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Linux Crashes the Mobile Party
superglaze writes "ZDNet.co.uk has a fairly comprehensive feature on the progress being made by Linux for cellphones. Seems a pretty consumer deal for now, but there are some interesting hints of Linux eventually challenging Windows Mobile and Symbian in business use. The article also seems to suggest that the two big groups pushing mobile Linux could be amenable to a merger due to common interests."
The year of Linux on the deskt...Cell Phone?
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
"Linux Mobile (LiMo) Foundation and the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS)"
Limo and Lips sounds like the name for a private escort service.. I can see these guys going far in the industry!
which is totally what she said
I havent read TFA but Jon Stokes at arstechnica.com has a quite enthusiastic review on Intel's new 45nm mobile processor. He foresees standard x86 operating systems (windows or linux) running even on am/fm radios :P
Intel's x86 ISA grows down: today laptops, tomorrow the iPhone.
This might speed-up the development of the wanted-by-all linux (smart)phone...
Call me what you will a BES set up is still really easy if all you need it for is email/calendar/contact sync from a corp standing
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Here are some smart phones running Linux.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9423084269.html
Personally I don't care too much what the OS is so long as it works well enough and lets me get my email too.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
All the others, including linux, still suffer in my eyes with ease of use and integration issues and will continue to have that into the future.
This doesn't have to be the case if companies invest time into building well thought out interfaces on top of linux. The idea here is simply that linux is a great platform to do this kind of thing.
In regards to Apple, I think they do what they think will maximize their profits only. If you think about it, the used and included FOSS in order to gain developers, and jumpstart increased interest in their platform. They are at the point now, where they don't need to do that with their mobile market. Nothing is touching iPods, and the iPhone already sold +1 million units, making it basically untouchable. They are smart, but they usually provide products that I don't mind having and using.
I write code.
The OpenMoko platform is looking like a good bet for a Linux-based phone/pda platform. ARM-based, iPhone-like touchscreen and a nice development kit available. It's due in Oct/Nov I beleve.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
For one thing I can't really see how Linux falls down on being "rich enough to deliver applications", and his other points just seem to show that Linux doesn't yet have much market penetration in the mobile market. While this is true, slamming it for that in an article about the Linux entry into the mobile market seems odd. I guess maybe it's just a poorly chosen quote by the author.
When I can easily sync my linux/wm5/symbian/whatever OS phone to my linux desktop wake me. These are just going to be more linux phones that sync with windows desktop easily but on the linux desktop require using some poorly documented library that may or may not work on the current version of your phone. Then IF your phone happens to work with said library/module you are going to have to edit all sorts of config files and PRAY that your phone is actually recognized. After all this you better hope that your mail client, calendar, and contact manager of choice work with said library.
I've said this before on slashdot and I know I will be modded troll so enjoy.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
I am a troll.
A little over a year ago I dropped almost $700 on an ipaq hw6945. I had visions of carrying around a computer in my pocket in place of where my phone used to be. This just is not the case. The network stack on this thing sucks - hard. Using terminal software and/or browsing the internet is excruciating. I basically never do it. I desperately want a choice that isn't Windows Mobile. Perhaps I'd come back at some point, but I doubt it. As it stands I have a really excellent text-messenger and a pretty crappy phone. Almost none of the capabilities of this thing are being used do to a ghastly interface and limited product selection.
I dream of being able to run Linux on this thing... and have it actually work, of course. I just checked handhelds.org again this morning, and this still wasn't the case. Frankly, I don't really see community effort ever coming back around to my device. Not at least as a phone with camera and GPS, etc. I do dream of some larger organization, e.g. Ubuntu, taking a stab at this some day...
I'm the biggest nerd in the world, I know, but at least I'm in the right place.
I remember running Linux in '93, Slackware 3.0. Amazing how far we've come, but this step could not have been imagined back when I began. Our little penguin is now going mobile!
The Cell Phone will become ubiquious in ways computers never could be. Even laptops don't get into places you will find phones.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Most "smart" phones (and most phones in general) don't have support for syncing with Linux. Try syncing any series 60v3 phone with linux, using even development code and it just doesn't work.
When first reading the title, I thought it's about crashes of Linux on mobiles ...
