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Hardware Companies Team Up To Fight Mobile Linux Fragmentation

Posted by Soulskill on from the isn't-that-cheating dept.

Nunavut writes with news that a number of hardware companies have banded together to battle the fragmentation of the mobile Linux market. ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments are forming Linaro, a nonprofit organization that plans to focus on "low-level software around the Linux kernel that touches the silicon, key pieces of middleware that enable new markets, and tools that help the developer write and debug code." "Linaro's chief goal is to reduce the time that it takes to bring a new ARM-powered product to market with Linux. This effort is largely neutral with respect to what software environment and components individual vendors choose to run in user space. Linaro will not compete with existing platforms such as MeeGo and Android. Instead, it will attempt to improve the shared underlying software components that allow those platforms and others to run on ARM SoCs. In principle, this could actually reduce fragmentation at the lower levels of the Linux stack."

7 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. if they'll fail by underqualified · · Score: 3, Insightful

    they'll be yet another fragment

    1. Re:if they'll fail by jedidiah · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes. This is about "standardizing the Darwin part" of an iPhone or an iPad.

      If this leads to Android or Ubuntu being able to readily run on an iPad and other similar SoCs then I believe they will have set out what they wanted to achieve.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  2. Re:Biggest issue they face... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What in god's name are you blathering about? This is a non profit organization that intends to deal with low level hardware libraries. It has nothing to do with "apps" and they have no intention of shipping a product. All of this is right in the summary.

  3. Summary by bcmm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Very good idea. Code reuse is always good. However, one minor point about the summary: fat chance of Android either helping or being helped by this - AFAIK, they've already messed up their Linux-derived kernel to the point where you can't assume that modules from actual Linux will work with it.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  4. Re:It's the apps, stupid by aero6dof · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Given the membership and their statements, it actually sounds like they might be working on integrating/standardizing the access to underlying hardware. Most of those manufacturers make ARM chips with various added peripherals. It would certainly save time if I could grab a Linux distro that was everything below the UI level without having to spend time integrating the low level chip libraries to access the custom hardware functions in the chip.

  5. Re:Direct response to Meego by dwater · · Score: 3, Insightful

    won't this also help meego?

    --
    Max.
  6. That's why I'm rooting for MeeGo by Qubit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I gotta hand it to the MeeGo folks. Their project has goals like

    1) Keep it FOSS. All of it (in the core distro)
    2) Upstream code whenever possible

    Even if you don't use it as a mobile OS, the work being done on it by Intel, Nokia, etc... is going to benefit pretty much every Linux-derived distro out there.

    If Linaro wants to join the party and throw time/money at improving Linux-y software running on ARM chips, that sounds pretty darn good to me!

    --

    coding is life /* the rest is */