Apparently Sailfish is using libhybris.
I looked at the libhybris page and a few other sources, but am unsure how much of Android is implied when using libhybris. Random person on Internet claimed it is a minimal, but complete, Android user space install, but my reading of the libhybris page doesn't seem to imply that. The libhybris page does imply some of Android user space. A (probably out of date) Android kernel with all the OOT binary blob drivers Android is famous for, seems like it would also be a requirement.
Am I misunderstanding how bad this is? Or, is Sailfish rather than being a real alternative to Android just helping to entrench the terrible situation with Android Linux kernels?
'world domination' not possible with "Sorry not available in your country".
I have worked Sailfish before, so I know what to expect. while a great OS, it is hard to compete with the established market. even the inclusion of libhybris won't change that... as in that case, why not just buy an Android device. unfortunately privacy is a niche to tailor to
I wish it was feasible to have alternative mobile systems, but it's not really.
You can't simply give up every popular app for a system nobody else uses or develops for.
Sailfish has Android emulation, but good luck running banking apps without Google SafetyNet. Even pure Android ROMs, like LineageOS, can't do that.
Also good luck with proprietary firmware for mobile networking and cameras. Another thing that usually holds back AOSP distributions, and will likely be even worse in a non-Android system.
Today sure, it just needs support from a major player. Not -that- long ago, nearly every mfg had their own OS(Blackberry, Meego/Symbian, Win Mobile, Palm, etc) and each had enough apps.
If Samsung or Huawei or probably even Motorola decided to ditch Android and go all in on Sailfish, we'd see support for apps in short order. But as a third party OS you have to install yourself, it's basically dead in the water.
What BlackBerry did before giving up was a smart approach, they basically just converted Android apps to BlackBerry ones for you. And that'd be a fast way to get bootstrapped. They just didn't have enough steam left in them, sadly.
BlackBerry was a huge player. They declined, as with Nokia, entirely because they didn’t use a platform
But for an old phone a very open and developer friendly environment (Linux like maybe) is attractive. Sadly those available are limited to more modern phones, which is I think a mistake. Maybe the answer is a side loaded application with a ridiculous amount of permissions?
> good luck running banking apps without Google SafetyNet.
Doesn't most banks have a mobile version of their website. Maybe not the best but it could be a good compromise.
Most banks here in Europe require Mobile apps to login into their website.
So the EU attempts to invade your privacy using smartphones [1] and forces duopoly-brand smartphones upon its citizens, yet it fails to compel Apple to allow true sideloading, so you're stuck choosing between "no freedom but some privacy" or "no privacy but some freedom"? Their digital policy initiatives overall seem like a net loss for EU citizens as it stands.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/19/24181214/eu-chat-control
As far as I have evidence, that is not true in Germany. I have accounts with three banks, and all of them can be managed with SMS 2FA and web access.
If you want to go in and do the basics (check balance, do a normal transfer, look at activity) this can get you by. A lot of the more useful features tend to be app only though. E.g. "scan to deposit check" is an app only item for my bank.
You got a cheque? How quaint. I haven't used one in almost 2 decades. (Australia) in fact when telstra refunded me $2.50 by cheque I simply threw it away.
This has to be a predominantly American problem, right?
I cannot imagine a cohort of Australian, Asian, New Zealand, British and European continental users noping out of an app because not cheque enabled.
I can do that sort of thing from the Ally website. Which is good, because Google is actively killing off support for devices more than a few years old, and I can't run most new apps on my phone, banking or otherwise (old apps are hit-or-miss, but the practice of forcing updates to the latest version poisons most of them).
Here in Europe you cannot login to bank websites without the bank app on your phone for 2FA codes
Where in Europe? Everywhere on the continent? Certainly not in Sweden where I live. The major banks here use 2FA but not mandated to a mobile app.
Not in Poland either. Pretty much every bank has also SMS 2FA available.
Why don't they use a third party authenticator instead?
See also from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41754074
Does anyone use or have feedback on Sailfish?
