What you think about this operating software? Pretty niche still, but if its alright maybe we could take the next step and use a almost open source os?

  • ewo@lemmy.sdf.org
    2·
    3 days ago

    Late reply - I have been using SFOS as a daily driver for many years now, on a couple of Sony Xperia 10 III and before that an XA2 Ultra. Everything generally works, although I’ve had a few problems/niggles:

    • I changed the ugly “defaultuser” username over to my name using some hackery
    • Internet used to not always work with android apps (fixed)
    • IPv6/DNS data leaks when using vpn/wireguard (fixed)
    • When I plugged in iems/earbuds with a mic they would always have an annoying buzzing sound, I fixed it by setting up pacat to run as a systemd service (no idea why this worked). Funnily enough I’ve actually just reflashed SFOS today and this seems to be fixed.
    • The keyboard on OSRS doesn’t work, which is probably an issue of not having play services/microg.

    Apart from that it’s generally wonderful. The UI/native apps are miles nicer than Android or iOS, you really can’t beat Finnish UI design. It has a small but vibrant community of nerds who make apps for stuff (e.g. Whisperfish for signal or a native kdeconnect client too!) and most of the components are open source.

    For native apps I use CHUM or the Harbour, they are generally more updated than the Jolla store and sometimes have better versions (e.g. file explorer with root).

    For android I generally use f-droid and aurora store; I don’t use microg to save battery but you can if wanted/needed. Battery life is not as good as android but decent enough, it’ll last me a day of heavy use/a few of light use.

    For me the selling points are you have a phone you can ssh into, way more freedom than android/ios for actually being able to tinker with it as it’s basically just a linux machine running a derivative of fedora, and the UI rocks. Plus I trust Jolla far more than a faceless corporation intent on harvesting all your data.

    They did have some concerning things regarding Russian investment prior to the Ukrainian war but as far I am aware this has all been dealt with - they filed for bankruptcy then rebranded.

    Generally speaking, if you want a Linux phone, you won’t find a better choice really.

    If you have any questions feel free to reply/pm :)

    • edvard@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      seems great for a os thats not very popular!

      all in all, what would you rate it against android? every app works on adroid right, so its a bit weird to go from there haha.

      • ewo@lemmy.sdf.org
        1·
        3 days ago

        I like it far more than android mainly for the UI. It’s pretty consistent whereas Android seems to change every version. You get very used to the swiping to hide apps/go back to desktop/close stuff etc and it feels pretty natural rather than having to click that button to show all windows like you usually do in android.

        For what it’s worth I don’t generally have any problems with android apps on SFOS and their implementation is pretty solid - It’s basically using LXC (Linux containers) to run the Android apps. It’s also pretty seamless compared to something like Waydroid (Although I can’t comment, I haven’t tried that too much).

        I wouldn’t really be able to give a 1/10 per se but I ditched android a while back and don’t think I’ll be returning, if Jolla goes tits up then I would most likely be looking at another Linux phone, maybe Pinephone or something running PostmarketOS.

        I think it’s good to view it as Android is something very established with a colossal dev team/manpower whereas something like SFOS or any Linux phone is more of a work-in-progress/labour of love. For that though, I would say Jolla have done an exemplary job and development is still churning along :)