I have been daily driving Sailfish OS since 2014. In this series of blog posts, I would like to jot down the why and the how. The first two sections of this post will some history and context.

Sailfish OS: the most usable Linux in your pocket

Somewhere around 2010, I was happily using a Nokia clamshell phone. It did what it had to, and it had worked for years. At that time, it was apparent that the world was moving toward smartphones: mobile devices with internet connection, a browser, a camera, a fancy screen, and way more compute power than those old-fashioned GSM-era devices. And apparently they could be used as a phone as well.

I was quite repelled by both the iPhones and Android phones at the time. Both were, and still are built by monopolists. Apple’s offering is marketed with privacy, but lacks the freedom to tinker: the whole ecosystem is locked down, and not very suited for the tinkerer and hobbyist that I am. Google’s offering was a more open ecosystem: the base operating system was open source, mostly free, and Linux based. However, something felt off. Whereas the Android operating system might be free and open source, its spirit is not. Google dictates the direction of the system, and their grip on the ecosystem keeps on tightening. Paradoxically, the free and open source Android seemed to be more privacy infringing than its proprietary rival.

At some point I learned about the Nokia N9. Contrary to iOS, this device was mostly free and open source. And contrary to Android, it was built around existing, well-known software stacks. The MeeGo operating system (technically called Harmattan) was built around Qt and QML, and the base Linux was an actual GNU/Linux. The thing even shipped a terminal emulator!

(left: Nokia N9, right: Jolla)

I got my hands on what was probably the very last device on sale in Belgium, and it is still my favorite phone to date. It was opinionated, featureful, and quick despite the rather limiting 1GHz single core processor. Sadly, it became obsolete quickly. Nokia sold most of their smartphone business to Microsoft, and Microsoft did what Microsoft does best: drop what is interesting, and then try and fail to make something nice out of the remaining pieces.

Jolla and Sailfish OS - from 2014 to 2026

Some of the parts did not end up in Redmond hands. Instead, a few brave souls at Nokia ran off and founded Jolla. I was still happy with my N9 when they released the Jolla: the spiritual successor to the Nokia N9 hit the market. I got my hands on it some months after it started shipping, especially when it became clear the N9 would not receive any more updates. The Jolla itself got very mixed reviews. Hardware-wise, it was a significant downgrade in many aspects. The screen was a rather dim LCD (being used to the N9’s utterly fantastic OLED), the more advanced and featureful software meant that the dual-core with 1GB RAM was quite limiting, and the camera was akin to a potato compared to the Carl Zeiss glass in the N9.

Still, it was an attractive device. It was backed by a company, and developed with a community. The operating system, Sailfish OS, was a true GNU/Linux system, which I usually explain as “OpenSUSE with a mobile-first Wayland shell”. The thing works out-of-the-box. You can browse the web, read and write emails, take pictures, look at videos, open a terminal and use ssh, and text and make phone calls. Their commercial offering was mainly “Alien Dalvik”, now Android App Support, which is an LXC container for your Android apps. Since 2014, Jolla has been through many rough waters. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of articles covering those. After the Jolla, their focus was on Sony Xperia devices (“Sailfish X”). These smartphones had the “open device program”, which made them relatively easier for Jolla to port to Sailfish OS. My personal Sailfish OS journey after the Jolla phone was: Jolla, community-ported Motorola Z Play, Xperia 10, Xperia 10 IV (with a lot of issues). Until recently, the Xperia series was the best way to enjoy Sailfish OS. Jolla announced the Jolla Phone (sometimes shortened to “the J2” by the community), a device with actually really decent hardware specs (if you decide to order one, feel free to add Jolla-Phone-10K-0976f49b15f4 to the discount field as my referral code). Finally, we will have an official high-end Jolla device. I am very much looking forward to this. I may or may not have held one in my hands during the French speaking community meeting in Lyon, and my opinion has only improved.

(left to right: Xperia 10 IV, Jolla C2, Xperia 10, Jolla, Nokia N9)

Sailfish OS as a community

Between 2014 and 2019, I was a silent Sailfish OS user, enjoying Linux in my pocket. One of the apps I started to use the most was Whisperfish, a Signal client for Sailfish OS. Whisperfish was developed and maintained by Andrew E. Bruno in Go, but in 2019 he decided to call it quits. I took the initiative to completely overhaul Whisperfish, and write it against the upstream Signal libraries in Rust. Since then, Whisperfish has become one of the most downloaded apps, and the second most active topic on the Sailfish OS forum.

(Community dinner 2026)

This is to say: Whisperfish got me from being a silent user to an active community member. Every year, I look forward to engaging on FOSDEM, and to attend the community dinner. Sailfish OS is not just an operating system. It’s a group of friends with set of shared values: the freedom to use your phone as you please, a design language that feels consistent across the whole operating system, and a chat with the CTO and the CEO about their preferred beer of the night, somewhere during each winter.

Sailfish OS as a daily driver

In my next two posts, I will dive deeper in the apps that I use, the oddly specific tweaks that make my device really mine, and generally how I have set up my device.

This is what my phone, the Xperia 10 IV, usually looks like. Yes, I am writing this when it’s 19°C outside.

(left: events view, right: application drawer and application view)