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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."
But symian os is already OSS and probably better for mobile phones (since Nokia spearheaded the modular phone movement).
Now a Linux development kit for symian would be nice though.
It seems as Windows and Linux will meet at yet another frontier. Desktop-wise Windows is holding strong and no break-through seems to be near. Server wise, I'd say that Windows is loosing, but only slowly and more work will be needed. In the portable area, both Linux and Windows are relatively new players, but Linux is better suited. Hopefully this will mean that more developers start using (and liking) Linux, and thus help Linux in other areas.
As for the phones; Can I make a call from bash?
Linux is GPL so any kernel modifications must be posted. However, loaded modules can be held closed. Also all software running on the Linux kernel can also be kept a secret.
As the article says, the custom software will run in Java running on Linux, so it will be a JVM hosted by Linux, but Linux will probably not be visible to the end user.
And when speaking about Java applets running on phones. That has been done by both Ericsson and Nokia for a while now.
why I need any OS on my lower-end phone. I just want to make some calls!
I'd be interested in what kind of hardware they are using. I built a Linux-based cell phone a while back (uses VoIP w/ WiFi) and the best hardware I could find was still somewhat clunky (PDA sized) and cost about $400. I'm looking into rebuilding the software into tablet and wearable form factors but I'd sure love to find a cellphone sized device that ran Linux that I could hack on.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
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.
Its worth noting that Yamaha (the music gear maker, not the motorcycle maker) announced recently that they would be using an embedded version of linux for most of their keyboards in the near future.
...if you recompile your phone's kernal.
;)
:p
Every time you add a new number.
still, I can start sending my business card as an rpm
Outsiders agree. "The story here isn't really Linux on cell phones. It's Java running on Linux," Jackson said. "It's more about it being a bigger part of Motorola's Java strategy than it is about the efficacy or viability of Linux."
:-/
That's just wrong. The story is about selling more phones. How to do that. Easy: Put (java)games, (java)PIM applications, (java)Chat, (java)anything on the phone. A second bonus is ofcourse that linux runs on top of the PPC arch that motorola develops. It's also worth noting that now that Apple is flirting with IBM motorola needs customers for it's PPC line. It all makes sense: Let one division of motorola use the chips that the other division produces.
I'm only worried about what all this does for battery lifetime of my phone
Thomas S. Iversen
The new, Linux-powered, easy-to-use SmartPhone! To make a call, just enter the IP address of each router!
And when speaking about Java applets running on phones. That has been done by both Ericsson and Nokia for a while now
And, in Japan, on Sony, Panasonic, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba, Dentsu, and others' phones.
Nokia is just buying its technology from Sanyo and passing it off as its own in Europe and North America, as is Ericsson with Sony's technology.
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...
And when speaking about Java applets running on phones. That has been done by both Ericsson and Nokia for a while now.
As indeed they have been on Motorola phones.
I believe they were the first in fact, on a US iDEN phone a couple of years ago, which hosted it on VxWorks.
It's good for Java, but Motorola had already committed quite heavily to Java on their phones - heck, you can't move for Motorola adverts promoting Java games on their phones on UK TV right now - just everyone expected them to choose Symbian as the platform for running Java on their next-gen phones, so this is quite a surprise.
You're right that it probably won't give Linux any end-user visibility, but it's still a big win, and it gives embedded Linux vendors a big name they can point at and say to their potential customers - "Look, they chose Linux, why don't you?". Good for MontaVista, good for other embedded Linux vendors, good for Linux as a whole.
Technically, this should be a no-brainer. PalmOS is effectively a 16bit platform dedicated to organizer functions, with other uses as an afterthought; and Palm is currently in transition between PalmOS4 and PalmOS6 anyway, two very different architectures. Microsoft's phone platform is the usual bloated, buggy, messy stuff we have come to expect from them. Only Symbian is pretty decent, but it is proprietary. The Linux APIs (i.e., UNIX/POSIX) have a three decade history. They are mature and scalable to small devices, and Linux itself is as well. And huge numbers of programmers know the Linux APIs.
By 2006, IDC believes Symbian will have increased its market share in powerful phones to 53 percent from its current 46 percent. Microsoft will have about 27 percent of the market, with Palm at 10 percent. IDC predicts that Linux could take as much as 4.2 percent.
I see: the reason why Linux will have a hard time is because we say so.
"It's more efficient to work with (Linux) because there are more modules we won't have to develop ourselves." [...] "By using Linux instead of Symbian or Windows, they are in control of their own upgrade cycle,"
Seems like Motorola really has their act together. Good to see. If they deliver on their promises, my next phone is likely going to be from Motorola.
"does this use of Linux in Motorola phones make it less likely that it will be used widely as a desktop? I think Linux is rapidly becoming viewed as an appliance engine."
In breaking news today, IBM, HP, and Sun Microsystems have officially dropped their plans for Linux becuase, quote, "Linux is just an appliance engine."
Meanwhile, sales of desktop Windows have crashed as the public has come to terms with "Windows only being a game console OS."
I guess I would tell the parent to "lighten up" if he was not already modded "Insightful."
Before you mod me down, please realize that I could have been a coward and used my mod points to mod the parent down, instead of posting a reply.
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