I’m still tracking as much as I can in the Mobile Linux world to try and bring myself up to a point where I can report with a respectable level of knowledge. Everyone I talk to though, seems to have differing opinions. Its an incredibly fragmented sector and I completely understand those that are simply ignoring all the fuss going on at the core level and focusing on the high-level, OS-agnostic application development environments.
Over the next three days we all have a good opportunity to learn more through the Mobile Linux Conference that is taking place within the Linux World Expo. That’s assuming that people are going to report from it but with all the hype going on about Android, Apple and others, I’m sure there’s going to be some serious focus on it. You can track Exhibitor announcements through this page where you’ll already see some news. I’ll be tracking it continuously over the next three days so if anything significant crops up, i’ll make sure I relay onto the front page here.
LinuxDevices.com have pulled out the important info about the keynote speakers and sessions which include one from Ram Peddibholta, the Director of Open Source Technology Center, Intel who will specifically talk about Moblin and Atom. I wonder how that will be received among the attendees, most of whom will be be coming from the smartphone world. Intel is a new player here and it’s going to be a tough sell for them.
Source:LinuxDevices.
If looking at the core software stacks from different mobile linux vendors they are actually pretty much the same. They target different processors but most have the same set of components from the same open source projects.
Then at the very top of the stack the differences arise:
– GUI libraries like GTK(+Hildon optionally), QT, Androids Java based library
– browsers including several Firefox variants, Opera, Webkit
– shipped applications for email, pim, media players…
Also deploying the software on mobile device varies a lot more on the embedded field than on desktop linux.