bug free OS upgrade version needed

asked 2015-08-29 23:59:57 +0300

llg179
186 ●5 ●8 ●17

2015.08.28. SailFish OS upgrades happen in big jumps and some major bugs survive between the versions. For example cannot swipe to accept a call bug is at least a year old and was reported both in 1.1.6.27 and 1.1.7.xx (24 ?) By voting to this question I emphasize the importance of introduction of a bug free stable release which aims to provide a stable environment for everyday business use of the phone. The stable release should be updated frequently by fixing existing bugs and security issues without introducing new functionality.

What do you think about it?

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Do you also wish for a unicorn?

Fuzzillogic ( 2015-08-30 00:56:36 +0300 )edit

Something like the separate stable/testing/unstable flavors familiar from Debian would be nice. Although I'm afraid that there hasn't yet been a single SFOS version that would qualify as stable. I'm hoping for 2.0 to break this streak.

Okw ( 2015-08-30 00:57:08 +0300 )edit

have you not been paying attention to the release notes? loads of bugs and security holes are fixed with each new update, so im not sure how 'focussing on stability' really changes anything from what we currently have

also, they have the community beta and early adopters stream, so i think thats enough for you to be on the normal release schedule

r0kk3rz ( 2015-08-30 18:41:37 +0300 )edit

I think I wrote about bug free _basic_ functions "a stable environment for everyday business use of the phone" which includes battery management and phone calls.

llg179 ( 2015-10-01 07:55:32 +0300 )edit

2.0.1.11 is my current os version. Next major public release arrived with a battery drain. Then no fixfor the battery issue only. Then current major release has some bug reports with phone 4G. Same story again and again. If Jolla wants to compete with android then basic use (battery, phone, etc) should be a priority. Jolla is still in its child shoes.

llg179 ( 2016-11-14 18:40:02 +0300 )edit

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answered 2015-08-30 01:09:20 +0300

5828 ●44 ●46 ●52

http://me.medesimo.eu/

updated 2015-08-30 01:10:27 +0300

Maintaining two different branches of an OS is an huge job, especially for a small startup like Jolla.

Backporting fixes is not always easy, and the difficulty increases the more the two branches differ. Also, a new bug found in the stable branch may not be present in the most up-to-date one (due to under-the-hood changes) and everything becomes a big waste of time.

Software can't be "bug free" (unfortunately). If the call bug (which, I agree, is pretty annoying) is still not resolved it's because they haven't yet found the root cause (as it appears pretty randomly) or the fix depends on other factors.

I think that the current release model is good enough. And the situation will surely improve once they start to open source more UI bits (hint hint :D).

What would be good in the meantime, IMHO, is to have every once in a while a regular upgrade focused only on bug fixes.

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Doubt open sourcing will make more people contribute -at least until SFOS gets more users-. Ie. how much has the browser improved? And how many have contributed to it outside jolla.

ApB ( 2015-08-30 01:59:22 +0300 )edit

g7, my impresion is that an idea which gets several votes gets higher attebtion. We agree that regular upgrade focused only on bugfixes would be beneficial. Would you please create a new question and formalize this in a way that is avceptable and achieveable and gets several votes?

Also please let me know how can I help fix of the call bug? I have some journal logs and have no idea where to put it. Is there a Jolla bugzilla or something similar? What should be done by end users to help tracking down the root cause?

Seemingly a stable release is not a priority.

llg179 ( 2015-08-30 08:41:31 +0300 )edit

@ApB: browsers are complex, and anyways sailfish's certainly improved thanks to outside contributions: the private browsing mode, for one, has been made by a community member.

Also sailfish-office improved significantly thanks to an external contributor.

@llg179: note that I'm not a Jolla employee but I have some background as a Linux distribution developer. "IMHO" has to be implied through the whole answer :)

"Stable" releases are always a priority, we would already be on 1.1.9 is Jolla didn't care about the product stability.

There isn't a public Jolla bugzilla currently, unfortunately. The only way to report a bug AFAIK is TJC (and there is a question already open for the call bug).

g7 ( 2015-08-30 14:06:47 +0300 )edit

@ApB I think that the half open/half closed state of Sailfish OS is discouraging many potential contributors as even though many individual components are open source, they interact in many ways with components that are not open and could therefore not be modified without help from Jolla. And considering how overworked the Jolla developers have been lately is unlikely they will be able to make the needed modifications in an reasonable timeframe.

