User/developer insights on Jolla SailfishOS, Ubuntu Phone and Tizen
asked 2015-02-13 07:20:14 +0200
This post is a wiki. Anyone with karma >75 is welcome to improve it.
Now that Ubuntu has just released their first phone (and Tizen SDK has also been made available) and atleast both Jolla SailfishOS and Ubuntu Phone OS are Qt/QML-based and have QtCreator as SDK IDE, it would be interesting to start to investigate what are the user needs, developer prospects, software/platform requirements and also best user/dev community practises to grow the native application provision for Jolla and to improve SailfishOS/Mer platform ecosystem in this new situation where two device manufactures and OS providers have some common mobile platform components, most notably QML/Qt-based SDKs (and related Qt-libs).
http://www.sailfishos.org/ and http://developer.ubuntu.com/en/start/ and https://developer.tizen.org/downloads/sdk/installing-tizen-sdk
Naturally, there are quite a few differences in the UI, middleware, hardware adaption and driver layer, and also the device specs are far from being identical. However, as both platforms are Qt-based, the co-developing to Jolla devices and Ubuntu Phone could be possible. Atleast it should be beneficial to find ways to easily port apps between these platforms. In.any case, the co-existence of Jolla/SailfishOS and Ubuntu/Phone OS should be seen as good possibility for Qt/QML-based appöication ecosystem(s) to gain traction and a great chance for both devices/OSs/platforms/gesture UIs to become more familiar outside niche markets or enthusiast user sphere.
What do you think, can Jolla and the communities help users/customers or developers of Qt/QML-apps to benefit from this situation? Is Jolla itself going to collaborate with Ubuntu or Tizen/Samsung to find biz or platform/app-ecosysyem future perspectives from this?
Is it already possble to develop native apps for these platforms with e.g. the current QtCreator in SailfishOS SDK?
How far apart are the platforms, devices, app store requurements actually? What kind of (existing) apps could be easily now or in the future developed / ported between them?
Can potentially also include Tizen in this as well, as it also shares a lot of common middleware and application layer technologies
r0kk3rz ( 2015-02-13 13:10:45 +0200 )edit@r0kk3z Sure, feel free to edit the original post accordingly or add the Tizen related perspectives and insights as commentaries or answers to this thread. You can also share links here to Tizen-related documentation about the development, SDK, app stores and technologies to further clarify and describe how Tizen as a platform and OS aligns with SailfishOS and Ubuntu Phone. Have they e.g. already released or published the final SDK and do we know how the Tizen as mobile stack is constructed and what kinds of applications it is possible to develop, build and deploy using it..?
Edit: added Tizen to the title and provided a link to the Tizen SDK in the description.
foss4ever ( 2015-02-13 15:32:29 +0200 )editIt would be nice if the Qt Designer could get the look and feel of the OS in question, both for QML and regular qt widgets. Imagine designing the QML pages for Sailfish with a WYSIWYG feel?
Larswad ( 2015-02-13 17:00:05 +0200 )editKDE is also based on Qt. I know KDE is for computer desktops, so it differs a lot in the different layers from the mobile platforms. But could there be some synergies to be found and used througout all platforms?
nick75 ( 2015-02-14 09:48:56 +0200 )edit