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Nokia Could Make Linux Top Embedded OS
prostoalex writes "Nokia's experiment with N770 prototype device and its own Linux-based dev platform got the folks from ARCchart thinking - Is Nokia ready to jump the Symbian ship and switch to Linux? TechWeb chimes in: "Such a switch by Symbian would make Linux, in one fell swoop, the leading mobile device platform. It already is riding a wave with PalmSource's decision to port the Palm OS to Linux and a defection by Nokia would seal the deal.""
Nokia to move off Symbian? Unlikely
ARCchart do allow that the porting process would be possible if technically not an easy feat. This rather understates the difficulty involved. The strength of Symbian is and always has been the fact it has been designed as a mobile OS from the beginning of its life. From release 6 onwards it has been designed with mobile telephony at the heart of the OS. As a result the Symbian OS is structured is some fundamentally different ways to other OSs. Power and performance management are key considerations in design from the kernel upwards. As a result the Symbian OS is the most powerful mobile OS available. It would require fundamental changes in Linuxs core to achieve similar specifications.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
Today's employment section in Bangalore "Times of India" calls for software developers with experience in Symbian/Series 60/Linux developers. Read what you want into this development :-).
Clicked the link. First story on their page:
Nokia to move off Symbian? Unlikely
Of course the article below that is the one we are looking for.
770 = 2*5*7*11
Coulda sworn I read that somewhere recently.
Maybe you should have read the linked stories?
My quality social news site.com.
Hmmm.... the ability to PERL script my phone into calling me every 5 minutes when I'm down at the pub is going to make me look popular....
*wakes up, gets back to work*
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
1. Fucking cellphone.
2. It'd be nice if he hadn't copied this, since it's been around since the beginning of times.
I know everybody here would love the idea of Nokia switching to linux, but let's not get carried away. What would Nokia benefit from that:
1) Since Nokia owns 48% of it, Symbian is "as open and free as necessary" from Nokia's point of view. They get to decide how the OS evolves and get their share of the profits.
2) Symbian is stable and has functionality made specifically for mobile phones. A new Linux platform does not offer this. There are no short terms benefits of switching.
3) Licensing Series 60 is a business for Nokia and something they have huge investments in. They can't switch unless it doesn't affect this.
4) The reason Symbian exists, is that Nokia doesn't wan't to spend resources to development of an OS.
The only way I see Nokia switching would be that Symbian would do it. And why would they?
I seriously doubt that will happen, when I can't even get my girlfriend to get rid of hers!
Troll. Anti-linux site.
that this was going to be the year of Linux!
This may have been interesting/insightful the first time it was posted, but now it's just trolling. Please don't mod up
9 84255
c id=12667071
Tuesday July 05, @13:28
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154831&cid=12
Sunday May 29, @01:45
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151030&
I cannot see Nokia jumping ship to Linux as much as we all may want them to, however they do seem to be heading in a direction which suggests they may offer a Nokia friendly distro which would be semi supported. Not installed initially, but would allow individuals and businesses to download at will and get more of out the hardware.
Already trolled Slashdot.
Nice creative writing, smartass..
Could you stop fucking trolling?
PalmSource can be summed up on one word: irrelevent.
The total number of devices shipping with a "next generation" Palm OS is 0. Very shortly, PalmSource is not even going to be using Palm in their name.
Now, if Palm (formerly PalmOne) was going Linux, this would be a big deal. But PalmSource is just building software or the sake of building software, not for the purposes of having it used by anone in the world.
(repost from http://news.com.com/5208-1030-0.html?forumID=1&thr eadID=2246&messageID=11929&start=-184
thanks to "Alex Vandeputte" )
You are grossly misinformed, and it's a shame that you decided to spread the wrong information (but somehow I have the feeling that was the purpose of your post: FUD).
- You do not have to release under any open source license anything compiled with GCC.
- You do not have to release under any open source license anything that uses Linux various libraries (unless statically linked, which you shouldn't do anyway) - there is a "Lesser" GPL (LGPL) that provide such exceptions.
- It's only if you took existing GPL code and modified it that you'd have to release it BUT only if you distributed such code (for money or for free.) You can use it internally without ever showing your modifications to anyone in the outside world.
