Mobile Linux Challenges Windows Mobile 23
An anonymous reader writes "Taking a page from Microsoft's playbook, MontaVista today announced an embedded Linux platform aimed specifically at mobile phones. 'Mobilinux' is based on a 2.6 kernel with real-time and power-management enhancements, and targets 'feature-phones' as well as the higher-end devices targeted by Microsoft with its Windows Mobile for Smartphones offering."
Linux 2.6 is slower than 2.4... (Score:4, Insightful)
Check out the Linux v2.4 vs. Linux v2.6 [www.denx.de]
Mobile Phones Feature Musts (Score:3, Interesting)
If they can develop a Linux mobile device that syncs with Exchange or Blackberry (wirelessly like ActiveSync), it would be money.
Re:Mobile Phones Feature Musts (Score:3, Informative)
Motorola not only is already selling Linux-based Smartphones [geekzone.co.nz] since September 2004, but in addition to that they also licence Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync [geekzone.co.nz] to synchronise with Exchange Servers.
Re:Mobile Phones Feature Musts (Score:2, Insightful)
Blackberry has done the ultimate-super-expensive version of this where it is completely closed-source. They've even brought it to the level of selling their own hardware.
A successful open-sourced project surrounding this topic would do the following:
1. define an xml/soap based protocol
Re:Mobile Phones Feature Musts (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mobile Phones Feature Musts (Score:2)
Can't really imagine it being simpler.
Re:So who exactly would have root? (Score:3, Interesting)
Cellphone providers have been dying to open up the software on cellphones so they can get out of the buisness of managing purchasing of dime a dozen software and games. I was recently talking the the head of Verizon, (he was out at a cellphone kiosk at the local mall getting input from subscribers and handing out popcorn). He said having these kind of options for phones is a great step for cell providers because customers can focus on the signal they are getting and dropped calls vs judging a compa
Re:So who exactly would have root? (Score:2, Interesting)
They love to talk about how they have the "largest calling area," but it's a fair assumption they are making a small mint on ringtones and games.
Re:So who exactly would have root? (Score:2)
Re:So who exactly would have root? (Score:4, Interesting)
On the one hand that's what providers want because they lose money on every game and ringtone they sell. According to the Register [theregister.com], a site that I trust. They want to give you freedom to do it on your own because it's costing them to put it on there for you.
However! They won't like it if you put a Jabber IM client on your phone and use instant messages or picture messages instead of SMS or MMS because they're raking in big bucks with that. They charge for both the MMS AND THE GPRS TRAFFIC! They'd like to keep you a dumb consumer for that.
The Register thinks they want to avoid becoming a wireless ISP at all costs because they'll bring in less money. Voice over IP instead of cell prices, jabber instead of SMS/MMS.
I don't know if the manufacturers want to sell you open and Free phones and have you use it as a miniature PC and use a carrier just as a normal ISP, like you're using your big PC at the moment.
Maybe they'll sell more phones when they can sell you phones with all the features they want. Maybe they want to keep the current situation and sell phones with only minimal features, or only extra features that the carriers don't mind.
Whatever the phone manufacturers want, at the moment they're stuck as the slaves of the carriers because the carriers are the ones choosing the phones that they're going to give subsidies for. No subsidies for your phone, your phone doesn't sell as well.
I'm still investigating how everything fits together.
And what do you want? And how can we get it?
Microsoft is really doing things differently (Score:2)
Linux has the same arrangement of squares as Symbian, with a blue background. That's just a different skin. Symbian could do that too.
finally, an X11-based mobile environment (Score:2)
(I have several Qt/Embedded and Qtopia-based devices, and those truly suck: Qt/Embedded and Qtopia are slow, consume gobs of memory, waste screen real estate on useless UI elements, and restrict you to exactly one toolkit to program in. They feel like a bad clone of PocketPC.)
Re:finally, an X11-based mobile environment (Score:2, Insightful)
directfb+SDL+cairo(glitz)+SVG == pure portable GUI mannah.
I'm lovin' it, personally
Re:finally, an X11-based mobile environment (Score:3, Interesting)
If you roll your own with SVG, there is nothing. SVG-based GUIs will probably a major role at some point, but by running them on top of X11, you give users a smooth transition.
Re:finally, an X11-based mobile environment (Score:1)
yeah, in theory. in practice, it'll be shit to run any X11 app on your phone, where it wasn't designed for in the first place.
and since this article is a developer-focus one (you won't get consumers all excited about this), whats the point? write code for your new GUI environment, yo!
Re:finally, an X11-based mobile environment (Score:2)
That's bullshit. The fact that the XFree86 implementation, which is perhaps all you have ever seen, is obese and adapted to workstation usage doesn't mean X11 is. Furthermore, there are plenty of X11 applications for those kinds of environments.
X11 was designed for hardware that was much less powerful than today's phones. I used to run X11 and a full SVR3 UNIX system for softwar
Re:finally, an X11-based mobile environment (Score:1)
errmm.. no. i'm running X.org on all my boxen.
X11 was designed for hardware that was much less powerful than today's phones. I used to run X11 and a full SVR3 UNIX system for software development on a 20MHz 386 with 4Mbytes of RAM, and that was a powerful machine at the time. Some X11 implementations are among the most light-weight window systems around.
Yes, I remember running X11 just fine on my MIPS Magnum pizzabox
Re:finally, an X11-based mobile environment (Score:2)
X.org is derived from XFree86. It's nice, but it's not designed for being lean.
I don't disagree that X11 can run, just that its pointless for developers to use it if they're working on a new cell phone platform, where there are plenty of other better, smaller, lighter options
People keep claiming that there are "better, smaller, lighter options". I'd like to know what they are, because I haven't found them. Qt/Embedded, WinCE, and Palm are all slower
Nice, but not a winner until... (Score:2)
I know we hate to say it, but Windows and lookOut are pretty dominant. A modern phone will be limited to the fans unless it integrates with outlook (and preferably other PMSs too) *as well as* linux. And I didn't see that out of the box.