To me, the main reason to get a Sailfish phone is as a developer wanting Linux on the go. My point here is that there are quite a lot of Linux devs in the world. Linux has some unusual requirements because it is mainly a text-based interface (most is done in a shell). To get that to work well means that you need a decently modern phone with a fast dev-focused keyboard and landscape mode, something that does not exist. You also need good Android support to enable the phone as a daily driver. For a small company like Jolla, it seems to me that rather than try to compete against Samsung, Pixel and iPhone, no other phone company provides for the dev community and it is easily large enough to support a small company like Jolla. Making a dedicated phone for Linux developers seems like a market worth looking at.
Seems unnecessarily limiting to only target developers.
Also; i strongly disagree Linux is mostly text - itâs all up to what the user prefers.
You suggestions are almost AI-levels of vague. Please be more concrete.
Android support works amazingly well for the most part.
Agree, all Android apps I want to use, do work.
sshd, vim(and emacs), screen (and tmux), git are available.
Itâs done already.
Good raise @00prometheus,
We have been developing long time both Sailfish OS (+10 years) and AppSupport (on C2 itâs Android 13 level) together with Sailfish Community â as weâre listening you carefully. Weâll continue this journey together with you â Sailfish Community. Regarding Android apps, we had very good discussion with Marvin WiĂfeld during this yearâs FOSDEM. Marvin is the maintainer of the microG. MicroG enables you many Android apps on top the AppSupport that youâd like to have. Target is that we get the microG available on the first time use sequence (aka Startup Wizard) to ease the setup â surely we do not force it, it is your call and you will have a chance to use Sailfish OS only apps.
AppSupport enables you most of your favourite apps that are not available as native Sailfish OS apps. Like me, Iâm disconnected from Google and others on my Jolla C2. Itâs my (ours) data and my content. We are not tracking you when youâre walking / travelling / etc and using GPS for example. Weâre not collecting your data â itâs yours. Thatâs how it should be.
Sailfish OS does not have textual interface, I think you knew that and you were not referring to that, but Sailfish OS has a smooth gesture driven user interface. Once you get those gestures into your muscle memory it might be hard to go elsewhere 
. At the same time, you have complete control of your device. If you wish, you can enable developer mode and do whatever quirks you like to. Itâs your device!
I (we as Jolla) do respect our values âdo it togetherâ, âcommunityâ, ârespectâ and âloveâ and I do live & work accordingly. Letâs do it together! This community rocks â you all do!
PS. Finnish OP bank replied to me recently and they are looking into that OP bank AppSupport issue.
Cheers,
Raine from Jolla
I would not say, that SailfishOS does not have textual interface. On all other points i absolutely agree with @rainemak - For me SailfishOS brings both: Texmode UI in a Terminal and very intuitive gesture-based GUI âLipstickâ - this GUI is one of the best of its kind. Its smooth, good-looking, logical and very intuitive. Its so cool, that even Apple IOS and never Android-Versions have copied this gesturesâŚ
But this is not the only advantage of SailfishOS: As a true GNU Linux OS - it brings you all the Textmode commandline tools, which you will expect from the modern Linux OS.
Its a very flexible mobile OS. It could be used by noobs, geeks, professionals, linux-developers, or just normal people who want a system, which respects their privacy, doesnât collect and sell data etc.
Android App Support in an LXC-container is Jollaâs crown jewel. All what it needs is just a solution for connecting and disconnecting Bluetooth and NFC devices from the Linux Host-System to the Android LXC-container, where a solution is hopefully found.
Sailfish isnât for just linux developers, it is for mobile-linux devs and as already described not that text based.
Iâm no dev just wanted to reply to what @explit said about ui and gesture-based interface. Already when I was deep into sailfish I tried to use an android phone with their implemendation of gesture-ui and I failed as it was unintuitive and really garbage. Sailfish ui is something you getting a glimpse of in the matter of minutes 
People want a phone that works and is a reliable tool first and foremost. The rest is irrelevant.
Even the basics are dodgy at the moment with SFOS. So no linux dev will do it when even ie email is acting or the network dissappears from time to time.
I had been Sailfish user from day 1 (i.e. Nov 2013). Started because of privacy and Linux, but stayed also because of UI. I even bought 2 licences that I never flashed to real devices (because of different reasons).
