Sailfish OS 2.0 UI Now In Early Access

[llelectronics]

I made a short preview video of the UI changes in 1.1.9.28 : https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=Uh92aKp50c8

[GreatEmerald]

Neat. Looking forward to that. Now if only they also updated GStreamer so it would play non-standard sample rates right...

[89c51]

Neat. Looking forward to that. Now if only they also updated GStreamer so it would play non-standard sample rates right...

Gstreamer has been updated to 1.x i think in the new release (1.1.9.28) i think.

[varikonniemi]

I don't know what you mean by customization but you can patch the UI in case you wan't to. There are many patches available already.

Also polishing and giving you a working products costs engineering time and someone has to pay for that and make money. Why do you think most FOSS apps suck.

If you wan't the best linux phone right now get it.

Customization = open the source code and make it do what you want. You know, like i can with ubuntu phones, the best linux phones right now?

[DrYak]

but then close down the one part which is the most important for end users to allow customization

The user interface is written using QML, which is - as the name suggests - a Markup Language that describes interfaces. Most of the time, these are scripted using Javascript (or some other high level language supported by Qt Quick).
It's not compiled binaries, it's plain text files.

You can already patch the interface as of today (there's even a patch manager to facilitate the application/removal of patches ; the warehouse homebrew installer can download such patches ; and last but not least, Jolla themselves do a little bit of limited testing and give caveats regarding system upgrades vs. patches - see the recommendation they write about at each final"gold" large-scale release of updates.).
Overall, even if the interface isn't officially GPL, it's already fully patch-friendly as of today.

(This mirrors the situation that WebOS device used to be in. The whole software stack only got opensourced as of Open WebOS. But even before, back in the days of Palm/HP WebOS, pretty much the whole interface was patchable as it was written in HTML. Geeks routinely ran heavily moded UI)

[DrYak]

Customization = open the source code and make it do what you want.

The interface is written in QML which is more or less jason-ish and with javascript.
You can open it with an editor, modify it to you liking, and publish a patch.
(And there's already an ecosystem of such patches).

The only thing that you're currently restricted as of yet is publishing the modified version themselves, or incorporating them into completely foreign project (steal one of their function for your own project).
Jolla is promising to eventually remove these restriction and go to an opensource license.

You can de facto make it do what you want. The only thing missing is an official license attached to the interface.

You know, like i can with ubuntu phones, the best linux phones right now?

You mean the phone that can't currently run Android applications and thus is cruelly lacking a good Apps ecosystem ?
The one running on Mir whereas everybody else (including Sailfish OS) is either developping (desktops) or running already (Jolla) Wayland ?

Don't mistake me. I like the idea of Ubuntu phones. They are a nice addition to the choice of OS. They would be the second choice for me, long before anything else, only coming second after Sailfish OS.
(And I liked Palm/HP webOS, but that one died and probably will take time until LG decide to ressucitate it on SmartPhones - though after SmartTV, they're now using it on SmartWatch, so perhaps they are moving in the correct direction).

But I think currently Sailfish OS is a better choice as they have access to a larger Apps eco system (that's part of what killed webOS. They bet on the wrong horse : they failed to see the rising of Android and instead bet on keeping PalmOS backward compatibility) (that and stupid service providers lock-in in the US. At least both Jolla and Ubuntu are respectively European(Swedish) and releasing hardware through a European company (Bq is Spanish). So not much lock-ins.)