Could Purism Librem Mobile OS include support for *.rpm packages built for Debian based Sailfish OS.
This way applications that are already open source and built for Debian variation can run and users can more easily switch between Librem and Sailfish without data loss or headaches and a larger developer community could automatically be tapped into, instead of going from scartch.
Well… Sailfish isn’t based on Debian. It’s rather independent GNU/Linux distribution, which uses RPMs for packaging (and zypper). Because of RPM, zypper and using OBS server for building packages I’d say that it’s closest related to (Open)SUSE. Debian OTOH uses deb packages and apt.
Anyway, I’ve recently got Xperia X and flashed it with Sailfish. I must say, that it’s quite nice experience. Maybe Jolla will port SailfishOS to Librem5, if not I’m sure that there will be a community port.
Packaging is minor problem, SFOS SDK is building rpms however having complete toolchain there’s no problem to build DEB.
The problem is rather framework - QtQuick framework for SFOS GUI (silica, nemo, etc.). So you cannot just run SFOS app on any linux, you need to have all underlying libs or - port the app to another framework (plasma would be the closest match).
QTQuick framework and Silica are Open Source i believe. I think porting is the wrong way to go, mobile OSs that are open source should callobate and allow cross OS app development and rollout, if thats not possible in Debian then what i am saying is Purism Librem should allow for rpm pacjages.
yes, it is proprietary. And it’s not just silica. It’s also about desktop manager (lipstick). Many things in SFOS are done right - using freedesktop.org dbus calls and core qt api components, so should be portable. TO make smooth migration to Librem SFOS should make an effort to port the DE to Librem - lipstick and other framework daemons and libraries (webview/gecko, pickers, indexers, dialogs, dbus services). Some of the services and libraries aren’t opensourced (rpm -qa | grep jolla)
In this case most of the native SFOS apps should probably ‘just work’.
it is good to hear that the effort could make this synergy happen without too much cost, i just would like those disparate teams of Linux Mobile system OS and App developers to come up with some Norms and Standards (html5 style) so there is more interoperability out of the box.