Android Enshittification process -> Let's promote Sailfish OS

General
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There has been a lot of news recently about the confirmation of the enshittification of Android. It’s becoming increasingly visible. Why not take this as an opportunity to promote Sailfish and encourage Android developers and FOSS enthusiasts to get on board?

Please be constructive. We all know about the issues with Qt and the browser. The aim of this topic is to brainstorm together and find new ways to improve our beloved OS. :slight_smile:

How to double new user in one year

  • Update Web engine
    • Perhaps, by updating compositor to use the same version as PostmarketOS?
  • Ease installations from Apps | LinuxPhoneApps.org
  • Create a new showcase, for instance hello.sailfishos.org
  • Remove traces from Google
    • NTP
  • Define what kind of user should we attract
  • Define paper cut bugs
    • How to provide more logs
    • How can the community speed up the fix?
    • Fix them
  • Speak about Sailfish on technical newspaper (LinuxFR, next.ink, etc.)
  • Install party
  • List realistic new features
    • What do you miss? Only features that impact the community and on which various users will agree

How to double new devs in 6 month

  • Update official website, last post is from 2018
    • Personally, I would hide the blog post
  • Allow paid apps
  • Android Translation Layer on Community Ports
  • [Jolla Store] Be less restrictive when uploading apps. See this post
  • Organize Hackathon
  • Promote Sailfish in Technical Universities (giving free material, create lessons for teacher)
  • Qt update
  • Open-sourcing more components
  • Newer dev tools
    • Slint
    • GTK? Or perhaps port Silica to GTK (I’m not sure if it’s doable or technically even possible)
  • Collaborate with other project (Ubuntu Touch, PostmarketOS, Thunderbird, Maemo Leste etc.)
    • MicroG
  • Leave GitHub

Paper Cut

Let’s priorise and focus bugs in open-source components

Clock app cannot be opened in tutorial / Stuck with the introductory tutorial

Accounts

Call

Browser

  • Update the web engine

Calendar

Bug name Bug Report Tracked ? Priority (justify in comments) What do to fix it ?
Unable to set random password Link1 Yes

Android AppSupport

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Great post and 100% support this! To attract new users at least the knowledge that SFOS exists needs to be increased. I found about SailfishOS from r/BuyFromEU subreddit which would be good place to market if(/hopefully when) Jolla launches next gen phone with better HW.

Also up to date wiki with clear information about known bugs or missing features would be helpful (but don’t know who would keep that list up to date). Also it has felt that most common question with SFOS have been regarding usability of banking and ID apps. Complete list with all reported android apps working / not working would be easiest way to provide this information. The current post about banking apps is great but could be expanded, even maybe added to some “Often asked” section. Again, don’t know who could keep the list up to date.

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Good that you’re speaking up about it. I think some users forget that the documentation is open to pull requests. Each file has a link where you can suggest modifications.

For instance, I started this document to list all community ports. It would be awesome to merge it into the official documentation.

EDIT: Feel free to improve it :wink:

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I’m wondering whether Exchange bugs should be fixed. Even Thunderbird has developed a module to configure Exchange accounts. As many users can’t choose their professional provider, I don’t think it would be a bad idea to improve the reliability of Gmail and Exchange.

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Maybe could be added to the “how to get new users” -section: next gen official Jolla phone with much better HW?

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I had one suggestion that would ease the development process and probably attract more devs to Sailfish, especially if Qt wouldn’t be updated soon.

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Ah if I am correct native browser uses google as a search engine without possibility to change that? That could be added under the browser: Possibility to choose used search engine

Edit: I stand corrected and this is not the case. It is possible to change the search engine, but it is a little bit non intuitive.

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It’s possible. But not totally intuitive. You need to visit your alternative search web page and then you can add it. There is also a file system way of doing that.

But I agree it kinda sucks as of now.

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To be fair it has some options predefined

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Rust - the ungifted thing still being in development, pushed mainly by political biggots?!

10x, but no 10x.

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What is Rust, please? Never heard about it.

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Rust is a modern systems programming language designed to be:

  • Safe: It prevents common bugs like null pointer dereferencing and data races at compile time.

  • Fast: It offers performance comparable to C and C++.

  • Concurrent: It makes writing multithreaded code easier and safer.

  • Memory-efficient: It uses a unique ownership model to manage memory without a garbage collector.

:wrench: Key Features of Rust

  • Ownership and Borrowing: Rust’s memory safety is enforced through a system of ownership with strict rules about how data is accessed and modified.

  • Zero-cost Abstractions: High-level features like iterators and pattern matching compile down to efficient machine code.

  • Strong Type System: Helps catch bugs at compile time.

  • Tooling: Comes with cargo (package manager and build tool), rustfmt (code formatter), and clippy (linter).

  • Cross-platform: Works on Windows, macOS, Linux, and embedded systems.

*Answer by AI

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Yeah, this would totally negate any plus sides of it.

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There was once already a thread for paper cuts, no time to search for it now.
Here or in together…

and yes the real thread was in together.jolla..

maybe worth copying

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That is not true, and AFAIK has never been the case.
What could be changed is to add Search engine selection to the First Use Wizard.

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While your initial assessment is definitely true, your “Why not …?”-question can be easily answered: Because SailfishOS is an proprietary Operating System and Jolla has never defined a strategy to open-source all basic components. Consequently every serious OSS developer will or should avoid SailfishOS, because it is fully dead in the moment Jolla becomes bankrupt (and nobody can revive it, except for a buyer of the remaining assets), which they were close to already 3 or 4 times and they appear to be close, again.

BTW, open-sourcing all basic SailfishOS components will alleviate most aspects of the licensing issues with Qt ≥ 5.7, AFAICS.

Please be constructive. We all know about the issues with Qt and the browser.

So you are proposing to all to adapt Jolla’s “strategy” to handle this:
“Ignore that these are SailfishOS’ biggest issues and refuse to discuss them.”
Well, this does not resolve any of these pressing issues, actually it prevents them from becoming ever addressed, actually quite successfully so for many, many years and counting.

Ultimately, everybody you lure into SailfishOS by false pretences (especially developers), will leave as soon they find out.

Thus, to “be[come] constructive”, these three issues (turning Jolla’s own proprietary components into OSS, update Qt to at least 5.15 and the next round of Firefox / Gecko updates) must be addressed first, at least strategically (i.e. by detailing a plan).

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Is there a way to replace proprietary components by FOSS components, make a Fork and set SFOS free from the blockers? Just an idea. I thought looong before asking/writing this, but now I think it’s really time…

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What will you fork if you don’t have access to the source?

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Sorry, I wanted to express: rebuild, replace, code the proprietary parts new as FOSS to get rid of the blocking licencing stuff. Sorry for my bad English!

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Probably those FOSS replacements

Isn’t this what nemomobile and glacier already do?

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