Thread: Sailfish (Jolla), Tizen and Ubuntu for Phones: Differences?
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benny1967 is offline benny1967
2013-01-07 , 11:53
Posts: 3,790 | Thanked: 5,718 times | Joined on Mar 2006 @ Vienna, Austria
#44
Originally Posted by Bernard View Post
While Jolla will most likely have a much better and polished UI than Ubuntu, I'm not convinced Jolla can get a big enough user base to create good user- and third-party-support.
While Ubuntu will most likely have a horrendous phone experience in the beginning, giving the fact that they are trying to squeeze desktop applications in a phone (very maemo style imho), Ubuntu is a very well established brand. Even if Ubuntu can't really compete from a user experience perspective at first, I think they will continue the development of Ubuntu Phone for a long time to come. I'm not convinced Jolla will have that luxury.
It will be interesting to see how easy developers can port applications between Jolla's Sailfish and Ubuntu. Yes, it's two platforms, but then both rely upon HTML and Qt/QML as developer frameworks. As usual, it's probably all about details, but if they're reasonably compatible, Sailfish could even benefit from Ubuntus user base.

I find you remarks about the UI very interesting. While I prefer Sailfish (for other reasons), I think Ubuntu did a much better job on the UI. Sailfish ist just too restricted and simple for me. Interesting to read other opinions.

Originally Posted by Bernard View Post
Tizen seems a big mess, and I don't see anyone that is willing to clean it up properly. Samsung is way to much Android oriented and I'm not convinced Samsung or Intel are even capable to fix the OS and release a good product.
Agreed. You can really smell all those suit-and-tie guys and their corporate strategies when you see Tizen.

Originally Posted by Bernard View Post
Firefox OS is intended for html-only application, so that isn't an option for me.
... as is Tizen, btw. The developer documentation mentions HTML only, no support for native third party applications.

Originally Posted by Bernard View Post
For me any linux distribution needs to have an active userbase, otherwise it is way to much work to update and support stuff myself.
I found that for me, the userbase (or community-support) that Nokias Maemo products enjoyed were just enough. It shouldn't be less, but it was OK. Of course I don't know the sales figures, but I guess any new GNU/Linux based phone, be it Jolla or Ubuntu, must sell as well as the N900 to be of any relevance at all. If this is true, I'd assume community support will be at least "just enough".

As written above, I'm really, really curious about Ubuntu vs. Sailfish: Will they be similar enough from a developer's perspective to actually support each other? Or will the differences be so big that "write once, run on both" is out of the question? (Which will probably mean they'll fight over a small market segmet.)
 

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