Please don't start titles with "Linux Crashes" unless it's about instabilities in Linux.
Does this mean that you can do crazy-ass things like setup an ssh server on your phone and then call yourself remotely?
Peter
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
So tell me what method you're using for time travel. Slackware 3 wasn't released until late 1995. http://www.jeepster.org.uk/history.html
I'm disabling ads until because I choose not to reward redesigns that are less usable than "view source".
It had to be '93 or '94, because I began running it my senior year of high-school, right before I had to switch to OS/2 in january '95 because it is what my college ran. It might have been 2.0 but I swore it was 3.0.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
If you think about it, the used and included FOSS in order to gain developers, and jumpstart increased interest in their platform.
They used FOSS tools and applications to actually implement sections of the kernel and low-level userspace, not just for developers and "increased interest". GCC is the MacOS X compiler, BSD is the UNIX user space, Darwin is the kernel. And as seen in WebKit and LLVM's clang, they're still making significant contributions-- far beyond most company's small patches and bugfixes-- to the FOSS community as well.
It will be interesting to see what the Darwin landscape looks like as of Leopard (the upcoming MacOS X 10.5). The iPhone was supposedly built on Leopard, and if the kernel is still sufficiently open source one could see it replacing Linux in some of these smart phones.
E pluribus unum
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there aren't enough people who both want a smart-phone and have bought into the Linux ideology to sustain a single Linux-based smart-phone. That's not to say that such a phone couldn't be successful, just that the selling point can't be "it's got Linux!"
What are the real selling points of a smart-phone?
* The applications
* The development environment (promise of new, better apps soon)
* Linking to other devices (syncing)
* The interface
* The phone functions
Apple have just sewn up the interface, everyone gets the phone functions pretty much right, syncing is okay generally (non-Windows phones are hurt by closed Exchange servers), most people do apps reasonably well and the dev environment is okay for some, not so hot for others (Apple).
How will a Linux smart-phone distinguish itself from the pack? It's no longer enough to be as good as the rest. These phones have to be much better. Maybe the better APIs and adherence to standards will be enough. It won't win the 'cool' factor that we saw the iPhone blitz just recently, but maybe it'll be enough.
I'd like to see more sizzle to help sell the sausage.
I am pretty frustrated with my iPhone in a lot ways, and really hope that there will be a linux replacement for the firmware, cause I don't want to be threatened (me phone is unlocked) every time there is an update for a few new little tiny things.
To see a few of my Android apps goto: www.hartwired.com
I already have my Linux mobile device, and I couldn't be happier with it. It attaches to my bluetooth headphones, keyboard, gps, and phone (DUN) without any problems. I can use xterm to ssh to my server, or stream internet radio or video at work. Oh yea, and I jammed 16GB of SDHC storage into the thing, so I have a decent music selection. The current version does not have a cell phone radio, but the next one will carry a WiMax chip, and possibly some other new hardware goodies.
On a related note, Ubuntu's Moblin and Red Flag's Midinux will be out relatively soon for use on UMPCs and MIDs. So, I'd agree that things are looking up for those of us who want more than e-mail and pim on our mobile devices. I'm not sure that I care *as much* about having Linux on my cell phone, as long as it will act as a modem to my other device and make phone calls. I want them to be separate, mostly so that I can make sure not to kill the battery on the cell phone, just in case I actually need it.
One of the more interesting developments following the release of the Sun UltraSPARC T1 & T2 chipsets under the GPL has been the S1, a single core implementation of the T1, which combined some other other GPLed hardware can be built as a RISC based system on a chip. It has massive potential as a powerful, low wattage processor that could compete with ARM and Intel in the portable device marketplace. It might be a couple of years in the future but I think it has the potential to be a competitor. It should run Solaris and BSD as well as Linux.
IE they may sell you a cable at the VZ store, especially if you don't use outlook, your patching together something not really supported by the carriers.
http://bitpim.sourceforge.net/ is the only useable solution to the LG phones that I have found, and it works equally on windows and linux.
I assume this is not needed for the treo, or Windows mobile phones. But it seams no carriers want to support getting your pictures, etc off your phone except through a subscription to their data plan of some sort. same seams true of email, good luck with a non wi-fi phones loading email onto a phone not using the network plan.
