Sailfish OS on Pyra?

[GinGordon]

I do not want to be a party crasher, but is seems that Sailfish OS on the Gemini PDA is getting a really big thing.

Some advantages of Sailfish OS on Pyra would be:

• Out-of-the-box phone support,
• Graphic acceleration,
• Linux command line,
• Optimised for a horizontal layout,
  
• Support for a limited set of Android apps, if you are in such a thing.

There are already numerous Youtube videos in several languages showing Sailfish OS in action on the Gemini PDA.

Sailfish OS on Pyra would be even better than that!
Would it be possible? Would a license be required for certain Jolla software components and at what extra cost?

 

[Caine]

I don't have any experience with Sailfish, isn't that another touch-screen heavy app swiping landscape? Why would I use that if I can have a full-fledged desktop environment?

 

[AnimatedFreak]

Well if people are using it on the Gemini and like it I could see why people would want it on the Pyra.
Sailfish OS is made for arm I'm assuming so in theory it should work as the Pyra's boot loader isn't locked down. But someone might have to make a custom image for it to support some of the specific hardware features of the Pyra. You also gotta keep in mind that the Gemini was made to support Android out of the box. So things like phone usability was in the design from the start. With the Pyra you would probably have to use a headset for example to make it viable.

 

[second exodous]

Hmm, I might try it but for me I want the Pyra for a full desktop OS. Having a mobile OS might be fun to play with but in the end I'll be using a full desktop as my main driver.

 

[GinGordon]

Hmm, I might try it but for me I want the Pyra for a full desktop OS. Having a mobile OS might be fun to play with but in the end I'll be using a full desktop as my main driver.

Each use case is different of course, but me personally, I would already be a very happy camper with vim, wyrd, ipython, ssh and mercurial-hg all in the command line.

Dual and even triple booting has been demonstrated on the Gemini PDA, so that might also be an adaptive solution to varying circumstances (e.g. on the move in a train/on a plane versus sedentary in a coffee shop).

As a matter of fact, given a stable connection, I could do everything through ssh (or mosh) on my server. I have no problem living in the command line for doing my productive stuff. For information and entertainment, there will undoubtedly be one or more browsers available on Sailfish OS.

However, this raises the following additional questions:

• What apps are available on Sailfish (standard and add-on)?
• Would it be possible to run some kind of package manager in the Sailfish command line to haul in common GNU/Linux command line packages? E.g. I have seen top running on Sailfish.

Apart from Sailfish OS, there is more MeeGo/Mer offspring that might be more open.

 

[dracmas]

The software to run Android apps it's paid from sailfish to another company. Assuming you do get their os running on the pyra it won't automatically come with Android support for their apps. That feature is when you buy a device from sailfish.

 

[second exodous]

I actually hope it is easier to boot multiple OSs on the Pyra than it was the Pandora, or at least have more options. I'm always trying out other OSs on my computers, not just distros but OSs, so being able to try other things on my Pyra would be great!

I fully support getting other OSs on the Pyra. Like I said, I'll try them all that make it on provided they aren't a huge headache to install/setup.

 

[rygD]

Swap the micro SD to use another OS.

What problems do you have trying different ones on the Pandora?

 

[second exodous]

Swap the micro SD to use another OS.

What problems do you have trying different ones on the Pandora?

Oh duh! Yeah, I knew this. I actually ran my OS off the SD card because I didn't want to wear out the NAND.

I think I'm remembering just every other OS was difficult to get running. I haven't used my Pandora for anything but playing games for so long I am out of the loop on what OSs are out there. I remember when I tried last the other OSs were difficult to install.

ARM is a lot more user friendly now than when it was when the Pandora came out though, with smartphone hacking and the Raspberry Pi and such.

 

[rygD]

It might still take a bit to get things installed on the Pyra, I don't know since I don't have one (yet).

I want to try a variety of OSs on it, but that ask depends on how easy it is to get things running on it. I can think of 5, not including distros and such, one being the one this thread is about.

Is Sailfish considered a distro, or is it its own thing?

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi all

I'm using Sailfish OS 2.2.0.29 (Mouhijoki) on my brand new (errhh, actually two years old) Sony Xperia X, and it's quite nice !

https://jolla.com/sailfishx/

Cheers, Magic Sam

 

[klapse]

Sailfish Applications https://openrepos.net/category/applications

 

[cube48]

Having Sailfish as an option on Pyra would be really cool, considering it's relatively grown-up mobile OS with phone support.

 

[Grench]

Mmm... should I be the bearer of bad news or leave the fantasy be? What the hell, I'll crush a few dreams.

Sailfish OS works on very few devices - likely fewer than your fingers on one hand (unless you're a commercial fisherman). Part of the reason for this is rolled up with creating drivers and driver wrappers for the devices.

To my understanding from haunting a few Sailfish OS places, the methodology varies depending on the system in each device. In most cases they put a wrapper/abstraction layer around an already existing Android driver to then be called by the OS. Each device and related driver (video, 3D, Audio, WiFi, cellular modem, etc...) within each device has to be addressed. This is nothing new, and to my understanding, this part of Sailfish OS is neither open source nor free.

Sailfish OS 2.0 sells for 50-60 EUR per license. I'm not sure why, but it is not available for purchase from the US at this time.

Sailfish OS has been shown working in beta on the Planet Computers Gemini. Currently it is a long long way from production quality. I.e. it will boot the device and put up a pretty desktop but very little actually functions yet. So, even on a device within their supported device plan, there is no telephony or 3D yet. Hopefully they will get that cleared up, though, because I would like to run it on my Gemini some day.

So, it is neat and I'd really like for it to come to the Pyra too. However, I suspect the odds are something akin to an icecube's chance in Death Valley.

 

[rygD]

Nuclear winter is coming.

 

[levi]

To my understanding from haunting a few Sailfish OS places, the methodology varies depending on the system in each device. In most cases they put a wrapper/abstraction layer around an already existing Android driver to then be called by the OS. Each device and related driver (video, 3D, Audio, WiFi, cellular modem, etc...) within each device has to be addressed. This is nothing new, and to my understanding, this part of Sailfish OS is neither open source nor free.

This, as you say is nothing new. Originially chip makers used to ship linux drivers for their bits and pieces, and you had to update those into whatever OS you were actually intending to use. Later on, chip makers used to ship android drivers exclusively (except for TI and perhaps a few others), and while you could see the source for them if you were making the device, you couldn't distribute that downstream or even especially widely within the company you worked for - I guess everyone had to be NDAed to the hilt.

Sailfish OS has been shown working in beta on the Planet Computers Gemini. Currently it is a long long way from production quality. I.e. it will boot the device and put up a pretty desktop but very little actually functions yet. So, even on a device within their supported device plan, there is no telephony or 3D yet. Hopefully they will get that cleared up, though, because I would like to run it on my Gemini some day.

Yes, this is a fair point and might indicate that depending on Sailfish's telephony components might be like signing up for a beating. But as a long term computer user it strikes me that getting graphics and everything else working well enough that you can even get a display manager up to log you on to a GUI is a chunk of good work, and means a surprising amount of stuff is working. Maybe none of the telephony stuff (although we're all posting out hopes in it being on one GPIO or other and amenable to Hayes modem codes), and 3D is never a given unless you're using intel graphics.