You can see the SIP integration effort as an example - the community has doe its part and it has been waiting for Jolla to put the final pieces in place since at least May...

Another problem with the half open/half closed state of Sailfish OS is that you can't make usable community distro based on Sailfish OS without rewriting half the UI. The NemoMobile project is making a valiant effort, but it is still unfortunately quite far from an usable state. And most of the effort goes to more or less to needlessly rewriting existing closed source stuff rather than extending what Sailfish OS can do, fixing bugs, improving platform support, etc. I can imagine this can also discourage quite a few potential contributors.

As an example how this can be done in a better way see the Fedora/RHEL/CentOS trio.

Fedora is the cutting edge community distro which both provides access to newest Linux technologies, frameworks and apps while still providing perfectly usable desktop and (with some caution) small server distro (upstream)
- RHEL is a enterprise grade distro building on all the integration, stabilization and testing done in Fedora but providing many years of stability & bug fixing for large scale/enterprise deployments
- CentOS is a stable community rebuild tracking RHEL (downstream)

Like this a lot of community innovation, testing and bugfixing is contributed by the community that would otherwise just not happen.

MartinK ( 2015-08-31 12:32:22 +0300 )edit

answered 2015-08-30 13:25:08 +0300

Giacomo Di Giacomo

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Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology clearly states that there's always one more bug.

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answered 2016-07-04 01:03:31 +0300

llg179
186 ●5 ●8 ●17

I suggest not to choose/use Jolla for business use. After a new release the basic functions may not work reliably and the bugfix is not fast enough. Same story again:

https://together.jolla.com/question/128155/bug-mobile-data-connection-dies-since-201x/

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Define "business use", please.

I have used sbj-1 as a "business phone" since day one. By "Business use" I mean it is my only phone that I use at my work. All my normal business needs are fulfilled and work well; phone calls, sms, email, calendar, working hours tracking, browser.

juiceme ( 2016-07-04 07:55:05 +0300 )edit

You are both right, IMO. I also use Jolla as my main phone in pretty much the same pattern as @juiceme. One thing perhaps worth adding is that neither of us (as far as I know anyway) have ever felt the need to resort to using the Android support. All our needs are fulfilled by native Sailfish apps only.

Yet my business use is very light. I read my work emails and make the occasional work-related call but the Exchange support is severely lacking, any instant messaging available on Jolla is at least 10 years behind the curve, and even standard email, something that has been around for 30+ years, has its quirks (particularly in the area of folders management). And of course, the reliability in general has a lot to be desired. It has improved over the years but still not as good as one would expect from a 3 years old system.

In short, I would not recommend using it if the life or livelihood of thousands of people depended on it.

pichlo ( 2016-07-04 13:34:33 +0300 )edit

I agree pretty much with all @pichlo says.

Categorizing each users "Business needs" in one locker is something that just cannot be done, for some people Jolla-sbj1 is OK, to some other people it is lacking.

juiceme ( 2016-07-04 13:45:44 +0300 )edit

My definition for "business use" of a phone is the ability to receive calls and place calls anytime when network is available. New releases continously contain bugs which affect phone function. I miss the dedication from Jolla to manage this in their releases. Once a release goes public and a bug prevents basic use then either the release should be rolled back or the fix should be applied as soon as possible (within few days).

llg179 ( 2016-07-05 08:10:46 +0300 )edit

@llg179 there used to be a bug that affected calling, the device went automatically to reject the call but it was corrected in 2.0.1.11 or at least the bug has not hit me after that release.

I also just love the automatic recording of all my calls, very important feature in my line of work.

Otherwice the phonecall functionality has always been excellent, I can always make and receive calls if there exists network coverage. (This is much better than my wife's very expensive top-of-the-line Lumia device which can be ages in non-responsive-mode even in good network and then crash suddenly without reason...)

juiceme ( 2016-07-05 09:18:41 +0300 )edit

bug free OS upgrade version needed

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