From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262460AbVE0NLd (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 May 2005 09:11:33 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262459AbVE0NLd (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 May 2005 09:11:33 -0400 Received: from smtp.cs.aau.dk ([130.225.194.6]:47566 "EHLO smtp.cs.aau.dk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262473AbVE0NKR (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 May 2005 09:10:17 -0400 Message-ID: <42971C0E.9030504@cs.aau.dk> Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 15:09:34 +0200 From: Emmanuel Fleury User-Agent: Debian Thunderbird 1.0.2 (X11/20050331) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Linux for Mobile phones and PDAs [long] X-Enigmail-Version: 0.91.0.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi all, These last weeks have been particularly busy in the wonderful world of consumer electronics. Linux seems to be more and more considered as a solution for these companies ! Since approximately two years, the CELF (Consumer Electronics Linux Forum) (http://www.celinuxforum.org/) try to harden the link between the Linux community and companies such as Sony, IBM, Nokia, PalmSource, and others (http://www.celinuxforum.org/MemberOrganization.htm). This non profit organization (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2163552454.html) is trying (among other things and as far as I understand it) to identify the weakness of Linux in matter of consumer electronics and to push for strengthening Linux in this very precise topics. Some of the results of the CELF that have been presented in its first conference can be found here: http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9266731500.html. Aside from that, and very recently several companies have been starting to make some interesting announcement. For example, on May the 24th, PalmSource opened the bal by saying: "Linux is our platform for the future" (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4835848451.html). It seems that the PalmOS kernel has been quite disappointing in matter of resources management and Symbian was not an alternative to it. Moreover, Palm seems to target the 3G market and need a much quicker development model with more involved developers. So, Linux was probably one logical choice as they joined the CELF recently (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8402137834.html). Again, this week, during the LinuxWorld event in New-York, Nokia unveiled its first tablet-PC (Nokia 770, http://www.nokia.com/770) which is running under a 2.6.x kernel (http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/05/05/25/139202.shtml?tid=100, http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5409534614.html) ! The day after, Nokia announce that they will release patents for Open Source development (as IBM did) (http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/05/25/1827259.shtml?tid=155&tid=106). But, that's not all of it, it seems that the making of the 770 has involved quite a lot of the people of the Open Source community whom were ask to keep a 'low profile' until the product will be released (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-multimedia/2005-May/msg00021.html). So, indeed, Nokia has been funding several Open Source projects for the last few months without advertising it too much. From my (poor) knowledge here are some of the companies Nokia did fund for getting its 770 ready: - Imendio (Gossip, Blam, Planner, DevHelp) http://www.imendio.com/ http://www.imendio.com/press/show/7 - Fluendo (GStreamer, Flumotion, Pitivi, ...) http://www.fluendo.com/ - Kernel Concepts (Contribution to Maemo) http://www.kernelconcepts.de/ http://oss.kernelconcepts.de/ - OpenedHand (Matchbox window management software) http://www.o-hand.com/ http://www.linuxpr.com/releases/7833.html On the top of that, the development platform for the device is totally free. To my knowledge (I'm sure I'm missing something), it's the first time that a company in consumer electronics of the size of Nokia release a complete Open Source development platform: http://www.maemo.org/ http://www.maemo.org/platform/docs/tutorials/Maemo_tutorial.html http://www.scratchbox.org/ http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3716070830.html http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8608661173.html Speaking about the hardware, it's an ARM9 (TI-OMAP) and it's relatively cheap to get on of these (around 400$/320¤ including the LCD (optional)). OMAP Starter Kits: http://focus.ti.com/docs/general/splashdsp.jhtml?&path=templatedata/cm/splashdsp/data/omap5912_osk http://oskfordummies.hp.infoseek.co.jp/ http://tree.celinuxforum.org/CelfPubWiki/FlashRecoveryUtility http://www.ti-estore.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=dStartKit Still not convinced ? Too expensive... Well, Nokia is offering 500 of these 770 for 99¤ per unit to Open Source developers. Take you chance: http://maemo.org/news/25052005.html Well, all this for what ??? My guess is that Nokia is trying to test the Open Source for its phones. The 770 is just a first try out. They have some benefit to do so, and we all have some benefit also... It's a win/win game if we can cooperate under appropriate agreements (maybe there is a footnote in very small characters somewhere, but I missed it totally). My big hope is that if the Open Source community give a good feed back to them, other companies which have already one foot in the door, will suddenly want to get in and focus much more on Linux for their PDA or mobile phone. So, if these links and this e-mail can make several of you at least trying out to develop for PDA or mobile phones (getting hardware, writing documentations, bug fixing, patches, new code, ...), this would be great ! :) Regards -- Emmanuel Fleury Assistant Professor | Office: B1-201 Computer Science Department, | Phone: +45 96 35 72 23 Aalborg University, | Mobile: +45 26 22 98 03 Fredriks Bajersvej 7E, | E-mail: fleury@cs.aau.dk 9220 Aalborg East, Denmark | URL: www.cs.aau.dk/~fleury