I read both on Twitter and online about Palm Pre's "WebOS" being based on the same kernel or structure that is designed for Android/G1.
Is anybody in the works on seeing if its possible to run WebOS on a G1?
Note: I guess I'm asking to not to replace the Android but to say that if its possible and that it can be done.
webOS runs on the Linux kernel, but nothing else beyond that is open source. How are you going to port an operating system to a different microarchitecture and hardware specification without its source code? Answer: you're probably not.
Why would you want to though?
It may be cute, but the platform has yet to prove itself. Developers are going to be cautious about developing for that platform due to how palm has so severely stagnated over the last few years. Unless the platform shows signs of really catching on, I would just ignore it.
Related
So I've been having a discussion in another thread regarding the use of older versions of MSOS's on PPC. That spawned a question on my part:
Is there a development group here somewhere that is working on a Linux OS, or another OS for PPC?
Linux will run on just about anything, its' lightweight OS needs little memory and cpu power. So how hard would it be to design a light Linux based OS for a PPC?
Obviously it would take a group of people, much like those groups developing Linux distros and programs.
I think there is memory to be saved, and speed to be had. And if someone were smart enough to wrap a dialer and vendor agnostic connectivity around it, it would take off.
Any interest in this?
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Xanadux
or android
or
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e...H_en-GBGB243GB243&q=linux+for+pocket+pc&meta=
Wow, I'm disappointed.
There are hundreds of WM5 & WM6 custom ROMs' being developed by hundreds of top notch developers...... and only ONE Linux port?
very underwhelming...
You may also want to check out OpenMoko (http://www.openmoko.org) or just try and put together your own.
Splitter said:
Wow, I'm disappointed.
There are hundreds of WM5 & WM6 custom ROMs' being developed by hundreds of top notch developers...... and only ONE Linux port?
very underwhelming...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a whole different thing. All those roms you are talking about are just modifications of an existing OS.
The linux port amounts to building an OS from scratch, and it's a lot harder.
edzilla said:
It's a whole different thing. All those roms you are talking about are just modifications of an existing OS.
The linux port amounts to building an OS from scratch, and it's a lot harder.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed.
Actually porting Linux to an HTC device wouldn't be so bad. Some people have found out how to flash ROM's theoretically without needing a bootloader even.
The problem really boils down to drivers for Linux. We can't even get proper video drivers working with the Kaiser under Windows Mobile (the proper drivers were never included, so video output is slowwww) though the hardware supports 3d acceleration! HTC denies our requests for hardware specs to develop our own. And this is trouble we're having with drivers for Windows!
Really it boils down to this hardware. This type of hardware being proprietary as you can get. You've got processors and controllers that are highly proprietary and the vendors are tied in to 100 different non compete non-disclosure agreements and can't provide specs. Even the qualcomm chips borrow code from broadcom -- which means qualcomm can't publish how those portions of their chips work! Microsoft then licenses code from these vendors with promises not to share source. HTC licenses code from broadcom and qualcom swearing not to publish it. Etc etc...
Now, your a Linux developer. How do you integrate drivers in to your kernel when the chip instruction set isn't even documented? Control codes aren't published? Reverse engineering is the only way, which can take years. Developers here have learned simple controls such as to change LED's or discovered the standard interface for USB/SD cards. That's about it.
It's hard for an open source OS to survive in a closed-spec hardware world. PC's are open and well documented and very standard. However, every phone is different, and different production runs may even have significant changes in internal hardware design.
It's really a waste of time to seek Linux on mobile devices until hardware becomes standardized. Which is never because companies like qualcomm and broadcomm via and others are not fans of open source. This is the market and those who dominate it.
If this saddens you, it should -- but it's just the way it is.
Dear members of the forum,
I've been trying to decide which path to take to get started with mobile development on modern devices. I've done some windows mobile development and quite a lot j2me development in the past, and I am very keen to explore these modern platforms.
However, I'm trying to understand the opportunities in Android platform and IPhone, and I need your help to complete some of the missing bits.
Android does not seem allow native code access to hardware for obvious reasons. It appears you can write native libraries, but they can't access hardware either.
IPhone on the other hand, seems to offer compiled code access to hardware, making it easier to port things like vlc player.
On the other hand, Android gives you the OS source code, and you can add custom modules to kernel. I've never been deep into kernel hacking, other than applying a few patches every now and then.
