What's so special about Sailfish? OK, I get it, it is Linux. But in what way is it better than any other Linux? If anything, I see it quite crippled compared to even its predecessor.
What's so special about Sailfish? OK, I get it, it is Linux. But in what way is it better than any other Linux? If anything, I see it quite crippled compared to even its predecessor.
Well, at the moment it's the only officially supported standard-like Linux distro on smartphone hardware. There are indeed limitations, missing stuff or outdated packages, but it's still miles ahead in "being Linux" than the nearest other contender, Android.
I would certainly not mind running Fedora on my smarpthone, but we are not there yet. Once the mobile hardware support stops being such a shitshow and some sort of standardization develops, like the one we more or less have with desktop/servers/laptops then we can hopefully have community driven distros on smartphones.
Until then I'm afraid we will need commercial entities, such as Jolla, doing all the dirty work needed to have at least some carefully selected mobile devices supported by a standard-like Linux distro.
But in what way is it better than any other Linux?
The question is :
compared to which other Linux ?
Ubuntu Touch ? Canonical has given up, leaving only UBPorts community to handle everything on their own without any company putting ressource (money/dev time) into it.
webOS ? Well, LG doesn't seem interested into anything else than using it on their smart TV and leaving luneOS community on their own. (No "webOS OpenSource editioin" doesn't count. Leaving things in open access (that were already accessible during HP's "OpenWebOS" phase anyway) won't magically start widespread use. Unless they are throwing the necessary ressources, dev time, etc.)
openmoko FreeSmartphone.Org / SHR ? Yeah speak about necromancy.
Debian ? Gentoo ? well, you can probably install them, and there's probably some "emerge phonetoo"-alike stuff to get some not very integrated semi functional phone middleware sortof working.
There are no other "full-blown GNU/Linux" OSes for smartphone on the market now, propped by sufficient ressources (dev time).
What about comparing to PureOS ? The one that comes with the dev board...
One that is based on Debian, with upstream packages and mainline linux, and Gnome and/or KDE on top.
One with a company throwing money at it, today.
What's so special about Sailfish? OK, I get it, it is Linux. But in what way is it better than any other Linux? If anything, I see it quite crippled compared to even its predecessor.
What's special about Sailfish to me, is that it hits pretty well the sweet spot at least for me. Some people value open source above all else. Some people that the they get things done with their device. Some people that they can tinker with the system as they want. Some that the UX is pretty and usable.
I value all of that with variable degrees. For example I was excited with Ubuntu Touch, and it was as much open source as could be. But it was still crippled in ways that killed my enthusiasm pretty much.
Sailfish has many closed sourced components. Yet it allows me to get things done, is pretty friendly for tinkering and "owning my device" as such. And it's quite standard Linux distribution under all of the nice UI.
So for me it's been the best. And I'd be quite surprised if this Librem phone can do better. But if it does, I'll be gladly surprised.
Once the mobile hardware support stops being such a shitshow and some sort of standardization develops, like the one we more or less have with desktop/servers/laptops then we can hopefully have community driven distros on smartphones.
Until then I'm afraid we will need commercial entities, such as Jolla, doing all the dirty work needed to have at least some carefully selected mobile devices supported by a standard-like Linux distro.
Stupid layman question: Why*is* mobile hardware support such a shitshow indeed?
I can't explain to myself why - on the one hand - you can just download one of hundreds of linux distros and install them on any old computer, and there's a pretty good chance everything will just work right out of the box (and if it doesn', there's a good chance it can be fixed in a matter of hours); while - on the other´ hand -
there's a company of skillful engineers (Jolla) making it its top priority to make this one Linux distro (Sailfish) run on this specific mobile computer (Sony Xperia X) that they have all the specs and drivers for, but they can't get it finished in a matter of six months? I just don't get it. What accounts for this incredible difference in difficulty?
Stupid layman question: Why*is* mobile hardware support such a shitshow indeed?
I can't explain to myself why - on the one hand - you can just download one of hundreds of linux distros and install them on any old computer, and there's a pretty good chance everything will just work right out of the box (and if it doesn', there's a good chance it can be fixed in a matter of hours); while - on the other´ hand -
there's a company of skillful engineers (Jolla) making it its top priority to make this one Linux distro (Sailfish) run on this specific mobile computer (Sony Xperia X) that they have all the specs and drivers for, but they can't get it finished in a matter of six months? I just don't get it. What accounts for this incredible difference in difficulty?
ARM hardware. Any of it.
Installing anything on Arm requires a reticulated process
of jumping through successive hoops in sequence.
Rube Goldberg engineering, on LSD.
Negotiating bootloader locking mechanisms
to enable (within specifically timed windows) blindly hacked
driver details that were originally created to comply
with randomly created choices in some spaghetti code factory
intended to support just about any kind of memory leak.
It is effing hopeless,
and will never quit being such.
ARM will never leave the padded rooms of the
ANDROID asylum for the crippled insane.
