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Linux Gets Mobile (phone)
arclightfire writes "The Register are reporting that Motorola, one of major mobile phone manufacturers in the world, has decided that the future's bright, the future's penguin! The reasoning cited is the belief that China holds the key to the mobile phone market of tomorrow, therefore this future needs to be Linux; 'Not only is China potentially the world's largest mobile phone market, but it's also where most phones are built. Even more significantly, it's where the next generation of all mobile devices will be based, thinks Motorola.' Pax Linux?"
Has anyone tested a Motorola Linux phone? Can I download my own C apps to it? Do I get root access? Can I mess with the readio protocols and steal the ID number from another phone? Do I get source? Can I recompile the phone OS and reinstall it?
)9TSS
OK, so world domination is now within reach, but think of the consequences.
I think a biggish fork (or probably forks) cannot be far away as Linux transitions from the current server/plaything position to the OS of choice.
Why should 1/4 of the population of the world have their software controlled, however benignly, by some hacker bloke in the US?
Of course, this might not be a bad thing: lots more resources will flow in, but it might be just too difficult to expect the current system where there is one central repository and everything else is a patch off that, to continue.
To an extent all of this is prefigured in today's world, but just as with the Unix wars of the 1980s, the future will probably see lots of people talking about "Linux" when their systems are incompatible at a fundamental level.
But that is the price we will have to pay to play in the majors.
PDAs and Cell phones are going more and more to java for applications so phone and PDA makers are now looking more at what makes the best operating system to drive java.
Linux is free and you get to dictate the hardware specs. You don't get this with Palm or Windows CE.
This makes Linux an idea operating system to run java applications.
But this won't take us any closer to a Linux on the desktop than we were before and with the applications in java there will be a big os battle with the applications remaining portable between them.
It sells phones and it costs less. But that won't alwasy mean a cheaper phone.
I don't actually exist.
In Europe the task of recycling is being given to the manufacturer of the hardware. The idea being that in many cases manufacturers make their stuff so it is cheap to make, but not necessarily cheap to dispose of. Now manufacturers have an incentive to make products with recyclable materials, because they also need to take into account the cost of recycling.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.