Related:

https://bobsummerwill.com/2018/02/03...same-mistakes/

Hmmm...
Maemo's similarity to a desktop system in every aspect, including the update mechanism, is exactly what attracts me to it.

Sailfish's effort to emulate Android (and, presumably, iOS, although I have zero experience to judge) in every aspect (or, as they call it, "to be a 'modern' OS", whatever that is supposed to mean) is exactly what puts me off.

what's the point of presuming of something with zero experince?
They are not alike. Except that all of them have some kind of store(s). Adroid doesn't have repos and you can't update just one component/package via terminal. At least not as easy as you do it on sailfish. If that is the most attractive component of the OS than Sailfish is 35875284x more like desktop than any other mobile OS.

Maemo was to be a computer in your pocket first and mobile phone second (or third, fourth... or dead last!). It surely had it's advantages, but also disadvantages:

- Being like downsized desktop OS usually results in slower device, N900 was slow to boot up and even slower to update all the repositories every time when trying to install some app, for consumer device it's not acceptable even if it allows some kind of "privacy"
- Previous can be mitigated with some serious optimization to some degree, however, being on top of X brings additional limitations that cannot be fixed, nor mitigated (hence Sailfish was designed on top of Wayland)
- Almost no go without HW keyboard, this of course doesn't bother anyone who explicitly want HW keyboard (like me, I just don't want the device to be thick as a freaking brick...) but it's no go for consumer market
- Without compatibility layer for Android commercial software is severely limited and OSS may not be that optimized for mobile pocket computer, which again rules it out from consumer market

In the end devices like N900 would be very much like niche in niche product. In my experience, N900/Maemo 5 was quite effective but in every day use Harmattan or Sailfish is just more efficient, thought it's more limited in sense that it's not meant to be like sysadmins pocket-tool for "doing it all".

Yeah, I should have left that bit out.

You know, that reminds me of the old joke about the guy who had painted each side of his car a different colour. When asked why, he replied that it was to confuse eye witnesses in case of an accident.

The point is, Sailfish and Android may look "totally different" to you if you only focus on one side of the thing. But there are also similarities and, to me, those far outweigh the differences. You may dismiss them because you are used to them and expect them to be the feature of a "modern" mobile OS, and thus you do not even see them as similarities, but that was exactly my point.

A bit like the English people thinking of their language as "totally different" from German when in fact there are far more similarities than differences.

well, every UI is similar if you look at it that way. I mean, people without technical knowlegde will be lost in any new UI since they don't understand it and their usage pattern is based on learned moves with zero thinking. For me, if I know what software does I'll find my way to do that (OK, that won't make me PS or CAD expert) but as Gnome shell user I wont be lost with any other DE. Some I'll navigate faster than the other but I can sure any of them. Because they are all more similar then it looks. And do the same thing.
Can't say the same for my wife. Even when it comes to android that she's using on a daily basis since HTC Hero days and still I'm way faster even with her phone than she is.
One of the best example for that is new Peugeot i-cockpit. People are bashing that on every review and owners complain that it's way to copmlicated for basic things. Sure, it's not like analog buttons for everything but it's way more simpler than one can conclude from different reviews if one can think outside of the box and accept that just because something is different it's not bad.

Really? Nokia N9/Meego Harmattan was also X11-based, and was much quicker than other dual-core androids
You really don't know what you are talking about, because most X11(including all GTK and Qt bases) apps doesn't use X11 calls, but rather XRENDER and OpenGL.
MAEMO for N900 was total mess being mix of different libraries inclusing GTK and Qt, so it needed more memory requirement on such memory-limited device. Harmattan was nearly Qt-exclusive(and got more RAM), so it was pretty quick for heavy multitasking(which was unavailable in iOS/Android in those times[and after intruducation on Adnroid, it wasn't real running prcesses pararelly, but more like kde/gnome sessions. Apps were freezed, state saved, and later restored).

N9's Harmattan was best-ever, state of the art mobile operating system. The only problem was that, it was announced dead even before n9 retailing, but still selling well(and better than Lumia, that was announced as supported in long-term replacement for it)

N9 also needed some clever tricks to make it faster especially after booting it up. Performance wise it was something like iPhones at that time and it was criticized for being too "modern" and limited instead of being a pocket computer like N900. As for N900, many apps it had were more or less tweaked conversions from desktop apps and it did result in poor performance. For Harmattan it was a bit different and better, possibly because forced rewrites for QT and UI adaptations - and the fact that N9 was the only MeeGo-phone to be, so there were no continuity issues that would have needed to be taken into account. Just limited set of features and optimizing them to run on that only device. X does have limitations, Jolla's decision to run Sailfish on Wayland was not just for the sake of having latest bells and whistles.

True. Because it was like desktop OS downsized for mobile device. And it is precisely what many people love about it, regardless of it being a mess. To have freedom is to have mess.

The sad part of the story is that N9 and Harmattan as we know it would never have delivered if the platform was not abandoned as it was stuck in Nokia's huge middle management hubris until new strategy came out. I really miss my N9 at times (still have it, but screen is broken and apps mostly obsolete).

https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/eve..._leste_mobile/


Maemo Leste
A Debian/Devuan based mobile hacker OS

Track: Lightning Talks
Room: H.2215 (Ferrer)
Day: Saturday
Start: 17:20
End: 17:35


Maemo Leste is community a Debian/Devuan based GNU/Linux distribution for smartphones and tablets aimed at free software hackers. In spirit and look it is similar to the Maemo Fremantle OS for the famous Nokia N900 phone. This talk will present the current (alpha) state of Maemo Leste, the presently supported devices, our development setups, the present and upcoming challenges and lay out the future plans for software and hardware (device) support.

This lecture will introduce Maemo Leste, a free Debian/Devuan based GNU/Linux hacker distribution for smartphones and tablets. We will cover the history of Maemo and explain what drove us to work on and create Maemo Leste.

We will provide a technical overview of the software stack, show off and discuss the current status software stack, how we got there, our upcoming milestones and the challenges that lie ahead.

Additionally, we'll take some time to discuss the "hacker" aspect of Maemo Leste. such as (only) supporting mainline Linux, future (first class) Tor and Wireguard integration, bleeding edge open GPU drivers and the availability of all the packages of Debian.

Next to that, we will explain the development setups, build servers and infrastructure, provide some information on how to port Maemo Leste to a new device, dive into possible Android compatibility and hardware and driver issues difficulties (such as mobile GPU drivers and the current open source solutions).