Installing and using Chum on Sailfish OS
A quick article explaining what Chum is, its interests, and how to install and use it on your Sailfish OS device.
Yet Another Store for Sailfish OS??
Existing Stores
Sailfish OS already has an official application store: the Jolla Store.
It has a decent number of applications, however there's a few limitations.
Openrepos is an alternative store, started initially for other Nokia platforms (Harmattan and others), which has a lot more applications with less limitations.
So why Chum?
Chum aims at fixing a few issues with Openrepos:
- For each app in Openrepos, you need to enable the developer's repo - this is fine with a small number of apps/devs, but when you have a long list, it can take some time for Openrepos to refresh when launched.
- Developers must upload (and therefore compile by themselves) the binary packages for their apps - and do so for both 32 and 64 bits version
What Chum is doing:
- Software is compiled against the software's source code
- Chum uses OBS (Open Build Service), which generates the RPM files for the different hardware platforms adn SFOS versions
- There's a single repo for Chum, so refreshing it is super fast
What does Chum mean??
All of the Sailfish OS community has something to do with sea and boats:
- Sailfish is obviously a fish,
- SFOS users are "Sailors",
... and so does Chum!
Chum comes from Chumming:
blue water fishing practice of throwing meat-based groundbait called "chum"
into the water in order to lure various marine animals to a designated
fishing ground, so the target animals are more easily caught by hooking or
spearing.
Installing Chum
You'll need to allow installation of untrusted software (from Settings > System > Security > Untrusted software).
Chum can be used with a GUI application, or just using the command line, with
e.g. pkcon or zypper.
Detailed instructions are available on the Chum's Github page.
- visit https://chumrpm.netlify.app,
- select your SFOS version,
- select your device architecture (e.g. aarch64),
- and whether you want to install just the CLI or both the GUI and CLI.
You then download the corresponding RPM, install it, and you're good to go:
Using Chum
Graphically
Installing new software is done in the same way as with the Jolla Store or Openrepos, i.e.:
- search for a software,
- use the pull menu to install it,
- start using it!
What is nice with Chum is that you can also directly look at Github issues if the project source code is on Github - example with Adam's Advanced Camera:
Using the CLI
Chum is just a(nother) local repo, so it doesn't come with its own commands/tools - you'll still be using pkcon or zypper to look for packages and install then, e.g.:
pkcon search <name>
pkcon install <package name>
or
zypper search <name>
zypper install <package name>
Chum vs. Openrepos
Chum is still new, and as I'm writing this, there are about 150 applications
available.
That's less than Openrepos, but Openrepos also has lots of unmaintained
applications, as well as applications who appear two or three times, as they've
been forked when someone else took over their development.
As developers start submitting their source code to OBS (Open Build Service), we'll see more apps in Chum.
Shall I use Chum?
YES!
Nowadays, when I want to install a new app on my SFOS device, I first look it up on Chum, and only if it's not there, will I use Openrepos.
Again, Chum aims at providing a central repo for:
- developers to upload their source code and not having to worry about compiling for different platforms,
- users to find the correct package/RPM for their apps, no matter which platform, and without having to enable a new repo for each and every app/developer.
Tags: SailfishOS