"Well thurs your problem!"
You're falling into the trap...
"Supported by the phone" is different from "supported by the carriers". Of course, the less we remember that, the less true it will be.
Have you looked at QuantumStep? It's a GNUstep-derived environment for mobile computing. It doesn't have some of the bells and whistles of the iPhone, but then mobile GPUs capable of supporting them have not been around for long either.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The funny thing about articles like this is there are always "experts" crying about shortcomings in Linux, yet the people actually making the phones are going toward Linux. In reality their criticisms don't hold enough weight to actually discourage the Linux train from rolling. I have recently begun to make the observation that people who actually develop for and use Linux don't have the same concerns as the analysts. Analysts cry "fragmentation", however in the actual Linux community it really isn't a problem. I've yet to run into the developer that says "oh man, I'm going to have to recode so much of this app for Ubuntu from Red Hat. This is going to suck...". Or what about the user "I've used Red Hat before but this Ubuntu is so damn confusing to get used to". The people that seem to criticize the most seem to have the least amount of Linux experience and form their opinions mostly on hearsay.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I've got no problem connecting the physical layer. I'm talking about software that does meaningful stuff with the connection.
I've never seen bitpim, so that's interesting. Unfortunately, I do a bit too much international travel for it to be practical for me to use a CDMA phone. Looks spiffy, though.
I have heard that Apple is using some kind of special applet system that only works in their own Safari browser and only supports limited functionality.. what we need is a true linux pda phone that will run usermade linux programs, programs that will run natively on a linux machine aswell as on a linux pda phone unit. The user who wishes to create his own programs or even modify the os on his phone then has the means he needs. Also the os will then give him an api to work with and offer access to the hardware in the phone. It would then be nice if the pda phone supported memory cards (MMC and SD), had a camera, had usb ports and had a pcmcia port. That would in my opinion, be the ultimate phone! Ps: Perhaps the phone would need a special window manager and keyboard + mouse driver though :)
You are right, they do contribute back, but my claim stands. They used FOSS to get FOSS enthusiasts on their side, and it worked.
I write code.
On a phone?
The UI on a Linux phone is very unlikely to resemble any existing Linux desktop any more than the iPhone GUI resembles Aqua.
There's plenty of space for a phone with a UI that has more depth than an iPhone, and more consistency than Windows Mobile. I've just dumped my iMate JasJam for a Sony Ericsson M600i, and it was like taking a breath of fresh air. Symbian/UIQ is much more rational than Windows CE, but I'd still prefer an OS I could customise, and the form factor of the M600 isn't as useful as the iMate.
For me, a Linux phone would be the best of both worlds. If there were any available, I'd have one in my pocket now.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Windows mobile is the biggest sham ever. There, I said it. Lemme explain...
At my job everyone used to have blackberrys w/ Nextel. Their data network at the time sucked big time (may or may not still be the case). So as the phones aged and everyone got tired of Nextel, we switched to Cingular. I'm not 100% sure why we changed the phones, but a few Windows guys started looking at Windows Mobile based phones. The key features for this were suppose to be
* Since it's Windows, there is a huge array of applications
* Since it has Internet Explorer, we can use all of our websites and IE quirks
* Since it's Windows and windows has a standard API, our windows programmers could write programs for it
* Basically every advantage you can think of for a full blown version of Windows compacted into a phone
Well we got them. Started using them. Crash. But not a normal crash. Remember, these are phones. So you'd spend the whole morning wondering why you haven't gotten any calls yet and it turns out the phone froze. This is completely unacceptable for a phone. I got used to checking my phone every hour to make sure it didn't need to be rebooted.
But heck, rebooting a phone every once in awhile isn't a huge deal to be able to use almost every Windows application ever! Out of all the smartphone OS's I've dealt with, in reality, Windows Mobile has the least amount of quality applications available for it. A lot of standard things everyone did on the Blackberry's were lost simply because there was no Windows Mobile equivalent program. It turns out most developers have no interest in porting their apps to Windows Mobile. Why not? Well this brings me to the next point...
