Not exactly an application, probably, but this is as close as a category as it gets.
Given SFOS is built atop of linux, has anyone ever made it possible to switch user interfaces like you would switch DE’s on the login screen? It would also be interesting to check out other interfaces like Lomiri or Phosh.
Sure, the obvious answer is “well you can probably fiddle around and get the packages built for your particular device” but there’s also things like reading old-ish forum posts mentioning the QT packages for SFOS are outdated compared to, say, what Plasma Mobile seems to require.
I’ve planned on getting the J2026 as a mostly toy device, and while eventually i’ll go through the tried and true rite of flashing different OS’s, it’s a bit overkill of a task just to check out how the KDE, GNOME and Lomiri guys are doing with their interfaces.
How feasible it is with how packaging/dependencies are set up on SFOS? has anyone frankensteined their install?
@piggz and @rinigus have worked on getting KDE plasma apps, a number of which are now on the QT6 branch running on SFOS. It get’s you plasma mobile apps. Yech. A number can be seen here: Show home:piggz:qt6apps - SailfishOS Open Build Service
Obviously not switching out the shell, but the apps look more of less the same on plasma mobile.
Well, that is one way of checking out the other projects as it gets without swapping the shell. And given @ApB ‘s me tion of the compositor being outdated it is probably as close as it gets! Still. Seems SFOS is flexible enough to swap bits about for testing! That is worth looking forward into
Yes, indeed. A number of people are working on different compositor approaches, as are the jolla team. The foundation work in @piggz qt6 repos is enough to test other builds with. Generally, you can adapt a package from the suse/redhat repos to compile on obs.
I assume nobody on this thread is driving for replacing the default Sailfish UI, but more about experimenting with the other options out there. And this is very much encourage as it can help in improving for example the compositor and interoperability with other environments and apps in their ecosystems.
I am going by @Keto ‘s translation below because i can’t read chinese. (Why?)
Here is a practical, if outdated example (given i dont have anything that runs SFOS yet)
Take the infamous weather app. Suppose i want to check out GNOME’s weather app for example. Or i want to learn to make a port of some current app.
It would be good to see how it works on gnome shell, and try to bring the app to sfos. Maybe check how well it integates or not with the system.
The main driving factor is to toy, experiment and see what works, what doesnt and generally try to have fun with an OS i dont (initially) plan on daily driving. And trying out other interfaces and their components is part of the fun. Your own personal frankenstain that works what you want.
For all intents and purposes, this is not possible. The user DE is system critical. You would most likely lose all comms functionality, at the very least.
However. It is - as already mentioned - perfectly possible to run apps that use a UI toolkit other than Silica.
So, DE != toolkit.
And the outdatedness of SFOS always comes up in discussions like this one. It’s not specific to the compositor, or the toolkit. We can’t compete with Android or iOS in that respect, or with a highly experimental project like PostmarketOS.
