[OT?] Android phones

[S P Arif Sahari Wibowo]

On Sun, 28 Mar 2010, Christopher Browne wrote:
> The size of community may be small now; if the stack gets used 
> more and more for mobile phones, the population increases,

True. But for the ones that use the same stack as common "Linux 
OS", the community is already big. No waiting required.

> What a "common Linux system" means is a mighty elusive thing;

IMHO Linus is partly to blame for this. :-) Obviously Linux 
refer to the Linux kernel. However when asked about naming the 
OS which were built on top of the Linux kernel, Linux preferred 
to call it Linux as well. Well, now everything that have a 
little part of Linux in it, is being call Linux. :-)

> that I don't imagine are what you have in mind:

Well, that's now entirely true. :-)

> 1.  Android would be one, for sure

Which actually have very little in common with Linux OS. Same 
with WebOS, I guess.

> 2.  BusyBox, and very little more, which is what you 
> frequently see on storage devices

That actually not so bad. :-)

> 3.  Maemo (the Nokia platform, using some bits of GNU, 
> originally with Python+GTk, later biasing to Qt),

I believe Maemo is largely a Linux OS, a direct descendant of 
Debian, carrying all major libraries and tools. So not just 
"some bits of GNU". From my searches so far, seems to be the 
only "real" Linux in cell phones in the market other than 
OpenMoko.

> 4.  Moblin+Maemo is in the process of begetting Meego.

Well Moblin seems to be another "real" Linux OS, especially 
considering Intel design it for x86 platform. :-)

> None of these represent places where I'd expect that what 
> you'd call "Common Linux apps" would necessarily run 
> trivially.

Well, actually I guess common Linux applications may be able run 
trivially in Meego x86s phones. :-) In Maemo changing to 
entirely different hardware platform (ARM) may introduce issues 
but other than that it seems that most porting issues is with 
display interface, as documented here: 
http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/Maemo_5_Developer_Guide/Porting_Software/Porting_Existing_GTK%2B_Application_to_Maemo_5

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