Comment by ho_schi
4 months ago
SailfishOS and the Jolla One were good (awesome usability) But the integration of Android was a horribly failure. It is like WINE, half working applications preventing native ports of quality. I left the boat.
After that Jolla failed with the tablet. Then they didn’t deliver a successor device for Jolla One and provided SailfishOS only as aftermarket OS. You remember the Android problem from above? The hardware of others, without official support? That is calling for problems.
And to make everything worse Jolla started a cooperation with Russia in 2015. According to Wikipedia they quit it in 2021.
Hint about compatibility and APIs
Never try to be compatible to an environment which doesn’t want to maintain interoperability with you.
Funny. This is the opposite of what https://blog.hiler.eu/win32-the-only-stable-abi/ states :D
And there's a lot going on with Proton and the Steam Deck, so I don't think this is a valid argument.
Why games on Windows ship their own C++ Redistributable? Well, the same problem. And for the very same reason macOS app bundles come with a lot libraries and we still see a lot updates after every macOS release.
A lot of known issues can be avoided with more experience and cooperation before changes happen.
Before anybody mentions Proton. Because always somebody mentions Proton?
Proton is WINE. But maintained by Valve. Which requires a lot resources of Valve (not of the users). But the key is Steam! Valve is controlling the Steam store.
It is still bad and Valve shall press hard on native ports (e.g. Linux only Steam Awards). Reducing the long term workload for Valve. WINE is not a solution and remains a workaround. That is why we use Inkscape and not Adobe.
PS: Remember when Apple dropped iOS 32-Bit? And PPC? And the classic APIs? Microsoft is trying to remain bug compatible. The problem? They’re bug compatible! My thinking is similar to Torvalds, Linux, GNU (GLIBC/GLIBC++, Systemd and Wayland shall strive for compatibility when possible. Users love compatibility. Programmers love compatibility. But it is hard work. It becomes difficult when security implications are involved. As long only re-compilation is need for compatibility I’m fine. When we need to adapt code I’m getting unhappy.
Sure, guess what is the most durable and long lasting ABI on Linux? Win32 via WINE.
> native ports
Native ports have huge problems as well. Most of them are hardly maintained and stop working years down the road.
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Proton is based on Wine and is a major factor behind the success of Steamdeck and SteamOS.
Also Sailfish OS Android emulation is quite good, good or even the best one I used on the Android emulation front.
See the other comment. Because I knew somebody will mention Proton. Because always someone mentions Proton :)
PS: I'm rather sure Jolla never emulated Android.
Does anyone know if Jolla ever published the full source-code? The promised back in 2013.
There are plans now in 2025 to work on this slowly. A few apps have recently been opened up. More are coming. So it is underway.
In 2015 Jolla were bought by Russian owners. They didn't understand open source or free software, they just wanted something for the Russian market.
In 2021 these ties were broken, but it took a long time since the Russian owners didn't respond in any way. It is only two years or there about that they are on their own feet again. They are still severely understaffed.
The OS was 'licensed' to a Russian distro as AuroraOS , not sold.Its still belongs the Finnish company.Note , that was their biggest install base and revenue source they cut themselves off from.
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Don't know 100% sure. But would dare to claim most UI apps are still closed source. All the basic libraries and probably most daemons are open source. In the HW adaptation it looks bad again, but there Sailfish is not to blame.
They've been opening up bit by bit. First stuff like 'jolla-weather', recently, the notes app and numerous bits in the backend ... Currently sync for nextcloud system integration is in the works.
Jolla made a lot of promises over the years....
Not openly published but they will send it to you on request.
The android support improved a lot such that all the apps I used worked there.
Thanks. Jolla stopped porting newer Android APIs to the Jolla One early. Which rendered the Android support quickly useless.
The Android environment is completely different now. The old one stopped at 4.4 for many years. The new one is version 13. Problem was the kernel. Not something Sailfish as a small company could really control.