I'm back in the boat

In mid-2014 I first heard about Jolla and Sailfish OS and immediately bought a Jolla 1; wrote apps; participated in the IGG campaign for Jolla Tablet; bought the TOHKBD2; applied for (and got) Jolla C.

Sounds like the beginning of a good story doesn’t it?

Well, by the beginning of 2017 I had sold everything (except the tablet, we all know what happened to that one).

So what happened?? I was a happy Sailfish user, but Jolla’s false promises disappointed me.

Yet, despite all that, I still think about Sailfish OS to this day. I think it’s because, despite some proprietary components, the ecosystem around Sailfish OS is ultimately open source. And that’s what interests me. It also got a fresh update which solves some of the problems that where there 5 years ago.

Nowadays, thanks to the community , Sailfish OS can be installed on many devices, even if with some less components, but I’m looking for that complete experience and so I asked on the forum if there was someone willing to sell his Xperia device with or without the license… and I got one for free. Better still, in exchange for some apps!

To decide which applications to create, I therefore took a look at that ecosystem. I started with the apps I use daily on Android and looked for the Sailfish OS alternative (spoiler: I’m impressed, good job guys!).

I am writing them all here because I am sure it will be useful to someone else:

AntennaPod (podcast app) -> PodQast

Ariane (gemini protocol browser)

AsteroidOS (AsteroidOS sync) -> Starfish

Connectbot (ssh client) -> built-in (Terminal)

Conversation (xmpp client) -> built-in (Messaging)

Davx5 (caldav/cardav) -> built-in (Account)

DroidShows (TV series) -> SeriesFinale

Element (Matrix client) -> Determinant

Endoscope (camera stream)

Fedilab (Mastodon client) -> Tooter

ForkHub (GitHub client) -> SailHub