Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by strcat 106 days ago
SailfishOS doesn't use the security features which are being worked on and doesn't keep up with kernel, driver and firmware updates. It doesn't use secure elements, verified boot or hardware memory tagging so it doesn't need the work being done on those things. They don't have similar requirements for hardware and have little use for what's being worked on for these devices.

The portions of SailfishOS specific to it are largely closed source including the user interface and application layer. It isn't possible to fork the overall operating system. It has much worse privacy and drastically worse security than the Android Open Source Project even without taking the GrapheneOS improvements into account. It's in an entirely different space and this has no connection to it.

1 comments

True, for the most parts, and that's because they are resource constrained and Jolla is on the verge of bankruptcy. But all those features are not important to me. I care more about privacy (surveillance capitalism) than "security" (from state actors or malicious hackers). And seek diversity in software system by not supporting the duopoly of Android and ios, both from American BigTech. Sailfish OS ( https://sailfishos.org/ ) meets those requirement better. If Graphene OS becomes popular, it is likely to be surreptitiously gobbled up by one of the BigTech, just like Microsoft's investment in Cyanogenmod ... moreover, with Google slowly making Android more and more proprietary, I personally don't see a good future for GrapheneOS, and bet on Sailfish OS outlasting it.