However standard upgrade (from UI) couple of months ago failed totally and that last phone is now unusable. I did not see any reason to reflash the old hardware, but descriptions in this forum show, that new one I had pre-bought as the follow-up (Xperia 10 V) is not at all usable in full functionality and I did not want to buy C2 as another follow-up.
It is so easy to turn a user to Android. Of course I choose 100% degooglified one, but Android it is. In the first weeks I thought, that it is temporary and Xperia 10 V will be soon fully usable, but it still isnât. From that standpoint Sailfish looks like a train that is pulling away from me.
Words about community and cooperation are nice, but at the end of the day you need a working phone on modern hardware, that you do not need to plug into power outlet twice a day.
Of course I understand that developing Sailfish is always an uphill battle and it is very good that this alternative mobile OS exists (big thanks to everyone involved in the background). But facts of life may very easily turn users away and then the question is, if and when you can return.
It hasnât been a nice/easy going relationship thus far and most likely some choices (no idea if these were by the management or technical or whatever) by jolla left a bad taste in many peoples mouths.
It something that must be worked on in the future if we want to get the OS in a better state together. I feel that as much as the community wants to help there are obstacles in the way.
Seriously? You are calling me a non-human just because you donât agree with me? That is a whole new level of rude! Flagged!
Thank you for your reply. I agree that the graphical interface is core to general usage of the phone and I should have been more clear that I was talking about two sides; the daily driver and the dev side. App support and the ability to run apps (i.e. graphical interface) are of course necessary for a daily driver. However, my point is more of a stance in product and marketing, not any specific feature. I simply think that Linux devs are a large community that it might be possible to reach with a focused effort. One of those is a dev-focused keyboard. I know there have been attempts with keyboards by other parties and it is hard to do well (the memory of Planet Computers and the Astro Slide is particularly painful), but if marketed to devs I do believe there is an untapped market there. Provided you can get sufficient daily-driver stability, that is the kind of market where you can sell to companies that buy the phones for their employees. For any professional developer making code that runs on a live environment, having access to a development machine at all times is extremely valuable.
Please read again. The criticism is the vagueness and quality of the argument not anything about your person.
23 posts were merged into an existing topic: Speed up an Xperia 10 by system tweaks in the qml files
I agree. To me, SailfishOS is clearly the only really sensible Linux phone. It has full GNU tooling and lets you do everything you expect of a real computer, you can even run containers and VMs in your phone! (That is how app support works), while at the same time having that app support that makes it viable as a daily driver. So it is a really good phone to use as a development environment, unique in having both a real Linux as well as having full Android App support.
@Rainemak-Jolla
This is the first time I read such a clear and honest statement about the policy of Jolla. Itâs good to know for I realise that all my efforts to advocate for a Sailfish system for everyone have been and will be fruitless. I too value my privacy, itâs one of the reasons I am here for more than 10 years⌠But reading that Jolla and some community members do not grant the same privacy to others makes me sad. Sailfish only for a select, privileged group of people ( linux devs) , I find it a bit hard to swallow. Besides , there are many more linux users than Sailfish users. Soon my first linux laptop arrives. A good one, suitable for everyone.
That is not what I meant by my post. I also value privacy and as a developer I understand how little of it we have left. Saying that Jolla should look to the needs of developers does not in any way mean that privacy, or even app support for a daily driver should be less important. I am only pointing out that there is a large untapped market to look at, a market where no phone company has focused yet. It is smaller than the âgeneral market of all peopleâ, but that is what makes it possible to gain entry. It isnât just the largest market size you should look for, it is the largest market that you can compete well in that you should look for.
Besides, giving special attention to developers isnât going to make things worse for non-devs who just want a daily driver, on the contrary, if devs use the same features as you do in their daily activities (general Android app support), they will naturally start improving things for you as well.
I know linux enthousiasts who also want a reliable functioning phone. There are more linux fans than Sailfish users. Why donât they switch?
This is the core question to ask! There is a definite interest among developers in Sailfish, there is a built-in market pressure there. I think having a good physical keyboard would help a lot, but merely marketing can do a lot too.
I remember when the first versions of the Nokia n900 were released, they sent them out in a dev-version that was a locked black box with a USB port on it and no instructions. If you connected a serial interface to that USB port, you got a shell interface to the phone with a command that unlocked the box. That is marketing to devs!
Because they want something that works in terms of SW and better in terms of HW.