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Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

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Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#131

Post by beenBoutIT »

realusername wrote: post #87
rqs wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about another angle: Android is Open Sourced and much powerful than SailfishOS. It's much easier for their target audiences to targeting Android than their OS.

> Android is Open Sourced Only partially, the ASOP does not run on anything because of the vast amount of blobs and basic drivers missing and people are maintaining open-source reimplementation of the gapps to make even the most basic apps working.

AOSP works great on Nexus devices with zero modifications, the only real exception being apps that require location and apps where the developers chose to require having gApps installed. Get an AOSP Nexus and install the latest build of Chromium and you'll actually be using a more advanced browser than someone with gApps running stock Chrome. Nexus blobs are proprietary, but they're not missing.

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#132

Post by beenBoutIT »

BubuIIC wrote: post #123
csydas wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be dismissive of what f-droid does, but a large majority of the applications available might be generously described as a student's end-of-year project, and often are not very good. This is not to diminish what is being done, as I do appreciate the option of a wide array of OSS items decoupled from the Google eco-system, but it's nowhere near independence from Google's eco-system. I would hardly say that it's…

I strongly disagree. I never used an android phone with google services. Apart from the mentioned unique apps I never missed anything from the FOSS ecosystem. Often the free alternatives are vastly superior over their google counterparts. Also I told all my family and close friends who only grumpily got a smartphone recently to not bother with creating a google account but just install F-Droid. I only got good feedba…

This idea that F-droid apps are garbage largely stems from the time when Firefox was the only open source browser available. Objectively speaking, Firefox for Android is terrible. Newer open source Android apps like Chromium and NewPipe are actually in many ways superior to their respective Google Play counterparts, Chrome and YouTube.

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#133

Post by beenBoutIT »

padraic7a wrote: post #12
zepearl wrote: post #2

I'm using Sailfish OS on an Xperia X since when it became available. My main reason to migrate from Android was "battery life" which was confirmed (battery now lasts ~5 days instead of the usual 2-3), but the OS has a lot of small and bigger bugs (e.g. carrier selection, 2G/3G/4G priority, stuck data comm for Android apps) and missing features (notoriously: tethering/wlan access point, bluetooth) that do not currentl…

Ubports, the community fork of Ubuntu Touch is still going strong. https://ubports.com/

The website isn't throwing a 404 error, yet.

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#134

Post by maheart »

skykooler wrote: post #128
maheart wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* SMS - yes * Email - yes * Browser - yes -- the official one browser is based on [an outdated] Gecko engine. Unofficial browsers based on QtWebkit. * Maps - yes -- the official solution these days is HERE Maps (this requires Android support which is available on Jolla-supported devices). There are several other Map solutions available through OpenRepos (a popular 3rd party repository for Maemo/Meego/SailfishOS softw…

The official browser is actually Webkit based. I believe Maemo was the last OS in that lineage to use a Gecko browser (microB).

The official browser for SailfishOS is Gecko-based. The SailfishOS browser source code is FOSS, so we can see for ourselves, from https://github.com/sailfishos/sailfish-browser :

> Sailfish Browser uses Sailfish Silica Qt components for the browser chrome and gecko engine with embedlite Qt5 binding.

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#135

Post by hajile »

diminish wrote: post #109
catwell wrote: post #104

I have never really liked any of the major players. I used to run WebOS on a Pre3 for a long time. Now I have a Jolla C, but it isn't my main phone because of its poor battery life, so I also use an Android phone. The saddest thing here is those alternative OSs innovate a lot. WebOS in particular was years ahead of both iOS and Android in terms of UX (after all they had Matías Duarte on board... [1]). Sailfish is mor…

Would you say that latest WebOS has still features which are years ahead of for both current IOS/Android. I mean are there features which aren't implemented in some form in by those two mobile OSes?

Yes!

The webOS UI from 8 years ago is still way better than the latest from Android or iOS today. The apps and implementation may not have been that great from a performance perspective (even then), but the UI was/is absolutely better.

If you want a specific feature, I'd point to first-class multitasking and cards, real menus, good combination phone/tablet UI via Onyx (I'm looking at you Android), JustType, Synergy (all your services working together instead of being separate islands in your phone), gesture zone, etc.

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#137

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

progval wrote: post #93
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I don’t personally like the policies of either government, if they throw money at FOSS. Sailfish isn’t completely FOSS and the strategy of licensing it to clients like Rostelecom foresees that a lot of the OS will remain closed source.

It's still better than Android or iOS. Besides, no government will actually check the whole OS themselves, so they have to trust some company at some point.

> It's still better than Android or iOS.

How so? Jolla’s licensing system allows its clients to bundle just as much closed source, phone home software on their phones as any Android system. They can lock the bootloader, etc.

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#138

Post by skykooler »

maheart wrote: post #134
skykooler wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The official browser is actually Webkit based. I believe Maemo was the last OS in that lineage to use a Gecko browser (microB).

The official browser for SailfishOS is Gecko-based. The SailfishOS browser source code is FOSS, so we can see for ourselves, from https://github.com/sailfishos/sailfish-browser : > Sailfish Browser uses Sailfish Silica Qt components for the browser chrome and gecko engine with embedlite Qt5 binding.

Oh, huh. I suppose I was mistaken. Thanks for clarifying that!

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#139

Post by u801e »

maheart wrote: post #68
forgotmypw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the OS natively support? Does it have SMS, email, and a browser? Maps?

* SMS - yes * Email - yes * Browser - yes -- the official one browser is based on [an outdated] Gecko engine. Unofficial browsers based on QtWebkit. * Maps - yes -- the official solution these days is HERE Maps (this requires Android support which is available on Jolla-supported devices). There are several other Map solutions available through OpenRepos (a popular 3rd party repository for Maemo/Meego/SailfishOS softw…

> Maps - yes -- the official solution these days is HERE Maps (this requires Android support which is available on Jolla-supported devices).

Do they still provide offline map updates? I have a Nokia N9 and several other Symbian based Nokia phones, but there appear to be no updates to the offline map data.

Re: Jolla is the last company with an 'alternative' mobile operating system

#140

Post by BubuIIC »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #132
BubuIIC wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. I never used an android phone with google services. Apart from the mentioned unique apps I never missed anything from the FOSS ecosystem. Often the free alternatives are vastly superior over their google counterparts. Also I told all my family and close friends who only grumpily got a smartphone recently to not bother with creating a google account but just install F-Droid. I only got good feedba…

This idea that F-droid apps are garbage largely stems from the time when Firefox was the only open source browser available. Objectively speaking, Firefox for Android is terrible. Newer open source Android apps like Chromium and NewPipe are actually in many ways superior to their respective Google Play counterparts, Chrome and YouTube.

To be fair Firefox for Andorid has gotten a lot better lately as well.
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