Jolla Announces Sailfish X

[DrYak]

So let me get this right....
You start with a perfectly good Android phone, pay for and install a proprietary "jolla sailfish" for it, which has running [IN? ON?] it, a forked.... ANDROID, so that it can actually be, uh, USED, and then what? How does this make anyone's life better? What is the point?

Sailfish OS isn't a fork of Android. Sailfish OS is a full blown GNU/Linux at the core.

The only Android-ish bits are :

- the kernel. There's almost no ARM chipset that is 100% supported by vanilla upstream linux kernel (maybe a few select Qualcom chipsets, a few variant of Nvidia Tegra, and some old FreeScale - that's why purism's librem phone is going to use i.MX6 - that about the only chip with upstream kernel support)
Instead chipset manufacturer fork whatever linux kerenl happened to be in the Android version du jour and pack it with binary driver, designed for Android.
Any smartphone running Sailfish OS is stuck with whatever android linux kernel the manufacturer gave to Jolla.
Jolla uses libhybris to make that thing usable on a GNU/Linux system (e.g.: the user-space binary-only OpenGL library shipped by the manufacturer was designed to run atop of Android's boinc, libhybris make it able to be used in a standard GNU/Linux system relying on glibc instead).
Libhybris was later reused by Canonical for the exact same purpose too (make Ubuntu Touch run on a hardware with only Android binary derivers available)

- Commercial Sailfish OS installation (like the one mentionned here) also come with AlienDalvik by Myriad, which help run android apps - that optional subsystem will obviously feature bits of actual Android.

Absolutely everything else is straight standard GNU/Linux :
- it uses Wayland for a graphical server
- it uses Qt (QML with mostly Javascript) for its interface.
- Bluetooth is handled by Bluez like any other distro (well obviously not yet on this Sony Experia as bluetooth is missing. But that's what is running on Jolla 1, Jolla/Aigo/Youyota tablet, Jolla C/Aquafish Intex, etc.)
- Other standard GNU/Linux components too (openssh, bash, systemd, pulseaudio, gstreamer, etc.)

Did they at least get arm64 working right?

That's where most of the development resources went into. Making it a proper full 64bits distro.
(upcoming Sailfish OS verison 2.1.1 is the result of these efforts).

When are they going to open source SailfishOS? They are promising it for years, and there is no progress.

As far as I've read, it's still an ongoing task that hasn't completed yet.

In the meantime, because their platform is written QML+Javascript, you can actually see the code, it just doesn't come with a opensource license. Thus you can hack everything on your device, but you can't repackage your modifications.

The current stop gag measure is to publish instead patches, and have the users install them locally, instead of publishing modified packages.
(In a similar way to what was happening back with webOS, which similarly relied heavily on human-readable code - HTML and Javascript in that case).

In my personal experience you can hack pretty much everything you need or find the necessary patch over at openrepos.net.

Meanwhile, Jolla still owes me $130 in refunding their catastrophic failure of a tablet. Not even considering anything they advertise until they make good on that debacle.

Remember : it was a crowdfunding operation (gathering fund to launch a new device) not selling a device that they have in stock. Failure can happen - and did in this case.
The fact they plan to give back the funds is quite exceptional.
And they are counting on making more money (e.g.: selling product or services like this one) in order to have enough money to be able to reimburse you.

(And if you still want the tablet, you can try to get it branded under "Youyota" brand on Indiegogo - apparently someone has managed to track the original design and get enough parts inventory to be able to build additional units).
It's the same guy who is currently shipping hardware keyboard for Moto smartphones, so chance are he might realistically manage to pull the tablets to completion too.

Looking at hardware freedreno has come rather far but maybe they intend to go with Intel hardware.
Intel hardware would be easiest for Purism to pull of, but then you really need a changeable battery since you might need to change it pretty often.

For your information : Intel has pulled out of the smartphone business. The Jolla/Aigo/Youyota tablet is one of the last devices in this form factor to be powered by Atom.

There are indeed a few select Qualcom Socs that are supported by upstream vanilla kernel, but there's a big technical limitation for Purism.
They want the end user to have total and full control on their device - to always decide what's going on inside.
Whereas on most Qualcom Socs, the cell modem serves as the northbridge. Meaning that the RAM and a few other key component are in the control of a piece of software which - due to how radio licensing works - is mandatory a closed-source binary-only firmware. (i.e.: the NSA could spy on everything in your phone, simply by pushing a normal-looking OTA firmware update).

That's why the Librem smartphone will supposedly be built around Freescale i.MX 6 (or perhaps i.MX8) :
currently this old 32bit ARM soc is the only one with a full upstream kernel support (or pehaprs same support could soon come to its 64 bits brother).

All the things that run mandatory blobs are isolated : cell modem is a separate chip, that only communicate over a standard protocol and shows up as a regular device (usually cell modem tend to be USB comm port or USB Network) - same a done by OpenMoko on their FreeRunner (GTA02) hardware or by Golden Delicious on GTA04 upgrade and Pyra console.

You just flip a switch if you're afraid of what the NSA might send to it.

[OneBitUser]

Pains me that many people frequenting the site are so stupid they can't even troll properly.

Are you trolling the trolls now?

[Zucca]

Pains me that many people frequenting the site are so stupid they can't even troll properly.

Are you trolling the trolls now?

Yo dawg...