I hope it’s ok to post on this community. It seems to be the most active. Skip to the summary at the end if you are in a hurry.
Every time the issue with google’s dick move come up, I barely see any mention to Jolla/SailfishOS. Why is this not the Linux phone that we should be supporting?
I bought an Xperia way back in 2018 I think, and bought their community support and installed. It was usable. I ended up giving up on it because it was much worse than the ungoogled android alternative back then. The GPS took a long time to work, a lot of stuff was rough.
And some things were great surprises that comes with using a Linux phone. Syncthing android wouldn’t install, but then I just installed the normal Linux Syncthing like normal and it worked perfectly!
But now with google killing F-droid and such, even a rough Sailfish will be a better option. I didn’t stop using it because it was unusable, but because open source android was better. Open source android will die, and Sailfish must have gotten better by now.
So why isn’t it an option? One thing I heard people complaining is that they are charging yearly for updates. Is this the problem?
People, even the very rich and evil microsoft gave up on investing in their windows phones. And those massive companies can only do so by profiting a lot from personal data. Any company will need a massive investment to be an option. Specially until it gains traction, with a small user base, it MUST be very expensive. And we, who want to see Linux working on phones, must invest on it. Otherwise any company trying it will go bankrupt.
There are few of us, it’s a massive undertaking. Those of us who can must invest on it. Put our money where our mouth is. It’s sad, but the world runs on money. Linux was successful because massive companies profited from it and needed it. If Linux relied solely on donations do you think an average person could use a Linux desktop today?
And then there are those saying “it’s stupid to start from scratch”. Jolla didn’t start from scratch. They came from Nokia and have been building SailfishOS for more than 10 years. There’s a lot of work already done to be ignored.
And on top of it, it’s not an american company. So no PRISM and other things on it. Specially with the orange king, it’s a massive plus to have software free from their system, unlike AOSP, which can just forbid their use by any country the orange king doesn’t like.
So, why is it not an option? And those currently using it, what’s your experience? Those who bought Xperia and installed on it, how did it go?
TL;DR: Sailfish wasn’t ideal before, but with google’s dick move, that will be better than not having open source apps.
A phone system will be very expensive and we must pay the entry price to support it, if that’s the reason people don’t like Jolla.
Jolla has been on the market for a while and already did a lot of work. SailfishOS is not something from scratch, if that’s the reason.
Anyone using it currently, how has the experience been for you?
EDIT: I forgot to mention. Bank apps, Facebook stuff and other massive companies apps probably won’t work on Linux, nor degoogled phones, and never will. They are allergic to freedom and if you need them, an alternative OS is not for you. Just like Adobe never worked on Linux and probably never will. It’s not profitable enough. If that’s what you need, just accept google decisions because you don’t have a choice. This post is not for that audience.
Links from A_norny_mousse that I missed:
https://sailfishos.org/
company: https://jolla.com/
download: https://shop.jolla.com/ => Get free trial (yes it requires an account, but there’s no timebomb in the trial)
docs: https://docs.sailfishos.org/ (thanks to the community!)
forums: https://forum.sailfishos.org/
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My gripe with Sailfish is that it’s not open source. Investing into development for it would be just a dead end. If it were open source we could be sure that it could be supported for basically forever and they could get help with development.
It’s basically the same as with Nokia’s Maemo. It was perfect. It worked so much better than other smartphones at the time. But once Nokia had pulled the plug all their investments into the system were gone.
Maybe that’s what I missed. Isn’t it open source anymore?
That would be really bad.
Isn’t it open source anymore?
🔫🧑🚀
Never has been.
It’s the ui they’re talking about.
There’s Nemo that’s most like the project and is completely FOSS.
Still… that’s bad…
Better than nothing, but bad.
But if it’s the only viable alternative, I would still invest on them. Idealism might just result in us having nothing.
It’s partly open-source.
Well most of it is open source. And opening all the time more. So stating it is closed source is not true
The f in FOSS stands for free. Optional donations are one thing, but this is the first I hear of mandatory payment for updates, and I stand vehement against it. There are alternative Linux phone OSs like Ubuntu Touch, or PostmarketOS, no need to use a ‘Linux’ less free than Android.
