Just curious on the history on homebrew/CFW, how long did the Switch scene take to get a fully working CFW and backup launcher/installer in comparison to the 3DS scene?
While I have been following the Switch scene very closely a short while before Fusee Gelee was leaked/released, I was not very familiar with the 3DS scene which caused me to do some research in case you weren't aware of its history. At least I was educated on how the 3DS scene evolved over the years.
The Switch came out in March 2017 while CFW was being developed as early as January 2018. However the only exploit at that time was PegaSwitch which was only good up to firmware 3.0 and wasn't enough to enable CFW. Then once ktemkin, fail0verflow, and even TX teased they had an unpatchable exploit, it would eventually lead up to the release of the exploit we all know and love as Fusee Gelee/shofel2/CVE-2018-6242. It was meant to be responsibly disclosed in late April for fail0verflow and June 15th for ktemkin but an anonymous source uploaded it to the Internet in mid April. Atmosphere, which was the only CFW in development at the time, wasn't in condition to be booted up until mid May and it was only limited to the homebrew menu. Similar to the 3DS scene, a Nintendo application known as DevMenu was leaked which had the ability to install .NSP file in late June. However no free CFW supported signature patches so it was useless to anyone not running SX OS. The issue with DevMenu though was that it was a copyrighted application meaning it could not be freely shared. That's when Adubbz saved the scene when user jjbredesen posted a thread documenting the work on a homebrew application that would install .NSP file, Tinfoil. Dating mid July, this tool mimicked only one feature of DevMenu which was installing .NSP files (DevMenu touted multiple features) and only worked for installing games you don't own when through SX OS but it was progress nonetheless. The last piece of the puzzle was signature patches which were finally released with the advent of ReiNX, ReiNAND but for the Nintendo Switch, on July 23rd.
For the 3DS, it seems free CFW achieved backup launching as of May 2015 with the release of Pasta CFW which integrated the leaked signature patches from RX Tools. However since the 3DS was released in 2011, it took
much longer compared to the Switch scene. Gateway was released in 2013 which is already slower than Fusee Gelee and the first free CFW didn't come out until November 2014. For reference, I pulled these dates from
Zoogie's timeline of the 3DS hacking history thread.
tldr
3/2017 Switch was released
1/2018 Free CFW in development
4/2018 Fusee Gelee leaked
5/2018 SX OS released as well as DevMenu being leaked
6/2018 Tinfoil began development and ReiNX came out as the first CFW with signature patches