I'm not familiar with modern tablets. I only own a 4 years old Nokia N800, -which is more like a larger Linux PDA used sideways- before the "tablets" market and craze even existed.
So, I'm not sure about what media the OS stored in on modern Android tablets. Do those feature flash memory chips soldered on the main board? SD slots? compactflash with IDE controller?.
Having said that, I wonder if anyone tried installing linux on tablets that otherwise run Android or other OSs?
I'm giving serious thought to buying a RIM Playbook, but I'm not sure I'll be comfortable with QNX
The CPU is confirmed to be a dual-core TI ARM. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Blackberry-PlayBook-CPU-Confirmed-1GHz-Dual-c...
So what are the chances of RIM making it easy to replace the OS with Fedora/ARM?
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM
I really, really would like to see RedHat putting some effort into seeing Fedora running on modern tablets... if only for OS mindshare and promotional purposes...
FC
On Thu, 2011-03-24 at 19:55 -0300, Fernando Cassia wrote:
I really, really would like to see RedHat putting some effort into seeing Fedora running on modern tablets...
+1 on this. Especially now that I have lost all confidence in Meego and Google seems to share less and less of Android.
Hey Guys,
I think we have a bunch of opportunity. We have free different UI's, we had once the OpenMoko (and the full documentation still exists) - and even we could try to run a full gnome 3 on mobile UI. After I have seen many things, including Motorola's Atrix, and the MoDu (modular phone leading by an engineer from Sandisk), and even low power consuming modular ARM based servers, I don't understand why don't have Red Hat support to MIPS, ARM platforms.
The most of the new generation phones are mostly becoming an tiny universal server (with multiple cores) in the pocket digged deeply into the cloud services. This it what we have to follow, and I think we fedorians have several advantage already. We have an company behind who are pro in between servers, and cloud and virtualisation, right? Imagene this on mobile platform.... Take out your phone from your pocket, and you could set up immediatelly an servers chained up in network, and works as router, firewall, samba share and more....
I think we have to look for broadcom, who is already member of the linux foundation, ask them, to let to use their chipsets, and let to us pull up an Fedora on it as complete solution.... What do you think guys, shall we dance?
Cheers,
Zoltan Nokia employee Fedora Ambassador
2011/3/25 Linuxguy123 linuxguy123@gmail.com:
On Thu, 2011-03-24 at 19:55 -0300, Fernando Cassia wrote:
I really, really would like to see RedHat putting some effort into seeing Fedora running on modern tablets...
+1 on this. Especially now that I have lost all confidence in Meego and Google seems to share less and less of Android.
-- users mailing list users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
On Fri, 2011-03-25 at 10:06 +0100, Zoltan Hoppar wrote:
Hey Guys,
I think we have a bunch of opportunity. We have free different UI's, we had once the OpenMoko (and the full documentation still exists) - and even we could try to run a full gnome 3 on mobile UI. After I have seen many things, including Motorola's Atrix, and the MoDu (modular phone leading by an engineer from Sandisk), and even low power consuming modular ARM based servers, I don't understand why don't have Red Hat support to MIPS, ARM platforms.
The most of the new generation phones are mostly becoming an tiny universal server (with multiple cores) in the pocket digged deeply into the cloud services. This it what we have to follow, and I think we fedorians have several advantage already. We have an company behind who are pro in between servers, and cloud and virtualisation, right? Imagene this on mobile platform.... Take out your phone from your pocket, and you could set up immediatelly an servers chained up in network, and works as router, firewall, samba share and more....
I am a huge, huge fan of something Fedora-esque on "mobile" devices. I love the vision you are presenting.
I'd love to see some sort of convergence of Meego with Fedora.
Redhat might have $1B in revenue, but I think they are missing something equally large in the mobile device market. I'm not sure how they would harness the revenue stream, but given what Nokia is paying M$oft for whatever they call their mobile operating system, I'm sure its possible to do.
FWIW, I own an N900. I bought it expecting it would one day run Meego.
LG
On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Linuxguy123 linuxguy123@gmail.com wrote:
Redhat might have $1B in revenue, but I think they are missing something equally large in the mobile device market
Exactly my thoughts. There´s an opportunity if only to "advance the bleeding edge Linux" and position the Red Hat and Fedora names associated with "bleeding edge stuff" namely, tablets.
It doesn´t have to be a commercial product, because if it becomes one it´ll be immediately subject to the press and the pundits labeling it a "failure" or compare it to the established Android OS.
This positioning is key. By being just a "pilot" or a "technology reference", it allows RedHat / Fedora to test the waters, advance the platform (Linux on tablets) and at the same time please us, the geeks.
The way I dream it, a "Fedora Tablet Edition" would allow downloading it and reflashing the OS on popular tablets (Samsung´s Galaxy Tab, the HP TouchPad, or the RIM´s Playbook), and replace it with "Fedora Tablet Edition". "As is" of course.
