Slashdot Mirror
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.""
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?
Yes, but...
...
Symbian does the job that it was designed to do, and does it well. That is, it makes a good phone, with an elementry address book and simple games. This is good for a phone from 1999. The problem is that today, phones do much more and in the near future they will need to do even more so. 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).
On top of these, you'll want to run advanced web browsers (how about KHTML?), mp3 players and an itunes-compatible DRM client, an address book to sync with Outlook, real games that have a better interface than the lousy phone keypad, Java/brew environment, Vonage client, net stumbler, secure credit card transaction manager, SD card file browser,
Yes, some of these things are hacked into Symbian now. But think of who Symbian's biggest competitor is: Windows CE. WinCE provides all of the above. Nokia is not an operating system company, and can't afford to be. They can modify Symbian to no end, but the effort required is large. Or they can use a freely available piece of code that does it all already.
As for NetBSD, Nokia is kind of in the anti-Microsoft camp because they fear MS marginalizing them. Like Palm, they've been fighting the invasion of WinCE, and they too realize that having an open system (to which they and their fellows in the anti-MS group) have to contribute benefits everyone.
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!