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.""

Comments

And the top post on the linked blog?

[sH4RD]

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.

Re:And the top post on the linked blog?

[dan the person]

Among these things are: bluetooth stack, audio and video playback, filesystem support (think sd cards), more advanced applications and games, virtual memory management, advanced process scheduling features, (wireless) USB stack with host/client, mass storage controller stack, input device support (who knows what kind), hotplug capability (expansion cards), tcp/ip networking (perhaps for VOIP).

Which is why they use Symbian which does all that.