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What about some other projects beyond Android and Linux? Sailfish OS? Tizen? KaiOS?

Technically even WebOS was open-sourced and still around as LuneOS, but its last update was Halloween 2019, so it's likely defunct.



> Sailfish OS? Tizen?

Those projects were a bizarre affair. There was I think Maemo, Moblin, LImo, SLP, Bada, Leste, MeeGo, Mer, Tizen, Sailfish, Nemo... all forks, merges, reforks of the same thing. They seemed to spend all their time and energy continually rebranding, forming and disbanding consortiums, creating new websites and logos. They never just got on with it. Ridiculous wasted effort when the market was possibly still just about open to them.


Well, Nokia finally got it together with MeeGo, but then Elop had to sell the farm and hitch their horse to Windows.

Tizen is reputedly of bad code quality, especially security-wise.

Sailfish is still out there as Jolla scraps away.

It’s a pity, as those projects did attract some powerful backers, who just weren’t very committed to them.


My favorite Daily WTF thread is about Samsung's adventures with the Enlightenment toolkit in Tizen: https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened


It's essentially a perfect description of a clash between a rather hardcore technical community with some academic/student background and a typical Korean Corporate conglomerate, with the expected end result.


You seem to be talking from a position of ignorance at least when it comes to Jolla and Sailfish OS. The former is probably the best non-mainstream mobile OS that can be used today.


Not sure which bit you think is ignorant.

> The OS is an evolved continuation of the Linux MeeGo OS previously developed by alliance of Nokia and Intel which itself relies on combined Maemo and Moblin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS#History_and_develo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeeGo#/media/File:Mer_and_mobi...

Ridiculous series of merges and forks.

Sailfish's market share is so low it doesn't seem to be measurable.

When these projects were at their peak there was just about a way for them into the market. There isn't now. If they spent their time working on just one branding of these projects instead of creating yet another new name, website, and icon they might have gotten somewhere.


Eh, I used my Jolla phone for 5 years and I still regret it to this day


Ha, why?


the native apps were so fast, everything happened instantly. Also the UI looked gorgeous. In contrast my current oneplus 8 pro feels like a complete regression on the software side.


Sadly it seems that everything is based on linux beyond Android. Wish there were more choices kernel-wise.


Truly, someone should try out NetBSD here...


iOS is BSD based.


Mach based with some components from BSD


Fear not fuchsia is coming along nicely.


I only evaluated Free/Libre OSes, even if they have binary blob drivers.

LuneOS is defunct as far as I can tell.

It would have been great if the whole Firefox OS thing had worked out, but it didn't :(


I believe KaiOS is meant to succeed Firefox OS, but admittedly it is aimed at a less-than-smartphone category.


I am wondering about a KaiOS phone with physical keyboard. This would be the crack for my use case.




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