Hardware Companies Team Up To Fight Mobile Linux Fragmentation 47
Nunavut writes with news that a number of hardware companies have banded together to battle the fragmentation of the mobile Linux market. ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments are forming Linaro, a nonprofit organization that plans to focus on "low-level software around the Linux kernel that touches the silicon, key pieces of middleware that enable new markets, and tools that help the developer write and debug code."
"Linaro's chief goal is to reduce the time that it takes to bring a new ARM-powered product to market with Linux. This effort is largely neutral with respect to what software environment and components individual vendors choose to run in user space. Linaro will not compete with existing platforms such as MeeGo and Android. Instead, it will attempt to improve the shared underlying software components that allow those platforms and others to run on ARM SoCs. In principle, this could actually reduce fragmentation at the lower levels of the Linux stack."
if they'll fail (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Biggest issue they face... (Score:5, Insightful)
What in god's name are you blathering about? This is a non profit organization that intends to deal with low level hardware libraries. It has nothing to do with "apps" and they have no intention of shipping a product. All of this is right in the summary.
Re:if they'll fail (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. This is about "standardizing the Darwin part" of an iPhone or an iPad.
If this leads to Android or Ubuntu being able to readily run on an iPad and other similar SoCs then I believe they will have set out what they wanted to achieve.
Summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's the apps, stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Direct response to Meego (Score:4, Insightful)
won't this also help meego?
That's why I'm rooting for MeeGo (Score:4, Insightful)
I gotta hand it to the MeeGo folks. Their project has goals like
1) Keep it FOSS. All of it (in the core distro)
2) Upstream code whenever possible
Even if you don't use it as a mobile OS, the work being done on it by Intel, Nokia, etc... is going to benefit pretty much every Linux-derived distro out there.
If Linaro wants to join the party and throw time/money at improving Linux-y software running on ARM chips, that sounds pretty darn good to me!