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Sailfish OS Comes to the Nokia N9

Posted by Unknown on from the what-might-have-been dept.

Via El Reg: "The only Meego phone Nokia ever released, the now two-year-old N9, has been given a new lease on life today. Owners can now install the new Meego descendent Sailfish alongside the original OS." There's a guide to installing. It looks pretty experimental, but you don't have to overwrite Meego to install it.

3 of 15 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Market share by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    i've looked at the install and basically the tricky bit is installing a multi-boot loader. Once you have done that , you simply drop the new OS (eg. Sailfish) in a directory and reboot.

    The key thing is this is Linux, so once it works, it will keep on working. Even when the manufacturer withdraws support... (I'm looking at you Nokia and the Jan 2014 insult posted recently).

    The most exciting thing about Sailfish is the possibility to circumvent the horrible android security. Each application will run in its own sandbox.

      Running a proper Linux phone with Android on-demand is as close to perfect as you can get...

  2. so what does not work ? by richlv · · Score: 2

    It has been confirmed that GPS, A-GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi and ‘Calling Functions’ are working!

    ok, what does not work then ? ;)

    --
    Rich
  3. Re:Market share by preflex · · Score: 2

    I ask because since the Sharp Zaurus days I have wanted a phone which runs 'proper' Linux, a Linux kernel with glibc, X-windows, GTK, QT, etc... I wanted something that I could easily 'port' desktop apps over just by recompiling.

    Sounds like you have wanted the N900. X11, Qt, GTK, SDL, Java, and even Mono are all available in the extras repo and easily installable through apt-get.

    Sailfish uses Wayland and QT. I'm not sure if GTK is available in the Mer repos. You could probably get XWayland rocking on it.

    My very limited understanding of Sailfish is that it is just a Linux kernel with webkit dropped on top of it to run HTML5 apps not unlike Google Chrome. Was I mistaken?

    Yes. You were very mistaken. This is a good description of WebOS, not Sailfish.

    Sailfish uses Wayland and QT. I believe Python is preinstalled. I'm not sure if GTK is available in the Mer repos. You could probably get XWayland rocking on it. Sailfish is the closest thing to 'proper' Linux available for phones right now, even closer than Ubuntu Phone.