1- being open source. Yeah that’s required. I have to check on that. They were open source last I checked.
2- free as in freedom, not free beer. Like I said before, if Linux relied only on donations of its users it would have never turned into what it is. It was company investements.
How can a project like Sailfish get the support it needs when even Microsoft failed, that’s a big question. But I doubt it will be with donations. I really don’t know, but I’m sure it will need a lot of money.
And as far as I know the alternatives are not really usable. So until/if they are, then they are not comparable to Android.
Requiring payment excludes those that require the software most but can’t afford it. Ideally there should be some kind of sponsorship system where people that can afford it buy an additional free license for other users. Software scales extremely well, so the cost should be negligible.
That’s a good point. But until it becomes like desktop Linux they will need money, lots of it. Without it it won’t be an option for people, rich or poor.
But I can’t imagine a company, no matter how nice, that will lower the prices once it doesn’t need it anymore. So yeah, you raise a good issue. I don’t know the solution. Your suggestion is a good one, though unlikely to work for the same reason. Most people are not that nice.
Still most of it open source and they are gradually opening even more. I cant see it opening completely and I think it is better that way. I don’t believe either that without business incentive we will ever get as polished alternative as android/ios
No mandatory subscriptions with SailfishOS. That was dropped before ever anybody was changed
Sailfish definitely has the nicest ui and gestures and they have addressed the connectivity bugs so it’s a bit closer to prime time.
It’s one contender. We’ll see where like-minded people flock to reactively when the hammer drops.
When it was a new thing, I was open to it, but since then same as other, open source portions makes it less appealing to me. Also I’m not clear on how easy it is to dock it and run regular desktop applications on it. To me that’s the second most important part of a Linux phone. Most important is how open source the operating system is. Second is interoperability with the common linux ecosystem of applciations
Yeah, the first one is the most important. The second is awesome, but personally I would say being usable as a phone is maybe as important as being open source, if the options are having a fully open source software, but not usable, or mostly open source but usable as a phone.
Though I’m kind of not sure. It kind of really needed to be both; usable and fully open source…
I forgot about the phone part, lol. Ya that’s the most important part. That should be stable especially voice and data. I’d really prefer if people migrated to matrix chats instead of carrier based sms/rcs
And camera and GPS. If it’s just voice and text we could use a dumb phone.
And then they could bundle with matrix and become common place. Like apple users think face chat (or whatever the name) is the name for video call, since it’s part of the phone and they never used anything else.
But that’s kind of day dreaming…
Just bought a Jolla C2, as you can see it is in high demand right now https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone
First impressions:
- UI in Sailfish OS is okay. Takes a bit getting used to, but it is clear that they want this to be noob-friendly - you don’t get lost in endless settings menus and advanced options, for example. The navigation itself is neat and tidy.
- A weird UX-decision is to rely on gestures even when there are acres of available real estate on the screen for a simple button. The Clock/timer-app for example.
- Keet (my main messaging app) works! Messages, file sharing, calls, etc, works as expected. Only thing missing is notifications. Trying to fiddle w microg, but it’s a lot of steps.
- All in all, looking promising so far
I hated gestures in Android, but for some reason the gestures in Sailfish really seem intuitive. I just wish it wasn’t so limited in other ways.
Seems similar to how it used to be many years ago. I don’t like gestures in any software, but I remember not disliking it that much with Sailfish.
How is the camera, GPS and general power of the phone? It seems very low budget, specially for the price. But I understand we have to pay extra for the freedom. I just worry if it’s really manageable for nowadays. It seems as bad as my very old Xperia I tried with Sailfish.
I would probably get one of the newer compatible Xperias instead. But it would be better getting something directly from them.
They don’t sell outside oe Europe.
Maybe not the phone, but the system I think they do. And the Xperia is a better option to install it anyway.
I’m in Australia and had no trouble buying it and installing on an old Xperia.
