Hey #FediFriends,

Has anyone tried #SailFishOS?

Any thoughts?

Just toying with the idea of getting a mini-laptop-style phone at some point, like a Gemini.

#SailFish #Jolla
#CamelCaseForAccessibility

How does using the #Jolla #JollaC2 (@jolla) with #SailfishOS for about a week as a daily driver now (with my old #iPhone at home as a backup)?

In general, it works much better than I had hoped after my experiences with other alternative #smartphone systems and it indeed is the first (and so far only) system that indeed works quite well. Also at around 285€ (https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone) it isn't too expensive, so one can simply try it out.

There are a few limitations though:

* I am really missing biometric unlocking
* There is no predictive text input, so typing could be more comfy
* The UX experience sometimes feels strange (but no no-gos for me)
* It is not a snappy and fast device
* Audio quality is so-so
* GPS really needs a GPS signal, so no WIFI-based location

What is great:

* It is a real #Linux, so it has a #terminal, #sshd, you can e.g. use the #Nix package manager etc.
* Android apps are running in a container
* You can have different users to limit data access

Unfortunately there are nearly no high-quality native apps so far and the built-in ones are very basic (e.g. email).

But: The #Android compatibility layer is very good, the system comes with #Fdroid and #AuroraStore (#Google store front-end) pre-installed, so you can easily install practically all official Android apps.

Most apps work very well, some (especially banking) apps do not though as they complain that the system is rooted, so YMMV regarding the apps you need.

In general I am really happy with this system.

And: All the de-ggoglefied Android phones like the #Volla will always still remain just that: A more limited Android. SailfishOS offers a path towards powerful native (#Qt/#QML/#Cplusplus/#Python/you name it) based apps.

I am hoping that Jolla will provide a significantly more powerful device option and that some of the problems above will be solved.

But already now, even with the limitations above, if you are somewhat technically inclined (but without the need to fiddle with a command line unlike with the open mobile Linux distributions), want to get rid of #Google or #Apple for whatever reason, want a #Linux #smartphone, support a #European company from #Finland, this phone is really usable.

I am using my @jolla #SailfishOS #Jolla #C2 phone for a few days now as my main daily driver (nearly since the day I have received it) and I need to my #iPhone only for a few things anymore (I am leaving it at home already though).

A more detailed report will come in a few days and I still might come across deal breakers, but so far: While there are a number of unexpected shortcomings, overall the experience so far was a lot better than I had expected.

This is the first #Linux based device I am testing that really seems to have the potential for a lot of people to get rid of #Google and #Apple - if they actually want.

@OpenComputeDesign @s31bz @light @admitsWrongIfProven

good feedback! i think #furiphone has support for #android apps (#waydroid iirc?) and back in the day so did #jolla / #sailfish - i think you can get those on a #sony these days

also i've run android-x86 in vm and its alright but idk what those apps are gonna try. supposedly only finance apps are allowed by google to check for a rooted phone but ... who knows https://peabee.substack.com/p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-use

Just got hit by some ads about the latest #Jolla C2. What are your feelings about it? https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone

Ratlose Gesichter bei 1&1. Meine SIM wird umgestellt und es ist unklar, ob die neue, wenn sie freigeschaltet ist, sich dann auch ins Handynetz einloggen kann. Ein Jolla C2 mit SailfishOS kannten sie nicht.
#Jolla #SailfishOs

Er der nogen her som har erfaring med

hvilken #Linuxphone kan håndtere vores elskede

#MitID #MobilePay apps .. ?

Det er tid at gå (tilbage) til #linux på #mobil - men de to apps er ligesom #cantDoWithout ...

tak!

Time to #free the #mobilephone too.

Therefore, collecting possible alternatives here,
for me and others -

and grateful for additional pointers and experiences:

Preferably #Linux, #European

Special #denmark #Danmark twist: #MitID #MobilePay apps ..

(update: on dk mastodon, i hear #MobilePay runs on #Jolla)

#sailfish #postmarketOS #Pine #purism #librem5 #liberty #jolla #linuxmobile

https://linmob.net/categories/weekly-update/

https://social.heise.de/@ktn/113922628507531163

@linmob
@postmarketOS
@jolla #sailfish
@kim_harding

Really finding the Jolla C2 a tricky beast to use day to day, lots of hanging and frozen native apps, camera locking up the moment you open it. The Android apps are a little better but still unreliable. Banking app for the Nationwide in the UK does work!

Shame as they are pushing it as a daily driver now and I have to say its not, other than for phone calls and sms.

So I guess some would argue it is meeting the basic needs of a phone but no a smartphone.

Will keep at it.....
#jolla #jollac2

Life with Sailfish OS, day 1, hour 6-12

Installed Whisperfish manually to skip the scary-looking StoreMan thing, and managed to set it up as a secondary device. Messages got passed back and forth, so with reservations, this is possible without resorting to Android compatibility.

Drive to the village to pick up a parcel, only to realize that the SMS with the pickup code is on the Android device at home. Yep, reminder to self: SMS'es don't live on the SIM card anymore. Not in a long, long time. It was a nice sideways winter-driving weather though so didn't mind the back and forth too much - not at all actually.

