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Firefox OS Phone on Display at LinuxFest NorthWest (Video)
Jakob Perry organized the first LinuxFest Northwest when he was still a student. He got off to a good start: now LFNW has been running for 14 years, and has retained its flavor as a low-key, friendly conference. Exhibitors from Linux distributions from tiny (CrunchBang) to huge (Red Hat) were on hand for 2013, and enough speakers and topics to fill about 80 different sessions over the two days of the conference. Not all of it's about Linux per se, either: the EFF and FSF were represented, along with a BSD table, and a local astronomy group with a great name. At this year's event I ran into the first Firefox OS phone that I've had a chance to play with in person. Firefox OS integrates Linux by way of the Android kernel, but is otherwise its own beast. Ubuntu and Mozilla contributor Benjamin Kerensa was on hand to talk about what makes it tick, and to give a demo of the all-HTML5 interface.
My bet is next month. Got to release new versions of the phones faster than android manufacturers, right?
I don't think a phone would be very useful if all it had was the Linux kernel. You would need a userland, and using one as a base that is already established means a lot of people already know how to use and develop for the platform.
Quite the opposite, Mozilla/Firefox has had to become leaner and meaner to run (acceptably) on these devices.
Demo isn't really a demo, he doesn't open up anything or scroll much, just shows off a bunch of icons.
Another layer on top of Android on top of Linux.
Mozilla needs to focus on their core business. The number of Firefox bugs fixed remains lower than the number being reported, and the internals, which date back to the Netscape era, need replacement.
So, the "layers" here are 1. Kernel. 2. Userland. 3. UI. Which one of these do you consider unnecessary for the purpose?
A phone that isn't tied to Microsoft or Google or Apple is a GOOD thing.
Yes maybe the hardware won't be able to compete with the iphone, the galaxy 4 or winphone but on the other hand you sure as hell won't have google/microsoft/apple right up your ass tracking your every move.
Remember for those companies, the phone is not the product being sold (although you pay a hefty price to buy it), you're the product being sold. So anything that trumps this vicious circle is good.
I'll give firefox phone a chance, even though I have a galaxy s3.
I don't object to the idea of getting a tattoo but really, a product logo? That's going to look really dumb in 10 years when he's tired of ubuntu, they go under or change their logo.
Damn, nothing about 3D printers, Arduinos or Raspberry Pi?
They've gotta save SOMETHING for the Slashdor Phone 2
If I'm not mistaken, the PostgreSQL booth was running some demos on a RasPi and donated 8 of them to the second-day raffle. I bought $10 worth of tickets, but didn't win any.
If we colonize Mars, it won't be the World Wide Web anymore. UWW?
Quite the opposite, Mozilla/Firefox has had to become leaner and meaner to run (acceptably) on these devices.
*WHOOSH*
The key is in the title of the comment.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I got to play with it there. I didn't know I was holding something newsworthy. As a Galaxy S3 (with CM10.1) user, I thought it ran very well considering it was on what appeared to be some older mid-range hardware. Everything seemed quite smooth and snappy.
If we colonize Mars, it won't be the World Wide Web anymore. UWW?
Update, it was the "Seattle Postgres Users Group" booth.
If we colonize Mars, it won't be the World Wide Web anymore. UWW?
There is no Android in FirefoxOS.
They do support running on the same Linux kernel though, so they can make use of the same drivers that were already developed for devices that can run Android.
Actually, it has been shown FirefoxOS can run on less powerful devices than Android can.
New things are always on the horizon
What's the point of it though? Why not run it like Facebook Home on top of Android and utilise the Firefox browser? At least that's as easy for users to install as any app and underneath is completely compatible with all existing Android functionality. I see no reason this would end up any different than Tizen or webOS or any of those abandoned mobile OSes. So the question is why would somebody choose this over an Android phone?
Is it going to spy on/track everything you do and report back to it's corporate overlords like iOS and android?
The reason not to run the Android user-space is footprint. If you use Android apps and a browser, you have two parallel platform stacks --- rendering, compositing, VM, networking, UI, etc both running on a phone at the same time. Getting rid of the Android Java stuff means you can use the Web and local HTML5-based apps at the same time with only one stack. Saves a lot of memory and simplifies the software design considerably.
If you use Android apps and a browser, you have two parallel platform stacks --- rendering, compositing, VM, networking, UI, etc both running on a phone at the same time. Getting rid of the Android Java stuff means you can use the Web and local HTML5-based apps at the same time with only one stack. Saves a lot of memory and simplifies the software design considerably.
All that does is limit you to html apps, which is what webOS was trying to do, on Android in the end Google made the NDK available because they realized that the abstracted environment wasn't flexible enough but you can still run HTML apps. Even the first iteration of iOS was supposed to be based around web apps and that idea was abandoned, but you can still run HTML apps. So given that HTML apps can already run on any modern smartphone I still fail to see what the appeal of Firefox OS is supposed to be unless it's about just targeting the really low end.
The last thing we need is another mobile operating system. We already have iOS, Android and Windows Mobile, and it's hard enough to get cross-platform support for apps at times, much less having a fourth or fifth entry in the market.
Nothing against the Firefox folks, but just as in Linux, there are problems with having too much choice.
I wonder if FirefoxOS can look up the definition of Balkanization.
/runs away
It is about targeting the low end, but then again don't underestimate what you can do with emscripten and asm.js.
That's a great argument for javascript and webgl - which we already have on Android and iOS - but still doesn't suggest why Firefox OS is a good idea for anybody.
When you get rid of everything else on the phone, but just the browser. You use less resources to view the same pages.
It's that simple.
New things are always on the horizon