How To Work With Repositories On Jolla’s Sailfish OS

Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Jolla is a project developed by former Nokia employees. The first Jolla smartphone is running on Sailfish OS, a modified Megoo Linux system, which is Android compatible, uses Wayland as the default display server , uses Nokia N9′s Maliit touchscreen keyboard and comes with interchangeable covers, allowing the users to easily switch them, in order to change the color/model of the phone and comes with impressive hardware specifications.

In this article I will show you how to add repositories to Sailfish OS system and install packages from it, with either Zypper, and ssu + pkcon.

Working with ssu and pkcon.

Adding repositories via ssu:
# ssu addrepo openrepos_username http://sailfish.openrepos.net/openrepos_username/personal/main

Replace the openrepos_username with the developer’s username.

Update the local repository index:

# ssu updaterepos
# pkcon refresh

Search for packages via pkcon:

# pkcon search packge_name

Replace package_name with the name of package you want to install.

Install packages via pkcon:

# pkcon install package_name

Replace package_name with the name of package you want to install.

Working with OpenSUSE’s Zypper.

Since zypper is not installed by default, we have to install it via pkcon (from the developer mode):

# pkcon install zypper

Add a repository via zypper:

# zypper ar -f http://sailfish.openrepos.net/openrepos_username/personal-main.repo

Replace the openrepos_username with the developer’s username.

Update the local repository index:

# zypper refresh

Search for a package:

# zypper search package_name

Replace package_name with the name of package you want to install.

Install the desired package:

# zypper install package_name

Replace package_name with the name of package you want to install.