Linux Of the Future May Be About Which Environment, Not Which Distribution 214
itwbennett writes "In its 2012 roadmap, the Mozilla Foundation highlights plans to create its own soup-to-nuts mobile platform, known as Boot to Gecko. With this move, the Mozilla Foundation 'is finally shaking off its dependence on browser revenues and treading where Google, with ChromeOS; Canonical, with Unity on Ubuntu; and (most recently) the Plasma community's Spark tablet have already started: the creation of standards-based platforms that rely on robust web applications (in varying degrees) more than native-run apps to provide the user experience,' writes blogger Brian Proffitt. 'I very much think that we are heading for a time when Linux flavors will be identified by environments, not distributions.'"
Will tablet and other platforms rock? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know the answer to your question. But I think there is reason to suspect that Linux on tablet will rock. If you make a tablet meant to run on Linux, you have no driver issues since you don't much upgrade tablets. Also, with Boot2Gecko running Javascript, there is great reason to suspect that it will have great compatability. I think it is clear that mobile/tablet apps will largely be made with Javascript with PhoneGap. This way, they can be Boot2Gecko and Metro compatible. They can also run well on Android and iOS.
Desktop is so last century. In the 21st century mobile computers and entertainment center computers will rule. Desktops will just be for work and
Just Stop. (Score:4, Interesting)
Right, Mozilla is going to compete with Google's Android resources.
I love Firefox, and they have one fabulous engineer working on memory leak problems, but just one (he should be managing a team by now).
They don't have the resources to compete or out-do Android, so any resources they spend on this project will essentially be wasted.
Here's a suggestion: allocate these resources into Mobile Firefox (is it still called 'fennec'?). Make that awesome. Make me want to run Mobile Firefox instead of Dolphin HD (a small independent browser).
Then, and only then, will it be worthwhile to start working down the stack. Replace the runtime next, then the subsystems, then the kernel. It just might wind up being excellent. Meanwhile, Android is OSS and there's no reason to re-invent that wheel at this time.