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Linux to Power Most Motorola Phones
raffe writes "Motorola will begin selling its first cell phone based on Linux this year and says most future models will follow suit, a major sign of the growing popularity of operating system outside its stronghold on high-end computers."
Come one, it's got linux in the title, does that make it news?
You bet it is. One of the big three mobile phone manufacturers has said it's not going to be following the rest of the herd with Symbian but is going with an alternative. That in itself is huge news - the mobile phone market is gigantic - almost certainly the single most important embedded software market - and Symbian was expected to walk it, and win over every major manufacturer. Instead, as we see, it's not. Even without looking at it from a Linux perspective, it's a big thing.
At the same time, from a Linux perspective, it's even bigger. It's an enormous win, it'll keep MontaVista and their partners afloat for years. It's also a huge boost to Linux's status in the embedded world - a manufacturer as large as Motorola doesn't choose an OS for their phones lightly. This is a market Microsoft has been spending hand over fist to get into, and failing apart from with a few niche players (one of whom, Sendo, very publicly dumped Microsoft for Symbian)... and yet Linux waltzes in with no budget behind it and captures a Big Three manufacturer without even trying, and in the face of competition from Symbian who have a very very sharp phone OS of their own.
So yes it's news.
This is very good news! All it takes is a couple large companies like this to adopt Linux (e.g. for embedded systems, perfect use for Linux).
Everyone on slashdot loves desktop PCs and laptops, but the vast majority of computing power in the world exists in embedded systems like in your car, home appliances, portable gadgets, etc. These little systems really run the world.
So when embedded systems engineers get hooked on Linux, believe me, that's huge.
Linux scales: From mainframes to microprocessors. Windows can't do that. There isn't a single Windows CE/ PocketPC that does anything useful in less than 8MB. This may not look like a problem since memory and processing power are getting cheaper, but remember that Moore's law applies only to silicon, not to the batteries powering the silicon.
PalmOS and Symbian have good playing cards as well, being lean and mean and having a relatively large number of PDA applications ready for use, but they may lack portability of some typical desktop applications.
As for the phones; Can I run bash using voice commands?
I say this as someone who was actually contracting for Motorola, when a rant came down from management demanding that everyone use Motorola phones. I wonder if anyone was actually brave enough to actually tell him why none of the workforce were using their phones...
Anyway, I hope the situation has changed and management has gotten a clue. No one will eat a cake that looks like a giant dog turd even if it is made of delicious marzipan. The same goes for running Linux in a phone.
You just can't see it.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
tell that to PIXAR who just purchased a 1024 node blade server running Linux.
Tell that to SGI who have a 64-way Itanium running Linux...
I'm not so sure. For starters, modifying GPL'ed software does not require you to make the source available, distributing it does. The software isn't, strictly speaking, being distributed, the phone is. I'd imagine that this would still count as distribution for licensing pruposes, but I can see the potential for Motorola to claim that it's not necessary. Obviously, the right thing for Motorola to do would be to make the source available, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
We all know that technical merit is the sole deciding factor of sucess in the market, right?
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.