We've had these phones 2 years, and not a single one of our Windows developers has written a program for it. Why? Because touting it as anything like regular Windows development is a flat out lie. Writing programs for a mobile phone is nothing like a traditional application. They couldn't use many/most of their normal development tools. Writing for limited hardware is a whole different ballpark. Microsoft tried to take their traditional developers and throw them into the mobile phone arena, and those developers simply aren't equipped to do it, and get discouraged and don't write anything for the platform.
Every advantage that relied on the fact "it's basically Windows" went right out the window because, in reality, it's nothing like desktop versions of Windows. We were left with an experience that was significantly worse than the Blackberry's. So guess what? We're getting rid of thousands of dollars worth of phones because the experience truly is that bad. We're going back to Blackberry.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I find the following quote from the article quite misleading:
"Imagine I'm an IT manager contemplating standardising on a mobile platform. I want something rich enough to deliver applications, that's available from multiple manufacturers, offering a decent range of handsets with corporate features. Linux just falls down on all of those."
The point of "that's available from multiple manufacturers", while a very valid point, surely linux is the only one that really is available from multiple manufacturers.
With symbian or windows mobile, you may be able to get the hardware from multiple vendors, but your stuck with a single vendor for the software. With linux, as the article states, there are at least 2 groups pushing mobile linux, and multiple hardware manufacturers also rolling their own.
The freedom of being able to buy your hardware from multiple vendors doesn't is far less of an advantage if you only have one vendor to buy the software from, whereas the freedom to obtain both hardware and software from multiple vendors is a huge benefit to the purchaser.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
in 1999, they were saying that Linux would never amount to owning more than 1% of internet servers by 2005. And at that time, Linux was already one of the dominant players
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes, Apple released Darwin, but closed OpenStep :-(
...ubiquious in ways computers never could be. Even laptops don't get into places you will find phones.
Sure, i can see it how far, places like the botton of a toilet seat, you kitchen sink, street mail boxes... you name it...
Have you used UME? I have, both on a Samsung Q1 and on other devices. It's aimed squarely at Intel's Mobile Internet Device (MID) initiative. There don't appear to be any plans for phones.
UME is not a product yet, and won't be for quite some time, from the looks of it. There is lots of enthusiasm around the project, but nobody seems to know what they're doing. Adding a couple of hooks to a desktop app ('hildonizing' it) does not make the desktop app suitable/useful on a UME-class device. Intel has at least a partial clue and is trying to build their own apps designed for the space (the Moblin project), but they too seem determined to miss the mark. Since someone's going to point out the Nokia apps, they're a) closed, b) not available for distribution, and c) too fugly for words.
Hopefully UME will evolve into something useful given a couple of years, but right now UME is downright maddening.
i am posting right now from my n800 :) also check out neo1973
I strongly disagree. While I think phone UIs tend to be far from perfect and agree there's a lot of room for improvement, they're usable. I can start a phone call in a few seconds, sometimes a lot quicker than that.
I think the main problems with today's phones are:
- Trustworthiness. How do I know the mic isn't on and transmitting to someone? (That's not hypothetical anymore; we know it actually happens; theoretical risks are becoming reality.) Why are my conversations still unencrypted in 2007? that's ridiculous. Most of my time spent on my phone is talking with people I regularly meet in the real world. There's just no reason we shouldn't have a nice, big OTP, and PKs for fallback whenever the OTP runs out.
- Lock-in and closedness. Why do I have to pay to get a ringtone onto this thing? (Not that I want my phone to make annoying noises, but there's a principle at stake here.) Why will my phone stop working if I put another network's SIM chip into it? Why do some people have to pay to get photographs that they took, out of their own device?
- Lack of connectivity options. If I'm near a 802.11 network, I should be able to (optionally) use that (perhaps at the cost of more power) for my side of the network connection, instead of the more expensive cell networks. If I'm near the person I'm calling (e.g. "hey, where the hell in this huge building are you?") I should be able to directly link w/out going through anyone's network at all. As long as phone manufacturers and network providers have such a close relationship, we're not going to get these features, no matter how obvious and desirable they are.
Having our phones run Free Software is a really big deal. I think it matters even more on phones, than it does on desktop personal computers. We need these devices to start serving the interests of the users, instead of the network providers, governments, and who-the-fuck-knows-else.As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You can use kagu music player that works with a2dp bluetooth audio. I don't know about headsets (for voip), haven't really been too interested in that, although I know that it's coming. Sound quality is very good with a2dp, and avrcp (remote control) works fairly well with kagu too.