Do you think it would be possible to exploit the open source nature of Android, to have compiled code access to hardware? I was thinking about developing software at the kernel level, using low level access, and then exposing a certain amount of control to UI layer.
Do you think this approach as a possible alternative to native access to device hardware (apis), as in IPhone and windows mobile?
I am not worried about deploying my code to other phones, these will be projects for personal purposes only, but I would like to know if I can find a way of squeezing performance of the say, HTC Hero to the max by using native code, rather than Java.
For a more solid example, how would you go ahead if you were to start a project for porting VLC Player to HTC hero? Would you say this is not possible?
Kind regards
Seref
Some peoples compiled mplayer for android probably helpful for your decision
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=575500&highlight=mplayer
How come they got Android 2.3 on the iphone but noone can get ios on android hardware?
I would think at least partly it's due to lack of trying (doubt many Android developers would want to use iOS)... but the thing is, Android is designed to run on a lot of different hardware, whereas iOS runs on specific hardware, so they can do lots of specific checks if they really wanted to to make sure it's running on a real iPhone. This is just my educated guess of course.
The iPhone currently has a handful of carriers and only 4 hardware configurations. I'd imagine that a fair amount of information about the internals gets leaked as well.
I am unaware of the specifics of android development on that platform, but the biggest advantage their developer community has is less overlap and redundancy in their efforts (lack of fragmentation). Also note that Android is open source-IOS is not, so we only tend to see iPhone OS installed on Apple hardware.
I also have my suspicions that their grass isn't really all that green. Personally, I tend to favor fragmentation, as it fosters innovation(but YMMV!).
You didn't ask my opinion though
Cheers.
Android is open source so it can be adapted to almost all hardware. iOS is closed source so to adapt it you'd have to reverse engineer. And that is illegal. It's that simple. And been asked before. You should try searching, reading and thinking, it's wonderfull, doesn't hurt and you might learn something.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
The reason's pretty simple. In order to effectively port an OS to any particular device, you really need access to the source code.
On the one hand, with Android, Google literally gives the source code away. You know that AOSP term everyone throws around? It stands for Android Open Source Project, and is the website (source.android.com) where anyone can download the full Android source code and do basically whatever they want with it.
Then, there's Apple. They guard iOS' source code vigilantly and litigiously -- I mean, their over-protectiveness even extends to what apps they'll let run on (non-jailbroken) phones. So needless to say, they don't make it easy to take their OS apart and port it to other devices. Really, they make it as hard as possible.
Great answers guys thanx!
Yeah! Thanks for the answer Ik Desire! You Rock!
So I've read and heard several people talk about how easy it would be to port over the QNX kernel to Android. So I was wondering, if it's so easy why isn't someone doing it? I mean if you think Google should do this it would make a great proof of concept and could maybe sway Google a bit. Now that's not to say that I myself think Google should do it, I don't really know much about kernels, but I'd be interested in trying it, if nothing else to see if benefits do exist.
The fact that QNX is a proprietary OS might be one of the reasons.
it became closed source when RIM bought it.
You mean porting entire Android software stack to run on top of QNX kernel ? (in order to run it natively). That is not that straightforward and Google would never do it anyway. You can't just "switch" to QNX kernel, it has completely different architecture.
Android is based on old fashioned monolithic Linux kernel, with all the stability, security and performance issues that come with it. QNX has a fantastic real-time microkernel. If Android was QNX-based, that would be a dream come true.
Ok first of I understand the nature of Android, Fragmentation asside genuinely why can't we unlock our phones bootloader? What is the reason? Like the reason a sales rep would give you would obviously be much different then say what a tech would know, so what is the true reason and Android device isn't like a PC for example? Thank you
Verizon policy. To say much more is just speculation unless you were a part of that policy making process, or have access to the documentation on the decision.
jayman94fly said:
...so what is the true reason and Android device isn't like a PC for example? Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's really good question. Smartphones are basically PCs and yes could be made without OS and let user to install any compatible OS. Of course, hardware vendors must provide drivers or OS vendor have to make generic ones.
In the previous sentence is hidden answer to your question. Driver/libs are usually closed source and vendors do not wish to provide them as for Windows for example. Many of them not providing for Linux as well. And Android is based on Linux. So in short, business politic (read money) is the answer.
Also, many Android vendors like to modify Android to provide better (usually opposite) user experience, change kernel (should release source according Linux kernel license) and so on.
Android right now is mess, pretty much as Linux with so many distributions. Google is trying to fix that moving core functionality to closed source play service but that makes another problem (notice closed source).