The most fascinating thing is how some in the open source community go wild against a tiny player delivering one of the most daily driveable phones with an OS other than from the big-tech duopoly (besides Huawei but that's another topic). It doesn't help that a system that is partially closed source (with the closed parts basically being only the home screen UI and the qt implementation) is misleadingly called "closed source OS".
Especially the frenzy within the GrapheneOS community in this regard is curious.
Why can't everyone just choose what they prefer without firing against other small alternative OS projects as if they were made by the devil?
Uh even this short stab is quite wrong. Here notes from Jolla itself for Sailfish OS 5.2
As promised, users can unlock the Jolla Phone bootloader. A corresponding menu item can now be found at the System Settings / Developer tools
Users can do factory reset from the System Settings
Users can enter the recovery mode with the volume up key + power key combination
Flashable images and fastboot will be provided (coming soon)
The initial version of the Privacy Switch was implemented. The function is end user configurable and to start with, the users can control e.g. Bluetooth, WLAN, Location and AppSupport status with the switch. Further implementations are coming and the framework is available for community contributions.
The base of Sailfish OS is a full blown Linux, way more open than Android (more options for the user, less secure than Graphene, which has that as main goal) you can easily install/compile Linux software on it.
Close source components are used. Parts of the UI (Jolla is open sourcing more and more), libhybris to run closed source Android drivers, Android App Support.
So yes its not as open source as debian, but offers more freedom to modify the OS than Graphene and gives you near full control.
It may be a private phone, but you don't really know whats going on under those proprietary blobs.
Sailfish OS is the definition of proprietary software.
You need to buy a subscription if you even want to install it on third party devices.
It's like Windows but it claims to be private and commnunity driven while not providing the source code to the entire OS. It's a little misleading to me
It may be a private phone, but you donβt really know whats going on under those proprietary blobs.
Yes thats not good, but also a problem of many common Linux distributions. If you have any linux-firmware-* packages installed on your system, they also contain similar binary blobs for the firmware. E.g. Intel or Qualcom wireless cards. But you can utilize all tools up to strace under Sailfish OS, to see what those drivers are accessing and check that they don't do anything bad. Under Graphene OS, you can not do this. (But its resonable to trust the very privacy focused developer that they have checked and tested this and isolated them as far as possible on the OS level)
Sailfish OS is the definition of proprietary software. You need to buy a subscription if you even want to install it on third party devices.
Again this is not correct. If what you claim is true, how comes that the OS is available on all these devices?.
Sailfish OS is open Source at its core and easily ported to new devices. What you can do is pay for the licensed content on official devices. That enables automatic updates and proprietary software as the MS Exchange support and the Android App Support. Though for the later you can also install Waydroid because, you know, its Linux! Paying Jolla however gives access to a more comfortable solution and support development of the platform.
Itβs like Windows
Um... no. Can you port Windows to a new device? No, its source is closed. Does Microsoft support people hacking their OS? No, Jolla has community meetings for that. Do you have full Access udner Windows? No. Does Sailfish send your data to a third party? No. Does Sailfish show you adds? No, Does it force you to use AI? No and so on and so forth.
Please don't hate on the one European company trying to do things right. Support them in making things better.
You are so wrong about many things that it seems like you have some personal anger towards it and just don't care about having a fact based based opinion. It all reads like a fanboy of something else just blurting out shit they've heard without even trying to find out if it's correct.
I do prefer a Fairphone, a Librem Phone or a PinePhone with postmarketOS though.
Install Niri or MauiShell and Waydroid to it and you have pretty much it.
But you can. Its Linux+GNU with a partially open, partially closed source UI. So you can run tracing utilities and other tools even wireshark!) to check that it values your privacy.
That statement that it is a fully closed OS from the OP is wrong.
If there's even one proprietary BLOB inserted into your open-source OS, you no longer have an open-source OS.
Pity, I really really liked the SailfishOS look&feel when I tried it briefly in 2015ish.
In that case hardware wise you are out of options. With the Librem 5 you get the closest. There you only have the CPU Microcode, Wifi and Bluetooth firmware, and the cellular modem & GNSS firmware.
Software wise you have quite a few options, albeit few are usable as daily drivers.
Android drops out because it requires hardware with proprietary HAL. You would have to rewrite huge parts of the OS so that it runs without them.
Postmarket OS is your best bet for a somewhat usable experience
Many open source systems run, but calls are difficult to setup and partly unreliable.
Pure OS should fit your goal best, Mobian second.
With a Droid 4 and Maemo Leste you can also get quite close but have no camera.
I wish there was an up to date linux phone/tablet alternative. We are kind of lucky that there is still a google alternative. The closer google gets, the worse our choices get. And with the dev speed of google and apple, it is really hard to keep up with them. Even many basics are still missing on linux or a free android.
But not everything works. One user is regularly posting updates (I think in !linuxphones@lemmy.ca) about getting all devices of their FP to work. They are making progress but it's still tedious work and if they ever lose interest or something happens to them it can be years until someone capable can pick up the torch.
Man, I just want a pocketable device with Linux on it, with cell Bluetooth wifi gps antennas that can send and receive texts, calls and data. I don't care about individual apps. If services can be reached via a browser, I'm good.
i really hope fairphone themselves picks it up. it would be incredible if fp7 (or 8, give them time) could be 100% (or close) compatible with linux out of the box. even if it required closed source blobs for like the radios or whatever. they can still ship with the option of regular android to not scare off the normies
i put postmarket on my fp5 and it runs pretty damn well. with a little more polish it absolutly could be my daily driver. it is very close.
i know its a lot to hope for, but i think faiphone is in a unique position to do this if they ever decided to.
Its pretty abysmal in the way of hardware security, and software. The gOS team did a deep dive on alternative devices to the pixel. Only device even close to the pixel was Samsung, but well... Samsung hates their consumers it seems and refuses to open their devices.
I keep hoping if I say it enough I can will it into existence but I really think that thr steam frame is going to usher in a community made phone/tablet that runs on arch and uses fex just like the steam frame does.
So many community projects poped up on github when the steam deck was released, and people been using proton in third party apps. Hell other distros have their own "steam deck" mode that just boots into big picture mode. I truely think that fex, and the work valve is putting into(or funding) arm64, is going to be more valuable than the steam frame itself. Gamehub app is already using the work valve put in with fex, and arm translation layers you can play red dead on a modern mid range pocco phone at 720p fps. And that's the exe PC version not the Netflix apk.
Me neither. Feels like a fucking psyop, accounts on social media constantly pushing a phone made by the least trustworthy, least privacy-minded company on the entire planet.
Plus ~700β¬, you can get a used foldable Pixel for that price or brand new Pixel with the option of flashing a more secure and trusted OS then Sailfish.
Why don't they at least try to strike deals with the EU telco companies. This is how many of phones started here.
You can do that but is it so strange to consider that some people out that don't want Android also don't want to stuff money into Google for hardware? Also, not everyone's priority is a hardened phone, some might just want a tinker phone with a terminal and linux environment, that also just works as a phone.
SailfishOS's underlying system and applications are open source.
Jolla has a proprietary UI and android compatibility layer they run on top of it.
The UI can be replaced with open source community ones.
Its similar to Android in its open source nature.
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