OpenMoko is crap. The UI is horrid and shows no signs of getting better, development has no direction and never will, the hardware is an order of magnitude crappier than iPhone's (no capacitive multitouch touchscreen, no WiFi, no 2.5G or 3G WAN).
Someone with vision needs to take over OpenMoko, or it will never manage to drive any kind of change in the cell phone market. The biggest problem is that selling a carrier on a device that puts as much power in the hands of the consumer as something like OpenMoko would LIKE to do is next to impossible: witness Apple's lockdown of the iPhone. If it weren't for the application lock we would have an incredibly powerful device on our hands (mine is jailbroken and will remain on the 1.0.2 firmware until EOL of the device if necessary), but Apple and AT&T couldn't have that, could they?
+++ATH0
So far, not 1 usable linux-based REAL smartphone has been released afaik. A little premature to say it's going to be huge, isn't it? ;-)
Sure there have been 2 or 3 phones that were either not widely available or just phones without the smart
With a real smartphone I mean something with a real keyboard (Nokia E61i, blackberry) or something like the sony-ericsson M600i. A thing that can play music, surf the web, read email, has a touchscreen etc. NONE so far.
The truth is that you're a trolling AC.
"Women are just like ninjas; They lie even when it is more convenient to tell the truth." ~ Unknown
For various reasons my cellular service provider is Verizon with all of the trappings that ensues. I have a Motorola E815 that I finally have working the way I want, including Java on the phone. Not linux, but much more versatile than it originally was. I was using OperaMini and Java SSH on my phone to surf and *very* occasionally remote-admin my machines. I could put 3gp TV shows ripped from my Myth box onto it, and I play MP3s in my 4x4 through the phone. Very cool. Until I bought a Nokia 770. Now the E815's secondary purpose (behind :gasp: making phone calls) is for EVDO DUN through the 770 when a 802.11 connection isn't available. I almost never use the E815 to check my mail, ssh, or much else other than Java Tetris any more.
I have the 770. BT GPS, BT Keyboard as optional accessories in my coat pocket, but the rest of the time I'm just using the 770 with the stylus.
SSH-FS to map drives back to the home server. VNC and SSH clients. SMB shares.
If I transcode my Myth shows to MP4 I can stream the TV shows to the 770 - even over DUN with the E815 in EVDO mode. Even better with a 802.11 hotspot or my local network. I'm working on GMythStream to transcode on the fly from the big MPEG2 files to something the 770 will process comfortably over a remote connection.
I haven't had a need for VOIP.
Anyhow.. the new Razr2 was looking promising, but the V8 Linux version isn't available for CDMA networks, and the V9m is still chock full of the usual crippleware.
But with the 770 in my pocket, it's not such a big deal that the phone is so restricted.
And you are no fanboi yer self... Totally unbiased observations...
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
First of all, I am not at all an Apple fanboy. I am sixteen kinds of pissed the fuck off at "teh Steve" for locking down the iPhone and pursuing the lockdown even after claiming not to be interested in gimping the ability to write applications for the device. They even claim to be "eyeing the developer scene with great interest." Bull and shit. Right now they are acting like they hate innovation, hate the technical users that evangelize and promote their platform, and scoff at the geeks that MADE them in the first place. We'll see how long that lasts, but right now I am not happy with Apple one bit. The iPhone, on firmware 1.0.2, happens to be the best fit for what I need, but I will hold onto that software version until EOL of the device if I have to. There is nothing I can imagine they can give me that would actually get me to give up the BSD userland and real applications, not to mention the ability to develop in Cocoa, that I have on it now.
Second, it is not multi-touch that I want for the sake of multi-touch. What I want is the capacitive rather than resistive touchscreen that is more responsive to gentler input. It is a lot easier to use a capacitive touchscreen on a phone-type device. Multi-touch is great for gaming and zooming in and out, but really what I am concerned about is the suitability of the technology to the application.
I am not trolling. I honestly don't believe OpenMoko or the Neo1973 will go anywhere at all without carrier support, and they won't get carrier support while they're as powerful as they are.
+++ATH0