There are a bunch of vendors that produce Linux products (compile with GCC, and linking to LGPL-ed Linux libraries) such as IBM and Oracle. Their products are not open source, nor do they break any licenses or laws by not open sourcing their product.
You need better lawyers. If they had as much as read the FAQs on the GPL website, they'd have this figured out. But again, I smell an ulterior motive in this post...
Personally, I do not trust them further than I can throw their cellphones.
Linux provides a very cost-effective (almost free) solution. The cost is born by the small army of volunteer open-source developers.
Nokia is making the right choice and shall remain the #1 cell-phone manufacturer.
Notice that the focus of the speculation is on LINUX, not on the embedded market. "If Nokia chose Linux..." But, why would they? Why would Symbian no longer be a good choice?
It's like saying... "If I won the lottery, I'd be rich!". Linux is great, and I'm sure will eventually command the information/communications industries. But individual speculations like this, unfounded by even a quality rumor, are just a waste of time.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Lima India November Uniform X-ray
Such a switch by Symbian would make Linux, in one fell swoop, the leading mobile device platform
;-)
Sure, whatever, so long as you understand that Embedded OS != mobile device platform.
Perhaps it's hard to believe, but to become the #1 embedded OS, it's going to take a little more than dominating cell-phones. Although it would be a good first step
They will actually switch to linux. Just like Micro$oft, and good open-minded people will loose their enemies. Everything is lost. No 'Big Bad' to fight against anymore. And all the people writing viruses will loose their job, or get twisted and join those M$ forces now trying to write linux virus. Living in harmony? No, life is not fun that way. Otherwise Star Wars would have been about happy people living in peace.
You are referencing to Linux in desktops/workstations and this article is about Linux in mobile devices. It's up to the GUI whether it is easy to use or not - not whether it is Linux or Symbian.
Those guys don't care about the rest of us, they have jobs, they're being paid by the government to design their half ass compilers and shitty OS.
Not true! Anything Richard Stallman needs he gets from donations (or anything he managed to save from his MacArthur award). He doesn't work for his food like the rest of us! I don't think he's ever had to earn a wage or salary from productive position.
To be fair, he's hardly alone in this. Like my university professor friend who thinks money grows on the government grant tree, or my charity president friend, who makes her living crying during PBS pledge breaks.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
It's just a little shocking, should be made note of. Here is the actual article link
Is it stagnant, or polluted with heavy metals? I think you drink to much of it.
This may be a stupid observation, but why not keep Symbian for the phone functionality and have a second processor running Linux for the "desktop apps"? You know, the way computers work already with multiple dedicated CPUs. In which case, development should be considerably easier and cheaper. It's always easier to do a development job when the different parts of the system run on optimised architectures.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
heres an article posted about a month ago that has more info on the 770. it looks like a really neat little thing. but i'm still not sure what the point of it is if you can just have a laptop. :\
= R2O0ULAC2ZZK2QSNDBCCKH0CJUMEKJVN
http://www.linuxpipeline.com/163701240;jsessionid
Wikileaks, no DNS
Let's just say that I have someone very close to me, that works in the Nokia business unit that makes Symbian (apps, drivers, protocol stack...).
Symbian is not only an OS for Nokia phones. It's a whole ecosystem that Nokia develops and nourishes: 3rd party developers, service providers, operators (which often are also service providers), related non-Symbian software 1st and 3rd parties etc. etc.
As it is now, Nokia's involvement with Symbian will only grow from here, not decline, because it aims to tap into multiple streams of revenue. If you think Nokia makes money only from mobile phones, you're a fool. And Nokia's ambitions are certainly towards further diversification. In this view, Symbian is a well-estabilished platform, and Nokia has invested billions in the abovementioned ecosystem.
Sigged!
Sure, Nokia are using Linux in the N770, but the N770 ISNT A PHONE! It'a a portable tablet that uses surrounding networks via WiFi/Bluetooth, so doesn't need the real-time capabilties of a phone OS. Nokia is a large company that produce a LOT of different products - it's not surprising that they use different embedded OS's for different things. It's just like saying - Wow! Nokia are using Linux for their digital TV decoders, that must mean they are going to use Linux for their phones too!
