Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Maybe, maybe not. Currently reflecting on the past.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Yeah, maybe I should try one of those at some point.


I guess I should admit that at some point between the N9 and the early Jolla days I gave up on the "phone as mobile computer" thing and eventually bought a MS Surface (the x86 unlocked one) which runs Gentoo quite well.

Half of the reason is that I was completely tired of having to rebuild everything on the phone. Not only different architecture, but different distro, different packaging system, different API versions, ...

With an x86 laptop, I just run the same kernel and user space I run on the rest of my computers. The amount of time saved is a godsend. You still cannot do this on ARM because, I guess, everyone is an idiot and they are very happy with the status quo.

In addition, physical pooooooooooooorts.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Sadly this would work with jolla tablet too in worst case scenario (assuming with store down enabling developer mode still works, on phone it needs to call home to some repos to download fingerterm etc, one should still be able to install fingerterm rpm manually and modify access rights I hope)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Still has a different distro, packaging system, etc. and most probably I wouldn't be able to use the same kernel and user space I use on my other computers (binary blobs, gfx, etc.).

It's one of the reasons I still prefer if ... Sailfish Tablet was something I could install on top of Gentoo or any other normal Linux distribution.

I'm aware of the many reasons this is not feasible. It's just a wish.

I still remember the GPE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPE days and how I basically used the "in-device" GPE calendar itself on my desktop after being annoyed by non-existent sync support...

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

You can always install win10 on it, don't fret ;) SailSurface 2.0 (or not? it's x86 so should be possible, right? then VM into gentoo image and voila)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

I think disruption could only occur through a revolutionary form factor or revolutionary functionality. The most likely avenue to chase in this area is the Internet Of Things; controlling and talking to things around you. But even that is getting fairly saturated.

In my fictional world, people didn't try to rewrite X Server with Wayland and Mir and SurfaceFlinger, they optimised X and compiz and made it modular, so it maintained all of it's cross-platform, cross-network robustness, but also became incredibly fast and beautiful, able to scale from smartwatch displays to vast walls of connected display grids.

And nobody made a Linux kernel fork (Android, grrrr) that fragmented the hardware market for 8 years (so far).

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

No sense in commenting above.

What you are writing is not true - you can buy Tizen smartwatches in USA and Europe. Regarding the smartphones (probably that's what you had on mind) - Samsung Z3 will be launched in 11 European countries (btw. Russia is also in Europe if you haven't noticed yet).

Ubuntu Touch is not a failure, it steadily develops, step by step and devices in 2016 will have the long awaited convergence. They don't have financial troubles or employeers leaving en masse.

When it comes to smartphones, first Tizen product - Samsung Z1 was targeted at low-end, it was not meant to compete with top Galaxy models.

I'll give you an example of a much smaller team, consisting of 39 people that weren't the "best & brightest former Nokia/Meego employees" and achieved a lot.

Meet Fairphone:
https://www.fairphone.com/about/

Clear goal, good communications with community, real transparency, humble approach and not having so much funding as Jolla had (read the figures in the Fairphone factsheet PDF).

Result:
60,000 phones sold

How many phones Jolla sold? 25,000-30,000? We don't know because of the so called Jolla "transparency" and "openness".

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Optimising the mess that is X is just as viable option to me as 'providing OS for all the abandoned HW', if this was a one weekend excercise, sure. Whole Jolla team worked for over a year to stabilise their own Jolla phone. Libhybris as revolutionary as it is, is brought down by the fact chinese manufacturers develop drivers only until it miraculously works for this specific configuration. With open drivers the latter at least would be a possibility (which could happen with tablet?)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Fairphone is a piece of hardware. Jolla is hardware AND software. Nobody from Fairphone team did following:

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Well I know there are people who do not like libhybris as the manufactures then feel they have no reason to write drivers for glibc and they are closed and we cannot modify or update them. people like this:
""Things took a wrong turn a while back though. In an effort to create a
stopgap solution, Jolla developer Munk created libhybris, a wrapper
library which allows the usage of android drivers on top of glibc, and
thus on a normal linux installation. I find this hack pretty dangerous,
as it makes all vendors complacent, and it cements the android way of
working and the it makes binary drivers the default. Our biggest open
source hopes for mobile; Sailfish, Firefox-OS and Ubuntu-Phone Mir
readily embraced this way of working." http://www.osnews.com/thread?595445

However what could we realistically do without it? Can the community reverse engineer drivers and write them? Maybe but I haven't seen that completed on my N900 yet so I find it unlikely before the hardware becomes very outdated and people lose interest. Manufacturers won't do it unless there is marketshare and $$ IMHO.
I want open drivers but I am very thankful for Stskeep's work that allows us to have a chance at alternative systems on more hardware, I don't see another way.