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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?"
and the geekdom was at peace for years after finally all microprocessors were switched to 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
Yes, they do run Linux. Most people in the cities own mobile phones. In fact, there are more mobile phones in use than land-line phones.
You'd be surprised at how capitalist China is. It's fast becoming a highly affluent society, and the companies that get in on the market are going to win enormously - those that don't are going to be left behind.
I don't know where you got the idea that people can't afford electronics there, but it's a pretty dated notion. At least 10 years out of date, I'd say.
Plus, my old boss once told me that Motorola's sole purpose in life is to make crappy phones at a great loss. Anyone who has ever had the mis-fortune of using one of them will know that in order to beat the Nokia's of this world, they need to fire their entire UI team and replace it with people who actually know what they are doing.
Sure, it runs Linux and it's got that geeky appeal. But don't get carried away, it's still the same experience that all Motorola phones have.
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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.
Now they should just port the UI and other frameworks from Symbian. Having a (C++) source code compatibility w/ Symbian OS would be a boon.
It will be interesting to see how Nokia and others react. The interesting thing isn't that it is based on Linux, but rather the fact that it's using Java extensively. Will also the lower level stuff be done in Java? In Symbian circles most of the "serious" stuff is done in C++ (ish), but we'll see whether the sledge will turn at some point. Phones are (still) very memory-cramped environments, and require design decisions that differ from normal Linux application design.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
The average annual salary in our high-tech company (about 75% engineers.. offices in Beijing & Shenzhen) is less than RMB100k (about US$12k), but yes, everybody seems to have cell phones...
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Sure, you may be wondering how most people manage to possibly even get by on a $50 paycheck a month, but realize that that is the national average, where all sorts of people are factored in. In a land of such contrast, there are still tons of terribly rich people, and those who earn upwards of $1200(USD) a month are not that uncommon.
80% of China's population is into agriculture, and only 20% of them are priveledged enough to be urbanites, but if you do the math, that would mean that there are more people living in cities in China than there are in the United States. In a place where image is everything, it is inevitable that cellular phones have become extremely popular, if not ubiquitous. On the street, almost everybody (and I mean somewhere like 9 out of 10 people) has a cell phone. It is no wonder why Motorola is considering this vast market, because this is only the tip of the iceberg. This many cellular service subscribers only indicate a market penetration of 13%. Imagine the profits of market penetration somewhere upwards to 50%.
Having read the article thoroughly, this startling news shows the flaws in the brewing Open Source Zeitgeist that is gripping the software community. Have you considered that providing software for free to countries such as China is essentially tacit support for oppressive regimes?
Far-fetched? Think about it: With MySQL, the People's Army will now be able to do multiple queries on their tables of democratic activists in Olog(n) time instead of lengthy searches in card catalogs. The bureaucratic overhead previously allowed activists enough time to flee the country. How about building cheap firewalls so the people can't get the unbiased reporting that CNN provides? Or using Apache to publish lists of Falun Gong people to their police forces instantly? I doubt that never crossed your minds when you were coding away in your parents' basements. Consider putting that little thought in your mental resolv.conf file.
If that does not concern you ( which it probably doesn't, since the slashdot.org paradigm is publishing articles about how not to pay for things ), consider something else. When China eventually goes to war with Taiwan, we want to be able turn their command and control facilities into the computing equivalent of a train-wreck. One of the advantages of Windows never mentioned in the article is the ability of Microsoft to remotely deactivate Windows XP in the case of a national emergency. Thanks to GNU/Lunix, Taiwan will be on a collision course with the mainland in the near future.
Which throws into question Mr. Stallman's motives. A known proponent of socialism, the Chinese government and RMS are natural allies. Could it be a back door to Stallman's dream of an uber-Socialist United States? We may never know for sure. Next time you consider contributing to an open source project, ask yourself this question: don't you want to make sure your work isn't used for nefarious purposes? Will you risk having blood on your hands?
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.
Oh my gosh. I just spent 3 years writing an application for Windows, and now Windows is done. Before that, I spent a year on OS/2, and OS/2 was killed by Windows. Before that, I spent a few years working on Commodore Amiga, and that was killed by PC Clones, and before that, I was big into Atari 800, and that was killed by Apple...
If I write something else for Windows, christ, MS will file bankruptcy...
This is my sig.
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.
How would either of them be cheaper? Both Symbian and Linux are for low powered devices. Putting the code onto a chip would be the same cost.
Symbian 0 - Linux 0 (both equal, no points)
no licensing fees
True, however the reason behind the licencing fees is so that Symbian can recruit people and pay them to develop full time. If you were going to go with a Linux based solution you'd have to pay for the development yourself. Also, most of the companies who are using Symbian have shares in the company and agreed the licencing model themselves to directly ensure they don't get screwed. Symbian cannot do a Microsoft here and pull a bait and switch tactic since they are owned by the very same companies that they do business with.
Symbian 1 - Linux 0.5
competitive advantage
Symbian is already out there, already proven and already has applications written for it. Linux in the mobile arena isn't as proven, isn't already written with the mobile in mind (there would still be a lot of work required), requires that companies give away their competitive advantage (through the GPL licence) and has far less applications written for it.
Symbian 2 - Linux 0.5
I still see no reason to jump ship. Even if other companies jumped ship, it won't signal the death of Symbian.
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