On the other hand Linux would be an interesting choice for PDA's and other such devices. The problem is though that now, the mobile phone and the PDA's are merging together. This is where the battle stands, with the new genereation of phones with both PDA and mobile phone capabilities.
Symbian has dominated so far.
Incredible the number of Redmond trolls in this thread. M$'s budget for Linux-FUDding is skyrocketting these days...
+1 funny, +1 true.
Linux is *not* user friendly, and until it is linux will stay with >1% marketshare.
So you're saying if Linux were to become 'user friendly' its marketshare would decrease below 1%?! Awesome!
1) Obfuscate Linux - the more the better apparently!
2) Watch marketshare grow!
3) PROFIT!
Great thinking Mr Troll!
the ability to PERL script my phone into calling me every 5 minutes when I'm down at the pub is going to make me look popular...
:)
Then get coding, because Perl and Python have already been supported by Nokia on Symbian for over a year.
But once Nokia moves to Linux, you can look forward to being able to VNC into your home Nokia server, turn down the lights and put that can't-fail Barry White CD on, all while you're still down at the pub.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Nokia phones, remotely managing your Swinging Bachelor Pad.
I thought TRON was the top embedded OS?
What you reap is what you sow
...people will loose their enemies.
As opposed to tightnening them?
I am responsible for some C++ components that build on Symbian, Solaris and Linux as well as some purely Symbian bits. Symbian has rich functionality in areas such as communications (obviously) and multimedia.
There are many wonderful ideas in it, such as the way it is based on a microkernel, the asynchronous IO mechanism (Active Objects) and ECOM which is rather like COM on windows. The fact that everything is in C++ is a boon too.
It is quite a mature system because it's simply the evolution of EPOC32 from the Psion series of PDAs. The Size and depth of the APIs is amazing.
There are some huge problems:
1) The base operating system is standard across phones but there are "environments" which consist of a GUI and various essential libraries (Series 60 or UIQ). The handset manufacturer has also, up till version 8, been free not to implement some of the Telephony APIs. It is hard, therefore to run exactly the same software on all phones. The situatio is probably still more standardised than Linux in that sense that it has only 2 GUIs and the multimedia stuff is completely standard.
2) It is built with GCC 2.92 where the support for exceptions was not good. They had to implement their own exception handling and a mechanism called the CleanupStack for freeing dynamically allocated memory in the event of an exception. It is unavoidably complex to use, non portable and the biggest bane to a Symbian C++ developer's existence.
3) The source is only open to those who pay a fortune for it and even then they get the base Symbian OS without the drivers for the phone models they use or the "Series 60" environment. This has hurt my company because we needed to understand certain aspects of the sound drivers - nobody could tell us and we couldn't look at the code ourselves because even though we have the base operating system source we haven't got the "Series 60" source.
4) Java on the phones is so crippled (e.g. not being able to open a file) due to their security fears that it is useful only for games and trivial applications.
Symbian 9 which is coming out with the latest N90 phone from Nokia fixes most things:
1) They have "bitten the bullet" and broken ABI compatibility to use the standard ARM ABI so now one can compile with GCC 3.4 with all it's great improvements. It is not clear whether the infamous CleanupStack and home-made exception mechanism has gone but I am hoping so.
2) As I mentioned, support for various Telephony APIs is now a requirement on the handset manufacturer.
3) Nokia Ported Python to Series 60 and unlike Java it's not crippled w.r.t. access to fundamental APIs.
4) There is a new security model which controls access to sensitive APIs. To get a public key certificate which allows access to the lowest level ones requires a payment which is annoying but at least it is now possible without buying access to the source at a huge cost.
Symbian was designed for much more constrained machines and with an inferior C++ compiler but the underlying design is very modern.
As another poster has said, it has an "ecosystem" across several manufacturers. To compete, Linux would have to be available in a standard version across a lot of handsets too. Destroying this ecosystem would eliminate a lot of development investment by third-party software vendors so I think that Nokia would be unwise to do that overnight.