I use it since 2014, 10 years and counting. I used the first Jolla 1, which was a lovely device, with a very dim screen :) It uses Wayland, Pulseaudio and Qt. I also used it on a Sony Xperia XA2, and since recently am on a Sony Xperia 10 III.
The Android App support is good, I use Whatsapp and Signal with it, also Firefox and DuckDuckGo browser. Just keep in mind that the Android App support is to get a few apps running that are important to you. Choosing Sailfish also means choosing mostly native apps. The system browser is built on the Firefox engine. SSH support is lovely though. It feels just like desktop Linux.
Don't expect a super slick experience. Companies like Apple and Google are pooring billions into their mobile OS. A small comapny like Jolla cannot keep up with that. Also the Android drivers are as is, the Jolla developers cannot improve on them.
Edit: by the way, it uses Firejail to have apps locked into their own jail.
I owned Jolla and Jolla C phones, that were made by the developers of Sailfish OS, until I got tired of swimming against the tide and switched to Android.
At the time it was very close to desktop GNU/linux OSes: software in rpm packages, wayland, pulse audio, easy SSH to device. It was easy. I still find myself confused when using Android, Sailfish OS was easy.
Not great, not terrible. The android support is hit and miss and the official store is mostly full of junk. Their SDK is rudimentary and there is close to no documentation. After they signed a deal with the russian state I gave up on them. I am on Plasma now which has an overall better experience.
Do you use Plasma on a phone or tablet? If phone, can you say which hardware platform and how "well" it works as an actual phone, making calls, texting, etc?
IMHO it's good enough for daily usage if your needs are not very sophisticated and you are willing to deal with some rough edges.
It has some fantastic native & open indie applications, see https://openrepos.net.
If it managed to attract some extra users and gain a critical mass, it could become a credible (niche) alternative. It's nearly there.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41755272
Part of this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41754074 [We need a real GNU/Linux (not Android) smartphone ecosystem]
I've used it for several years and the feedback from a user point of view is not positive. My sample size includes me and several members of my family who used Sony Xperia devices running SailfishOS for several years.
The Sailfish guys for some odd reason decide to invent their own "user interactions" where you click-slide ("one handed") to do certain opertaions. This makes the UI not only awkward, but NOT intuitive. You don't know what your options are until you perform this strange operation. I get why they did this, it was a way to potentially reduce swiping, etc but now that we have phones with big screens, you can actually put those options in one UI.
Further, basic things like composing a text and attaching a photo requires a round-trip to the photo app where you 'tag' the images you want ONE BY ONE rather than being able to do this inline from the SMS/MMS application. I think this has gotten better recently but for a long time it was SUPER awkward.
Two other perplexing points was how SLOW the UI felt for what should have been compiled Qt code and poor battery life on the older Xperia devices. Maybe they're using QML and it's not compiled?
The Sailfish guys have what I think is an ugly looking UI as well.
They've "dithered" certain parts of the UI so it really looks like old-school EGA/CGA graphics, even though the display is high-DPI and they have what's effectively a TUI style interface.
The only people I know who "LOVE" or claim "it's the best" UI are the same ones who LOVE Zune and Windows Phone UIs which are basically flat UI, almost monocolor nearly TUI type which is what you see pieces of in Win10 as well. Personally I dislike this UI and so do many people I know, there's a reason why UIs have icons and ideally text labels. TUIs have their place but so do GUIs.
If the Sailfish guys abandoned their weird UI ideas and frankly made it more like iOS or Android (I know, so boring, we have to re-invent the wheel just because...) it would actually be compelling.
On the very very plus side of Sailfish, as someone else pointed out, it's basically a GNU/Linux device that uses RPMs. I was able to install dnsmasq, set up DNS based adblock filtering, curate firewall rules and basically harden the device. You could SSH into the device via USB without adb stupidity and once I set it up, it stayed working until the VOLTE switch-over occured.
I think Ubuntu Touch has a better "UI" (I've also run this) but the Ubuntu guys have basically been ignoring VOLTE and since all major US carriers have switched over to VOLTE, your phone basically can't really make calls now on Ubuntu Touch (but that's OK, they've improved a bunch of other stuff! /sarcasm off).
