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Nokia Researcher Puts Firefox OS On Raspberry Pi
judgecorp writes "Mozilla's mobile phone operating system only exists in an early beta form, but Oleg Romashin, a researcher at Nokia, has already got it working on the Raspberry Pi and posted video to prove it. We don't think this indicates any alternate strategy for Nokia if Windows Phone doesn't pan out, but it does show that Firefox OS is portable, and the Pi is capable, and both can be played with — which will please both Mozilla and the Raspberry Pi Foundation. And the Firefox OS work in progress is available for download (direct tarball link)."
Apple's going to use Bitcoins to patent the idea.
Sorry, but with only 224MB memory, this is a bad idea. I've tried multiple browsers on Pi -- including full-blown like Firefox or Chromium, and minimalistic like Midori; the only one that's actually usable is elinks. Especially if pages as bloated as Slashdot are involved.
Gooseberry, if it ever becomes something more than vapourware, might get into an usable range (512MB minus video memory).
It's interesting how no graphical browser of today can cope with that little memory, when back in the day we could browse fine with 4MB.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
The mobile browsers work OK in that much memory. My ipad1 can browse fairly well and "only" has 256mb of ram.
Nokia is an empty shell, zombie puppet company controlled by Microsoft. They have been running into the ground for some time now. They have no future. They are an asset being spent to push Microsoft agenda.
Farnell seem to be quicker at fulfilling orders than RS - plus you get a t-shirt.
Rather than add more memory, why not use the architecture of the Pi to write a new browser that doesn't suffer from software bloat and scope creep? The RPi project was initially targeted at teaching children how to write programs that run on small, simple, and affordable systems with no fancy toolkits or bloated libraries.
In other words, the way it used to be, when 256MB was a blessing and not a hindrance.
The Pi is 700Mhz ARM processor with 256MB total memory (some reserved for GPU) and some hardware for OpenGL and MP4. The more you can push onto the GPU the better because the CPU is designed to power set top boxes and the like where the CPU should marshal the hardware and do as little as possible otherwise. So Raspbmc works okay for the most part because mp4 content is being powered by the hardware and there is only one main process running. But Raspbian demonstrates that a desktop performance is awful even with the lightest of configurations. I don't expect the performance of Firefox OS to be earthshattering. Even budget phones would have a faster CPU and more RAM than the Pi. It might run and be interesting for that, but I think performance will be poor especially on heavy content. So calling the Pi "capable" is reaching a bit.
It's interesting how no graphical browser of today can cope with that little memory, when back in the day we could browse fine with 4MB.
Back in the day, a good practice was limiting your entire page to under 100kb. Now, you're lucky if a page clocks under 1mb even with all the caching going on. Don't get me started on sites like the Huffington Post or Destructiod.
Ordered one with farnell and after 4 days it was delivered , even if the website states 5 weeks.
I'm using the official Raspbian image. When I start LXDE, run Scratch or Midori, I get only 10-20mb free memory.
I quickly abandoned LXDE, installed xmonad, now I have 50-60megs left in the same scenario. While I love xmonad, and it's the only WM I use on all my linux machines, it's not for everyone. But even under xmonad, web browsing is at best super slow with Midori. Chromium is completely useless.
We can get a lot of things to"run" on the RPi, or a machine with 256mb ram. But the real question is, can we get it to run well? Can it do a quick google search? Can it scroll through a webpage with decent speed?
As it stands, I can see the RPi as a faster replacement for Arduino, with a wider range of development tools. But not as a standalone computer to be used in education with X and Scratch.
I ordered two on two separate orders, one took two and the other three days.