Regards,
Tim
This is all just my personal opinion.
Put Quake3 CD into your CD drive.
Type "apt-get install quake3" or "emerge quake3"
Follow the instructions on the screen.
Start playing.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
http://dc5video.debian.net/2005-07-11/03-Debian_De rivatives_Panel-Benjamin_Mako_Hill.mpeg (right at the end: 1h 42 min)
Just a guess: On DebConf 6 someone mentiones he presents Nokia that are "trying to build a Debian-based Tablet". So is this a Debian Derivative??
well,
- size : laptops ARE generally larger
- power consumption : more peripherals to support disks, IO ports, DVDs larger screens.
- Heat : more equipement means more power needed
- bloated : requires more powerful equipement meaning more power needed again
- bloated : a laptop can do a lot more stuff but that makes its use more complicated for non-tech savvy.
m2cThe Arc-chart article is factually wrong and assumptions made based on these 'facts' are very close to being rediculous.
I don't really have the time to dispell all errors in the article but I must address a few.
First, porting Series 60 user interface, and especially Nokia's base applications to linux is implausible - more likely scenario in that case is a complete rewrite due to heavy use of Symbian specific features such as comm/file/... servers, active objects, IPC and finally security.
Java VM sold as part of Series 60 is Sun's CLDC HI ported and maintained by Symbian, not 'written by Nokia' as the article claims. In addition to core MIDP2 features, most other major features such as PIM and file access (JSR-075), multimedia, bluetooth (JSR-82), location API, access to SMS and MMS are all developed and maintained by Symbian. Nokia does have a considerable Java resource but to my knowledge most of them work on integration, future (possibly CDC) and of course Series 40 (Nokia's non-symbian OS and UI).
Nokia has put in £50 million over it's licensing fees in 2004 to help Symbian and that was at the time of the Psion sale. The suggestion that Symbian license fees are something troubling Nokia is really really out of place because a) Nokia owns close to 50% of the company b) Nokia has ~$20 billion idle in the bank.
Symbian phones constitute 10% of Nokia's sales - Nokia has a large set of non-symbian technologies such as Series 40 - for their mainstream phones. This explains why has Nokia licensed ActiveSync and Window Media DRM directly, rather than through Symbian - so they can actually use it in non-Symbian phones.
Finally, using the announcement of 770 to draw conclusions about N-S relationship will not lead us very far. Following the same logic, if hotmail was using freebsd (at some point at least) would that mean that Microsoft is ditching Windows?
http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/
Season 2 Episode 19
Linux User Group Radio interviewed some of the people from Nokia, you can find it in S2E19 from the link above. Warning: adult language content!
The interesting thing, for me, was the timescale they discussed to get the N770 approved and out of the door. I'd have thought it'd be a year at most, given that linux on arm is well understood, used on iPaqs, Zauruses, etc. But the were talking nearly two years!
Embedded linux has come a long way in the last few years, but the lack of linux smartphones on the supermarket shelves hints that it's not a trivial process.
Trolltech have a QT package specifically for phones, and yet Nokia rolled their own. Are Nokia re-inventing the wheel, or do they think they can bring something new?
Nokia is a big company. A huge one, actually. Big companies benefit from software patents and therefore Nokia benefits from software patentability. That's why Nokia is in favour of software patents.
Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your friend, sometimes it isn't. Nokia is no exception.
?SYNTAX ERROR
You know what? Fuck linux! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck lignux!
will the fonts be as hideous and unreadable as on desktop linux?
And to continue the list above:
6. Price. 350 and this device looks like it can do all the things I usually use my 1500 laptop for in the evenings (checking tv program lists and news, that is), but without the 30 second boot time.
Using python we clustered (we managed over 100!!) Nokia phones (3650a, 6600s) and built a distributed processing platform with nodes being dynamically introduced and removed from the cluster...impressive but bandwidth over GPRS, bluetooth and infrared was poor - fairly cool to switch between protocols on the fly..eg: close proximity BT/IR, when a phone moved out of range we automatically switched to GPRS.
...what about text entry? One way PDA/Phones are ok, but with gadgets like these, I want to be able to enter data fairly quickly...
