what.
furryrain 7mo ago
"- buggy Android compatibility and near zero native devs, all jumped ship" I'm a bit confused by this. Are you saying that the developers who once wrote native Sailfish OS apps are no longer writing those native apps? Is there any hope for using the responsive libadwaita programs from the Mobile Linux space? I realise this isn't particularly large, but it is active.
- mpol 7mo ago
  > Is there any hope for using the responsive libadwaita programs from the Mobile Linux space? Currently not, if I understand correctly. There are plans to update or rewrite the Wayland compositor. If all goes well it should support GTK programs and I assume libadwaita too.
cookiengineer 7mo ago
You should instead check out Plasma Mobile devices. They're _very_ close to releasing something for daily use and the whole KDE stack on mobile has come a long way. I have no idea about the state of ModemManager though, because that has been historically always painful to use. I'm currently betting personally on a Hackberry Pi variant. It's a Wi-Fi only device, so doesn't have a SIM without a breakout/addon board though. But at least it's fully open source and not whatever SailfishOS is. To me, SailfishOS is the same kind of fail like the "ZTE Open" with FirefoxOS, which, contrary to its name, was not open at all. [1] https://plasma-mobile.org/ https://plasma-mobile.org/

embedding-shape 7mo ago

> but I don't think it should come from this company. Could*, maybe than should, unless you believe that all those things will apply to the phone they plan to release in September. Otherwise I don't see the issue with a company keep trying until they get something right (or give up). Why not?

poisonborz 7mo ago
True, but I also wanted to signify that I find any user trust (eg as a result of this new marketing campaign) is misplaced and steals air from a better alternative.
- fsflover 7mo ago
  Which is?
  - poisonborz 7mo ago
    See my reply above

tpoacher 7mo ago

on one hand you're not wrong on the other, I really, really loved my original jolla phone back in the day. I happily used it as my daily driver and only phone for 2 years. Until it had a hardware fault which I could no longer repair via the company.

dijit 7mo ago

> Jolla / Sailfish is a 13 year old project Realistically building a production quality database takes 10 years. Building a production quality game engine takes 10 years. They're building a mobile operating system and the hardware it runs on; that's harder and a moving target. How long do you think it takes to build a supply chain of hardware that doesn't suck (if it takes 2 years to get moving: you need to start with hardware specs for 2 years from now) and an operating system that doesn't suck when you're also trying to catch up to a major duopoly cranking out devices at an unfathomable volume, with more money than most nation states? Your standard is "succeed against Google and Apple within 13 years on a shoestring budget with no volume discounts." How can any project clear that bar? What would you do?

poisonborz 7mo ago
> Your standard is "succeed against Google and Apple within 13 years..." Absolutely not. My standard is the many other AOSP-based ROMs communities and companies that were founded around them, having success within a few years - yes, they could lean on the ecosystem compatibility and didn't produce their own hardware, but maybe that's a more viable way to start? "shoestring budget with no volume discounts" does not explain the points of criticism above.
- dijit 7mo ago
  AOSP is just a totally different destination, it's not a faster route to the same one. Sailfish is spiritually MeeGo: actual Linux on the phone, not a custom skin on Google's foundations. Obviously it's faster to build a kit-car than a car factory, I don't see how that's a rebuttal, it's an entirely different conversation. An AOSP fork on Qualcomm hardware isn't independence. Jolla are actually trying to build the factory. The $50 fee and tablet scandal are fair hits- but fuck-ups don't make you a grifter, and we've forgiven larger players far worse. You still haven't said what you'd actually do.
  - poisonborz 7mo ago
    Why is AOSP a wrong path? Why would it be "tainted"? Any large enough entity can fork. Hundreds already did, successfully. Even China couldn't do otherwise - via Huawei they mutated it to HarmonyOS (becoming much different from its roots, and incompatible to it, structurally becoming superior in many ways). Why throw away 20 years of development and a sea of dev experience? But even if you insist on a non-AOSP way: Supporting any other, more well regarded projects and initiatives? Random top of my head idea: motivate Fairphone (Denmark) to adopt some non-android OS like Ubuntu Touch?

toast0 7mo ago

> Jolla / Sailfish is a 13 year old project and through all this time they couldn't make a foothold, or even sustain some small motivated community around them. Sure, but somehow RCS is viable in 2026. Old projects can come back!

badgersnake 7mo ago

I got burned with the tablet too. Still have the phone and the first one t-shirt that went with it, as well as a Nokia N9. And I agree, it’s turned into a bandwagon grift. They’re also selling AI boxes that do who knows what.

furryrain 7mo ago

"- buggy Android compatibility and near zero native devs, all jumped ship" I'm a bit confused by this. Are you saying that the developers who once wrote native Sailfish OS apps are no longer writing those native apps? Is there any hope for using the responsive libadwaita programs from the Mobile Linux space? I realise this isn't particularly large, but it is active.

mpol 7mo ago
> Is there any hope for using the responsive libadwaita programs from the Mobile Linux space? Currently not, if I understand correctly. There are plans to update or rewrite the Wayland compositor. If all goes well it should support GTK programs and I assume libadwaita too.

cookiengineer 7mo ago

You should instead check out Plasma Mobile devices. They're _very_ close to releasing something for daily use and the whole KDE stack on mobile has come a long way. I have no idea about the state of ModemManager though, because that has been historically always painful to use. I'm currently betting personally on a Hackberry Pi variant. It's a Wi-Fi only device, so doesn't have a SIM without a breakout/addon board though. But at least it's fully open source and not whatever SailfishOS is. To me, SailfishOS is the same kind of fail like the "ZTE Open" with FirefoxOS, which, contrary to its name, was not open at all. [1] https://plasma-mobile.org/ https://plasma-mobile.org/