Tizen Gets Boost From Bada Merger
LinuxScribe writes "As predicted last September, Samsung has announced plans to merge Tizen with its own Bada platform to create a new mobile OS that will fit well on low- and high-end smartphones. Last year, Bada had more global phone deployments than Windows Phone 7. The merger means each Linux-based platform will have access to more native- and HTML5-based apps."
Adding a compatibility layer to run apps from one "linux distribution" into another don't sound that much as merging. Maemo and WebOS didn't merged when was released a compatibility layer that enabled Maemo to run WebOS games, neither Linux and Windows got merged when Wine was released.
In any case, means more apps and then maybe more potential relevance to Tizen, and probably will balance things to have another player in the mobile arena.
There is a lot of room for another smartphone platform, IMO. Can't speak for WP7, because I haven't tried it, but the others all suffer from some combination of: closedness, privacy/security issues, poor performance, poor build quality, poor battery life, being dead.
Tizen seems to approach at least some of these issues in a sensible manner.
I would wait until there is a second device running Tizen before I would consider it a viable solution. Given the history of the people behind Tizen, I suspect they will announce a reorganization of the project around the time a phone is first released with the OS. Maybe a rename while they're at it.
Je ne parle pas francais.
I am curious what Samsung could get out of this. bada has C++, Flash and Web App development models already. Would they ditch the C++ and Flash approaches and switch to the Tizen model, or use Tizen to build out the Web App model more?
Or could this be mostly a business move? Are there partners associated with Tizen that would look upon this happily and be more keen to partner with Samsung on things in the future?
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
.... Getting big Bada boom?
... might not look kindly to suddenly have their phones rendered obsolete. As the Samsung Wave line (all running Bada) are all on ARM-based processors, I would venture to think that these phones will not be given upgrades to any Tizen releases in the future.
... not another name change?!?
If taxation is legalized theft, then Capitalism is a prolonged rape followed by a slow death.
I had really high hopes for the various Linux-based mobile OSes last year and before... but I wonder if it's too little; too late at this point. By all accounts, WP7 is very very slick, yet it has negligible market share and even less mind share. What advantage will this new merged OS have?
Also, the software developer side of me has extremely high doubts that this will be doable in any reasonable time frame. Merging any kind of software is tricky; merging an OS is a herculean task. And for what?
Bada already use Linux or RTOS operating system, so which one is going to be chosen to result of this new merge?
Moblin + Maemo 5.0 +Qt = MeeGo -> MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen -> Tizen + Bada = ???
But even that MeeGo seems to be going somewhere (at least source code being moved around), did Nokia correctly to reject MeeGo from the begin and continue develop Maemo 5.0 + Qt as Maemo 6.0 aka Harmattan for N9 and N950 and later just renaming Harmattan officially as MeeGo/Harmattan to get away with Intel deal?
Seems that Android will stay the best Linux OS distribution for smartphones and tablets few years now...
MeeGo stalled in the water after February 11th, 2011, and just slowed down after that due to Nokia walking away and Intel left in the lurch.
Rather, the N950/N9 was delayed so long that they never had a chance to switch over to MeeGo. They were fully behind the effort that was MeeGo and pushed to get the label on the N9's OS because it had most of the important APIs (mostly Qt.) Then Elop continued to burn the platform.
MeeGo stalled in the water after February 11th, 2011, and just slowed down after that due to Nokia walking away and Intel left in the lurch.
There is a community initiative continuing where MeeGo left:
http://merproject.org/
Its separated to:
MER - the core software stack
Nemo - Qt based UI
Nemo is not the only UI, both Plasma active and Cordia use MER as core and provide its own UI.
So far, I would rather bet on MER than on Tizen...
That's the big issue with Linux: everyone and their dog can have "their own" OS. Start worrying, details to follow.
Except that Android is as much Linux (as in GNU/Linux, as in: what people expect when they hear "Linux"),
as an Ariel Atom is a Honda Civic Type R.
It has a modified version of the same engine (kernel), aaaand... that's about it.
Unless I get a real GNU userland, and a proper package manager instead of the retarded Joe Sixpack crap that a "app store" is, It's shit.
According to an insider, (you'll just have to take this at face value) the periodic 6 mo changes from platform to platform are not due too poor management but are designed to cut the open platform at it's knees. How this story got spun into it's-a-good-thing is anyone's guess.