You have only to look at http://www.roesler-ac.de/wolfram/hello.htm
to see that development on Symbian is insanely complex and you'd have to be out of your gourd to do it voluntarily. The development environment only runs well on Windows. Last time I looked, Wine was required in order to run it on Linux because there were some proprietary tools in the compilation chain. There is no good debugger support.
There are, however, reasonable POSIX compatibility libraries; Java is implemented using them.
Even in Java, many programs run flawlessly in the emulated environment and die silently on the hardware. On-device debugging is supposed to be available for Java but I was never able to get it to work. Nokia would do well to consider other operating systems.
enxcept that linux is a kernel, not an OS
If Nokia goes with Linux how will users be able to use the phone. It will be useless like using Linux on a PC.
Linux sucks. It is an underground OS that is completely unstandardized. Linux geeks, get the fuck over yourselves.
Apparently Linux has stealthily pulled ahead of Windows Mobile in the mobile phone space. Quoting from a recent article: 'Embedded Linux powered 14 percent of smartphones shipped worldwide in Q1 of 2005, up 412 percent from 3.4 percent in Q1-04, according to Gartner. Windows Mobile Smartphone shipments also grew, rising 50 percent from a 2.9 share in 1Q-04 to 4.5 percent in 1Q-05.'
I don't see why there are hardware manufacturers using Linux on their proprietary devices.
They should be using something they can keep the source code to, such as NetBSD, which already has been ported to many platforms.
Linux (it is just a kernel) may have better SMP and other features for large machines, but in this case there is no benefit.
Not all companies give the source back, as in the case with Linksys a while back.
Yay for GPL Kool-Aid.
ESR > RMS
I recently purchased a Nokia 6680... ordered straight from Hong Kong through ebay. Not really available in the US. One of the main reasons I got it was that there is an active developer community around the Series 60 based phones. I hadn't really seen open source projects for a cell phone before and the thought intrigued me. Also, looking at the code (esp. Python...my language of choice)...it looked pretty easy to program for. Plus... no one I know has that phone...which makes me way cooler than all of my friends.
Doesn't SlashCode have a delete post feature?
Offtopic I'd say.
Is that the newest development in Cybersex?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Ha. Linux is hardly free the way these corportations use it. In fact it is probably more expensive than their in house solutions.
Another microkernel to the rescue!
See: http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2005/07/new_w ifienabled.html
The articles make it seem that all S60 applications are Java. While many are, a growing percentage of S60 applications are written in C++. Nokia purchased and licenses pieces of freescale's (formely Motorola, formely Metrowerks) CodeWarrior for Symbian OS, which is the most popular C++ IDE for SymbianOS. You'll find that most games and heavy-duty S60 applications are written in C++ because, well, Java sux at ~133Mhz (where most entry level S60 devices run at).
That's not what I meant.
Microsoft Could Make Linux Top OS ...of course they could...
yeah, good points there. i'm a 12" powerbook user so the size, bloatedness isnt neccesarily true although yes it is bigger. battery life, i get about 5 hours on low power consumption. but anyway, i guess i can see where someone would want one. its that consumer electronics thing i guess
Many large SW development companies (including the one I work for) will not consider Linux because proprietary drivers are not practical. Embedded requires proprietary drivers for areas such as safety, telecoms compliance, use of third-party hardware.
Embedded Linux use in phones has gone up 400% in the past year. Isn't it already the top embedded OS?
Moo!
How is writing your own modern operating system from scratch going to be cheaper than modifying the already existing high quality well explained code base of Linux? I honestly fail to see the "Insight" in the parent's comment.
My company is a Nokia Forum Pro member, and they've been great with us on the business side. However, as a Symbian developer, I'd like to see some support for Linux development environments.
Granted, some people have gotten the tools running in Unix-like environments, but the emulator is Windows only. Development without it is nearly impossible because the only other option is a hacked together print to a file. It's frustrating going through endless edit-compile-install-run-read the log loops only to find out that the problem is something I wouln've seen after thirty seconds in the debugger.
How do you "port" an OS to another OS?
Isn't that much like painting a window on your wall? It not really a window...its a wall, but it looks like a window.