
Sailfish OS – Independent Mobile OS - rayascott
https://sailfishos.org
======
TheAceOfHearts
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/)

~~~
mixedbit
Another truly open alternative in crowdfunding stage (I really wish it will
reach its funding goal):
[https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)

~~~
tom_mellior
Wow. On the one hand, this is really cool. On the other hand, it's 600 USD for
a phone that might be delivered in a year and a half and will not be able to
run Signal.

~~~
subway
Not running Signal seems like a security feature to me. The official Signal
servers, and their stance on requiring a phone number and forbidding 3rd party
clients is absurd.

~~~
aidenn0
What's the alternative? iOS has a poor story for jabber support, _and_ the
network effects for jabber are poor; the gradual network onboarding of signal
made it easy to capture new users, but made it federation hostile.

~~~
subway
At the moment, I think Matrix is a solid contender. It's easy enough to use a
public servers like matrix.org, or riot.im, or run your own.

It's far from a perfect solution, but I feel like it comes closer to the mark
than Signal.

------
pedroaraujo
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.

~~~
hd4
Yes the AOSP apps are usable, but the way Google has withdrawn development of
them so that the proprietary versions available on the Play Store have
progressed far ahead of them was not really in line with the whole Android-
being-open-source mentality.

And yes they are entitled to keep whatever they like proprietary, as long as
they stop trying to pretend they are interested in promoting an open source
mobile OS, out side of the AOSP internals. If I'm wrong and they have
contributed significantly to the AOSP apps then I take that back.

~~~
pedroaraujo
It's true that the AOSP version of the email app, for example, hasn't been in
actual development. But as long as you can replace it with a good solution,
like K9-Mail, does it really matter?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
K-9 Mail has gone years without significant updates. Last I checked it doesn't
work on newer Exchange servers and requires you enable "less secure login" to
work with Gmail.

~~~
mi100hael
"Less secure login" is just a scare tactic anyway. You're still using a
device-specific, highly-random password that's being sent over TLS to their
servers. It's at least as secure as any other IMAP/SMTP server on the
internet.

~~~
mikelward
But it's not device-specific, which is exactly what makes it less secure. If
anybody is able to sniff your password (e.g. due to initially trying to
connect without TLS accidentally) or MITM your connection or get privileged
access to your device (either locally or remotely), then they get access to
your email, even from their machines.

~~~
mi100hael
Any mail client in the wild today will support STARTTLS and won't submit any
credentials to Gmail until a TLS connection has been established. If your
connection is MITM'd and you accept the bad certificate error or your laptop
is totally pwnd, you're screwed regardless of how you're authenticating. In
those situations an attacker could still hijack sessions, exfil data, act on
your behalf, etc regardless of whether you went through their browser auth
flow with MFA.

------
jhasse
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
Check out [https://www.postmarketos.org/](https://www.postmarketos.org/)

------
claudius
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.

~~~
bilkow
The OnePlus 3T seems to be officially supported by LineageOS[1].

I'd actually trust my phone more (using the official LineageOS build) as basic
system components are FOSS (although there are some firmware blobs).

[1]
[https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/oneplus3](https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/oneplus3)

~~~
claudius
> The OnePlus 3T seems to be officially supported by LineageOS[1].

Yes, but everything I have read, anybody who tried only the official ROM had
various problems, e.g. with the camera. Hence I settled on an unofficial ROM.

But even if I used the official ROM, there is absolutely nothing on the
LineageOS website that makes me trust them. No real names, no GPG keys,
nothing. Just "The LineageOS project", a bunch of pseudonyms in the blog
entries and apparently some LLC. Even their "Legal" sub-page does not contain
anything at all.

------
H00tyMcOwlFace
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

~~~
raimue
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
Well you are comparing apples with oranges here ;)

True, good point about the testing!

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

------
nkkollaw
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
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
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...

------
bitL
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
Why do I need an alternative to Android? I can always fork an older version if
it starts to restrict free speech.

~~~
Brakenshire
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
> 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
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
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.

~~~
Brakenshire
Ah, I was trying to distinguish it from Android on the basis of 'Linux',
rather than on the basis of 'functional'. Functional was meant to contrast
with the existing state of Linux on mobile, i.e. if we could get a full Linux
userspace working well on mobile, that would be better than relying on
Android.

~~~
jhasse
Let's see what the Librem 5 comes up with ;)

~~~
Brakenshire
Yes, I'm looking at supporting that. It's a bit of a pity they seem to be
downplaying Android app support. I think they will need that to be functional
in the short/medium term. From a user's perspective, it would be good to
commit to Anbox support, but perhaps they're already biting off enough for
them to chew!

------
sgloutnikov
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
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
_> 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

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

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

------
ivan_ah
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.

------
TootsMagoon
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
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.)

------
kutkloon7
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).

------
anilakar
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
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
> 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.

------
guuz
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

------
jackvalentine
Control-F "baseband"

> no results found

~~~
bmn__
I don't understand what you want to say.

~~~
bitL
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
And what did you hope to read about the baseband processor's relationship to
the OS?

~~~
jackvalentine
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
Are we talking about binary blobs for the baseband processor?

~~~
bitL
Baseband processor on most phones can access RAM/storage/IO at will even if
the phone is "turned off".

------
James_Owens_69
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
Like this

[https://s26.postimg.org/n71r8vlex/20170719_191716.jpg](https://s26.postimg.org/n71r8vlex/20170719_191716.jpg)

~~~
lunchables
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.

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