Discover that the integrated Nextcloud support (which appears to do calendars and contacts just fine) doesn't include automatic uploading for photos. One can manually share photos to Nextcloud, but you need to manually type the remote folder name. Apparently automating the upload is something you can script yourself if you first install SailSync from OpenRepos. Assuming you make that leap of faith, with everything it entails. And are willing to tinker with shell scripts.

It's a rather petty issue in the big picture of things but it also happens to be one of the most important features for me, outside the absolutely critical comms + banking department.

I'm sure I'll tinker more some other day, but back on Android for now. Like I concluded in an earlier toot last week or so, I think it this could be used as a daily driver but it'd require sacrifices. Life on desktop Linux is so easy these days, I've gotten a bit lazy.
Certainly a de-googled Android would be a far, far easier thing to go with.

Life with Sailfish OS, day 1, hour 2-4

Couple of important apps still missing: Signal and Discord

Discord: the proprietary chat platform with off-putting terms of services. It's not a great starting point. The reason I'm there to begin with is following Synthstrom Deluge and C64 OS development, those communities unfortunately only really exist in Discord. Discord has a web interface that works okay on desktop Firefox, but it's a no-go on a mobile browser. The Android client is this elephant class Electron app, and not something you want on top of a heavy compatibility layer on a lower end phone if you can avoid it. Plus, getting away from Android was kind of on the agenda. There's a native app called Sailcord in the Jolla store, the gotcha is that using 3rd party software for accessing Discord isn't something their terms of service exactly encourages. Apparently people have gotten banned from their Discord accounts for using such things. But, these clients wouldn't exist if everybody was getting banned, and OTOH people get banned for doing stupid things with the official client. So I guess it's fingers crossed and don't do anything stupid.

For Signal, there's an unnoficial native client called Whisperfish. Unfortunately this is not available from the Jolla store, instead it takes you down a bit of a rabbit hole: Release builds are available on OpenRepos, but to access that you need a client. Which is not available from the Jolla store either. To install, you need to download a storeman-installer package from either OpenRepos itself or their GitHub release page.

The package is an RPM package which does some rather questionable looking things in its installation scriptlets. What it appears to do is add OpenRepos to the system repository configuration and then automatically run the installer contained in the package, which turns out to be another shell-script that then refreshes the PackageKit installation service, and finally tries to install the actual Storeman software through PackageKit. I don't know the Sailfish OS ecosystem sufficiently (at all really, at this point) to judge whether all this hackery is truly necessary, just that in the desktop Linux world, that is a whole bingo line of "don't do that".

Also, the installer package is not signed. Apparently nothing on OpenRepos is. There doesn't even seem to be checksums that could be manually verified. I'm not letting an unverifiable software from the net run as root funky looking shell-scripts on a device with my banking app on it. Just no.

The whisperfish package itself seems okay, it just does a systemd user session reload in the scriptlets and doesn't run as root. It's just as unverifiable though, but maybe the repository is signed? Need to investigate that.

Signatures appear to be overlooked in this ecosystem: the official Jolla packages on the system are signed, but neither of the two Jolla keys imported in the rpm keyring actually match that. And community packages from the Jolla store don't appear to be signed at all. This is like going back to the nineties.

So that's about two hours gone and I still don't have a Signal app. I could of course go with the official Signal app, but that requires the heavy Android compatibility layer running and besides, Android.

Life with Sailfish OS, day 1, hour 1

Having gotten my banking app to run on Sailfish by downgrading to a slightly older version, starting an experiment to use Jolla C2 as a daily driver. I've spent a few evenings tinkering with this, hunting, installing and configuring necessary apps etc. What follows is random observations from the first hour after swapping the SIM over from my real daily driver (Nokia XR20) and letting the reality sink in:

Obligatory disclaimer: this is not the intended use of the C2 phone - it's a "reference phone", aimed at developers. So we need to give the hardware a break. But, as an observation, the protective cover doesn't sit properly on the button side, making the use of the main lock/unlock button annoying. It looks and feels like an ill-fitting condom, really. I might end up ditching the cover, this is not a phone I would take to the garage anyhow.

There are zero swipe options or actions for the keyboard. In fact there are zero options for configuring the keyboard at all. What I immediately miss are two things:
- moving the cursor by swiping over space bar
- number row on the keyboard, I prefer it always there
The latter is one of those tiny details that make up ones preferences, I expect to be in the minority wrt this. The former is going to be painful.

The default search engine in the Sailfish OS native browser is Google.

Let that sink in for a moment.

This is by far the biggest WTF so far, a slap in the face, really. For a phone whose raison d'etre is to be NOT FROM GOOGLE, and advertised with a privacy edge, this is a pretty terrible blunder. The default alternative search engines are just as bad, and there's no obvious way to install or configure alternatives from the browser.

Another dive into forum.sailfishos.org reveals that once you visit a search engine (such as www.quant.com), it magically appears in the search engine preferences. Which is kinda neat, but totally undiscoverable for the new user.

#jolla #sailfishos

Edit: post language to English

Selling my #Jolla #C2 #SailfishOS #Linux #phone as it is too big for me unfortunately #PleaseBoost

https://www.kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/jolla-c2-community-phone-sailfishos-/3028379041-173-3477

In case anyone doubts the credentials of the #Jolla C2 as a true Linux device (there are a few such people in the @jolla #Facebook feed ) : It's perfectly happy running the normal Linux/aarch64 binaries of @eclipseadoptium #Temurin #java #openjdk and @nodejs #NodeJS from the command line...