linux

Linus Torvalds, who is not only the Creator and All-Father but also a pleasant-looking man, has commented on Android and the wider Linux-on-mobile-devices issue, in this interview with Reuters.

I haven't been personally involved but it certainly looks like 2008 may be, thanks to the Google Alliance, one of the years you will find more widely available phones with Linux...It used to be that they are so expensive that, by necessity, most people even in the industrialised [sic] world ... would not go for a smartphone. Quite frankly, Linux makes much more sense in a smartphone than it makes in a really low-end product

Nothing here on how He feels about Google's implementation, whether He's played with Android; basically, there's nothing really juicy here. It is nice to now that His gaze is on the project, however.

OHA member Wind River and embedded Linux gurus, have been chosen by LiMo to provide the foundation for their CIE (Common Integration Environment). From the Press Release:

To eliminate unnecessary complexity that increases time to market and development costs, OEMs and operators must reduce fragmentation in the Linux handset market. One means of reducing fragmentation is to standardize the mobile handset stack, from the Linux distribution to application framework and above – LiMo’s core objective. To integrate these stack components, a common integration environment is needed where all component providers’ contributions may be managed as both independent modules and an integrated whole.

By contributing key components of its commercial technology, Wind River provides a platform for LiMo to develop, test, certify, and deploy commercial products consisting of components provided by various members of the Foundation. The CIE will:

* Allow LiMo to easily manage components developed by the diverse engineering teams of its members, maintaining quality and ultimately time to market as different application and middleware components are contributed, assembled, and tested within the LiMo platform.
* Allow LiMo to easily update or exchange components, allowing OEMs and operators to differentiate their handsets while remaining within the LiMo standard.
* Allow LiMo to leverage a standard suite of components and applications for multiple projects, which is key to the LiMo mission of reducing time to market for Linux handsets while driving the greatest innovation and differentiation.
* Reduce debugging, test, and validation cycle time by minimizing challenges working with multiple versions of merged software.

This just further affirms that Wind River is the industry leader in Mobile Linux, and perhaps hints at some future LiMo-OHA love?

From a fanboy's point of view, Linux at the core of Google's new mobile OS is great news. But is Linux really up for this?

There's been much talk in the Linux world over the last few years about "Linux on the desktop". The server space has been fairly locked down for a while now; Linux owns as much market share on the backbone, big-job machines that power the digital world as does the competition. The question, however, of whether Linux is ready for the Desktop - and I mean truly, your-grandma-can-use-it, ready - is still open. From my point of view, here typing this blog post on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon running on a Dell XPS m1330, Linux is all that and more; this is the most satisfying desktop I've ever run. But my friends keep asking me to do stuff that Linux won't do (ie. MSN video chat - "What's Ekiga?" they say), so I have to admit that from a lowest-common-denominator position Linux isn't there, although that has everything to do with market dynamics (Microsoft's stranglehold) and nothing to do with pure ability. But perhaps the next computing movement, which is undoubtedly the mobile phone and embedded systems, will be kinder to Linus' wunderkind?

Or perhaps not. The mobile Linux space has been full of promise for some time, but there's been no delivery. There's Maemo, which powers the Nokia internet tablet line, but as far as I know there are no plans to extend the distro onto handsets. Qtopia was, a year or so ago, full of promise, but Trolltech has recently announced it will no longer produce the Greenphone development platform. OpenMOKO sounds great, but delayed release on the development machines, as well as the notice that it still won't reliably make calls (it's November now; FIC was promising second-gen, mass market handsets by now) makes me concerned that it's a dying horse. Anybody seen anything tangible from LiMo? Palm has been talking about Linux-powered phones for a while now, but the Folio died and the new Centro runs PalmOS.

It's a pretty grim scene, all things considered.

So I have to ask: can Linux really do this? Many big players, including now Google, believe so, and I hope they're right; it would be fantastic vindication for a lot of open source geeks, myself included, if Linux dominates on the next generation of personal computing devices. It would, once-and-for-all, prove the power of the open source model and give the consumers ultimate control over their systems. But I have to wonder if the lack of huge success so far means that success won't ever come.

I'll throw everything I have into supporting Android, 'casue I want Linux on the handset to succeed, but I'm making sure I'm prepared for disappointment.

CNET news is asking whether or not Android will spur a wave of viruses that target mobile phones.

At the heart of the article is this blog post at F-secure's site, in which they state “The key issue here is whether Android will go for totally open systems.” F-secure is the creator of security software for Symbian and Windows CE, so they're, like, experts and stuff.

Just yesterday, McAfee global marketing manager Jan Volzke stated “McAfee is looking forward to support this new initiative by contributing our security expertise and technology leadership.” No word yet on whether the OHA is taking them up on the offer. McAfee is already a member of the LiMo foundation.

Many experts believe that making Android's open source will result in a more secure platform. The argument is that with complete transaparancy security issues can be identified and fixed more quickly and easily. Ben Whitaker of Masabi, a mobile security company, is quoted here as saying "Gphone is open source, which means it can get a good kicking and shoeing, and can be worked on by just about anyone,"

Traditionally, Linux has been less of a target for virus writers and crackers because it was not a popular platform. If Android becomes ubiquitous, will the number of exploits targeting Linux go up? Will my Debian install be in greater danger?

In case you were waiting for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to say something:

Well of course their efforts are just some words on paper right now, it's hard to do a very clear comparison [with Windows Mobile]....Right now they have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software, many hardware devices and they're welcome in our world.

Ballmer, and Microsoft in general, truly fears Google. We all know this. He puts on a brave face but we can all see the spreading wet spot around his crotch.

Meanwhile, the same article quotes the CEO of Symbian dissing Linux. It seems Android has a knack for bringing out the haters.