Ubuntu Touch (not that you asked) is also a LOT slower than it should be and because the Ubuntu Touch guys are pursuing an 'Over the Air' update model, since the OS can basically be overwritten, applications aren't actually unpacked at install time but dynamically at run time. On a desktop this is OK but on a phone it leads to very slow app loading times.
I have high hopes for the current batch of Linux phone projects, Mobian, postmarketOS, etc but sadly I'm on Android until these are fully solidified.
Funny, I used the Nokia N9 back in the days and the UI of (what was called Meego back the IIRC) was head and shoulders above everyone else. I believe the they were the first to have general gesture navigation so your comment about reinventing the UI is somewhat off the mark. Android implemented things after them, it's sort of like the argument that unix terminals should adopted ctrl-C for copy because it's the "standard".
I actually bought a Sony Xperia 10 and sail fish because I wanted the UI back so bad, but unfortunately I have some apps which didn't seem to work with android emulation (mainly banking...)
I am not saying the gestures in Android and iOS (app switching, etc) are actually the value add, but in fact things like toggles for options, or a "=" where the options are available to turn on/off. Sailfish forces gestures for things inside an application as well.
No doubt Meego innovated on ideas, but just because they came up with something doesn't make it "good" and just because Apple/Google copied it doesn't prove the validity of the idea.
To that point I would prefer we used more screen real estate (Android, iOS, whatever) and REDUCED the usage of gestures, it would end up being faster. It sometimes takes me multiple attempts to swipe from the bottom on a Android/iOS to get it to do something because I have a screen protector and/or case and the way I'm interacting the with the device is different than the developers who might have worked with a "nude" device.
The screen protector/case issue made UI navigation even worse on Sailfish devices because you had to use this gesture inside a program, not just to switch between applications.
Ubuntu Touch also has a swipe, but from the side where a screen protector is slightly less likely to affect it's ability to register the gesture.
By far the best mobile OS, way better than iOS or Android (simpler and more consistent).
The biggest obstacle to greater adoption is the lack of availability outside of the EU; of course, this is easy to work around...
It has a 'killer feature': Android App Support (https://jolla.com/appsupport), which enables a SFOS device to run Android apps in a sandbox.
I would also love to see a carefully engineered photo app...
Na thanks no closed source "near scam" OS/Company for me.
Well, I think you ought to write more than that... Enlighten us!
I am skeptical too, but the company is Finnish. Anybody know more about them?
Edit: looks like a non-free OS indeed. The developer tools just seem to include an SDK. It's a pass for me.
For those curious, it's a continuation from where Nokia left with their Linux efforts, that's the roots in a nutshell. They did ship a smartphone with their own hardware in 2013. I still have it in my drawer.
Definitely ambitious, and an achievement, for a small company tackle OS, hardware, dev experience, everything.
I had a Nokia N9, their second attempt at Meego/Maemo, to this date it's the weirdest consumer device I've ever owned. The device shipped with a front camera but it was not accessible through any default app. The closest I got to it working was a mirror app someone made in a Hackathon.
Issues aside it was a beautifully designed device, you could see real innovation. Unfortunately Nokia killed it before it even shipped.
fwiw I was working at Nokia R&D when Elop trojan horsed us, Jolla (and sailfishOS) was the result of people making MeeGO jumping ship.
I don’t know if it’s the same now, because 12 years or more of fighting the duopoly with no cash to speak of in comparison must have meant selling your soul somewhat, but I doubt it’s the intent to do anything shady.
Android (in popular use) tends to have a lot of closed source bits, though I agree that it should be entirely open source. I would guess that not having it straight FOSS is more a function of financials and headcount to be good stewards than it is of ill-intent.
What's the significance of the company being Finnish?
> Sailfish Mobile OS
> Available for supported Sony Xperia™ devices.
So not very useful for other devices. /s
There's a 70p document (available at: https://docs.sailfishos.org/Develop/HADK/) that details how to port Sailfish to any Android device. From a skim, seems straightforward and not harder than building an Android ROM. Could maybe be outdated in some parts, since even if says last updated 2023, mentioned Android versions are from 2021.