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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.""
Linux is *not* user friendly, and until it is linux will stay with >1% marketshare.
/tmp or the installer will dump core. After the installer is done, edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and add a section called "GL" and put "driver nv" in it. Make sure you have the latest version of X and Linux kernel 2.6 or else X will segfault when you start. OK, run the Quake 3 installer and make sure you set the proper group and setuid permissions on quake3.bin. If you want sound, look here [link to another obscure web site], which is a short HOWTO on how to get sound in Quake 3. That's all there is to it!"
Take installation. Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package": Yes, because typing in "apt-get" or "emerge" makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking an icon that says "setup".
Linux zealots are far too forgiving when judging the difficultly of Linux configuration issues and far too harsh when judging the difficulty of Windows configuration issues. Example comments:
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?"
Zealot: "Oh that's easy! If you have Redhat, you have to download quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin, then do chmod +x on the file. Then you have to su to root, make sure you type export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 but ONLY if you have that latest libc6 installed. If you don't, don't set that environment variable or the installer will dump core. Before you run the installer, make sure you have the GL drivers for X installed. Get them at [some obscure web address], chmod +x the binary, then run it, but make sure you have at least 10MB free in
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Windows?"
Zealot: "Oh God, I had to install Quake 3 in Windoze for some lamer friend of mine! God, what a fucking mess! I put in the CD and it took about 3 minutes to copy everything, and then I had to reboot the fucking computer! Jesus Christ! What a retarded operating system!"
So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards Windows.
I started (or attempted to start) using Linux a few years back when I started university, just out of plain curiosity. My buddy and I downloaded the ISO images of Red Hat Linux 8.0, and from that point forward, it all went to shit.
I figured it would be no problem, I used Sun's Solaris quite a bit so I understood the shell at least. Install went well, even though I was confused why I needed seven million partitions which I had to allocate manually and to have a root password since it was a single user machine. After my install, I restarted my machine, saw a bunch of ugly crap being spewed to the screen, and before you knew it, X Windows loaded up and I was in Linux. "Ooh, this looks neat, just like Windows. Let's see if I can surf the web!"
This is the point where I discovered the 'magic' of Linux. It couldn't find a driver for a simple ethernet card. So I got onto another computer running Windows, and found some type of driver for it. All right, I'll just burn it to a cd, pop it onto the Linux machine, and we're good to go. I started looking around for the CD ROM icon...where was it? Apparently I had to mount it manually, luckily I know UNIX. Then it asks me for root password. Okay, so I enter it. Then I can see the CD ROM, great. Oh look, the driver is in the form of source code, I have to compile it. So I tried to compile it with the configure script that came along. Oh wait, I need some !@#$ing stupid C library. All right, so I download that as well in the form of a RPM, which luckily worked, and then I was able to compile the driver.
Okay now what? According to the instructions, I had to recompile the kernel making the driver a part of it. 'Recompile the kernel?' I thought, 'What kind of sick operating system makes you recompile its kernel...' Apparently I didn't know what kind of twisted people designed Linux. Oh wait, it wants the stupid root password again...good God. So after about 5 hours, I had Internet...given that I knew how to use a UNIX machine. Four days later I tried installing something else, it asked me for the same stupid C library but version 1.2.3.4.5 instead of the version I had...God forbid...1.2.3.4.4 (oh what a fool I was for not updating every 10 minutes!) Within an hour, my drive was formatted (twice out of spite) and running Windows XP.
A few months back I was inspired again to run Linux. If you read the tech news, there's no doubt about it, it's taking over the server market. A Linux sys admin will make 20 grand more than a Windows sys admin (Makes you wonder if 20 grand is worth eventual suicide), so I felt I should pick it up. Of course now I was more prepared, I've read books, admin guides, worked as a student UNIX operator, 3 years under my belt as a computer science student, two internships, and had studied the Linux kernel in depth.
I decided I would try a whole bunch of distributions, I tried Red Hat 9, Fedora Core 2, SuSe 9.1, Debian, and Mandrake 10. All special in there own little way...like retarded children. As soon as SuSe loaded up, I was like..."nice nice, very sleek...", then a hissing came out my left speaker that wouldn't go away. Nice autodetection for the sound driver. Bye bye SuSe. All right, let's try Red Hat 9...oh look Red Hat won't give any more automatic updates because now that it has a little bit of money...!@#$ open source, let's become the next Microsoft! Oh Debian and Mandrake, just plain ugly and slow.
What about Fedora Core, Red Hat's latest method of getting code for free rather than having to pay programmers in India $0.85 an hour to do it. Why pay someone when you can have some idiot from GNU or some grad student do it for free, then sell it for 400 bucks a pop. It was surprising though that that experimental piece of crap worked better than all the other distributions, even though its autoupdate some how corrupted my kernel and I had to overwrite it.
But what I find most stupid is the philosophy behind it. Why make something so complex for free? I'm an excellent software engineer, good software is hard to m
Consulting for several large companies, I'd always done my work on
Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do
some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was
very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our
exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several technical challenges along the way
(specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we
were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process
went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were
considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that
we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It
was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something
called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license
states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available.
Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money
we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would
now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any
products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to
its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever
use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult
position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with
another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no
option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive
with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually
guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my
experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my
associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to
something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source".
Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure
it remains only a bit player.
Thank you for your time.
I found this site http://www.sextoysparty.com/ whicj uses the same format as you as Nokia. Whicj one it is I still do not know.
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.
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Ha. Linux is hardly free the way these corportations use it. In fact it is probably more expensive than their in house solutions.