If one day the project becomes good enough, then surely tablet makers will select it for pre-installation into the devices.
Technically, if you think about it, all tablets are ARM based systems with touch screen and wi-fi. I´m not sure there would be huge differences, from the point of view of the underlying hardware drivers needed.
Just my $0.02 FC
On 03/25/2011 02:26 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Linuxguy123 linuxguy123@gmail.com wrote:
It doesn´t have to be a commercial product, because if it becomes one it´ll be immediately subject to the press and the pundits labeling it a "failure" or compare it to the established Android OS.
..
The way I dream it, a "Fedora Tablet Edition" would allow downloading it and reflashing the OS on popular tablets (Samsung´s Galaxy Tab, the HP TouchPad, or the RIM´s Playbook), and replace it with "Fedora Tablet Edition". "As is" of course.
What is the commercial reason to do this then? I understand what -you- want - but redhat needs to have a business reason to leverage this - like RHEL derives from fedora ...
Unless there's a rational business plan it makes no sense to sponsor this ... think like a businessperson ...
On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Genes MailLists lists@sapience.com wrote:
Unless there's a rational business plan it makes no sense to sponsor this ... think like a businessperson ..
Is mindshare and brand promotion not a reason enough? If you have hundreds of thousands of people talking about your brand world-wide, isnt´t there any economic value or benefit from this?.
H*ck I´ve read about firms paying bloggers and/or twitter users to write good things about a certain brand...
Also, what part of "initially" didn´t you understand?. IF the project takes off, tablet manufacturers might choose to install it. Just like Ubuntu didn´t make any money at first, and then one day Dell choose to preinstall it.
To me, the beneits are evident. Just like not everything Microsoft does generates a profit inmediately, but has the long-term goal of having people talk about the brand and the windows software ecosystem.
Specially if the required investment is relatively minuscule, compared to the firm´s overall R+D budget. I´m not talking about porting Fedora to ARM. That´s been already done, so the work would be mostly packaging and buying one of each of these popular tablets and find what devices-features might need tweaking or drivers (say, for accelerometers).
FC
On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 4:37 AM, Fernando Cassia fcassia@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Genes MailLists lists@sapience.com wrote:
Unless there's a rational business plan it makes no sense to sponsor this ... think like a businessperson ..
Is mindshare and brand promotion not a reason enough? If you have hundreds of thousands of people talking about your brand world-wide, isnt´t there any economic value or benefit from this?.
H*ck I´ve read about firms paying bloggers and/or twitter users to write good things about a certain brand...
Also, what part of "initially" didn´t you understand?. IF the project takes off, tablet manufacturers might choose to install it. Just like Ubuntu didn´t make any money at first, and then one day Dell choose to preinstall it.
To me, the beneits are evident. Just like not everything Microsoft does generates a profit inmediately, but has the long-term goal of having people talk about the brand and the windows software ecosystem.
Specially if the required investment is relatively minuscule, compared to the firm´s overall R+D budget. I´m not talking about porting Fedora to ARM. That´s been already done, so the work would be mostly packaging and buying one of each of these popular tablets and find what devices-features might need tweaking or drivers (say, for accelerometers).
Okay, so you know that ARM is a secondary ARCH in Fedora. You're just wanting someone with a bit of spare money (quite a bit, really) to start making hardware with Fedora pre-installed.
If I ever win the lottery, that's one of the things I want to do. (But I don't play the lottery, so the odds of that are less than really low. Sorry. :-/ )
On Fri, 2011-03-25 at 15:20 -0400, Genes MailLists wrote:
What is the commercial reason to do this then? I understand what -you- want - but redhat needs to have a business reason to leverage this - like RHEL derives from fedora ...
Unless there's a rational business plan it makes no sense to sponsor this ... think like a businessperson ...
Well... given the demise of Meego, more or less, and the pending demise of Symbian and the fact that Nokia just signed a deal with the software devil to use Windows on their handsets, I think there is a huge opportunity for Redhat to go after the mobile device market. Just look at the success of Android. A lot of players in the mobile market would love to partner with someone other than Google.
Well... given the demise of Meego, more or less, and the pending demise
Meego isn't dead.
of Symbian and the fact that Nokia just signed a deal with the software devil to use Windows on their handsets, I think there is a huge opportunity for Redhat to go after the mobile device market. Just look at the success of Android. A lot of players in the mobile market would love to partner with someone other than Google.
So you've got a business plan - you know what to do.
Seriously if you want ARM tablet support in Fedora build a Fedora for ARM tablet (or at least a tablet of choice as you'll probably need a lot of one off driver/kernel bits and customisation per board).
The Debian folks run on one of the tablets already.
Alan
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Linuxguy123 linuxguy123@gmail.com wrote:
I think there is a huge opportunity for Redhat to go after the mobile device market. Just look at the success of Android. A lot of players in the mobile market would love to partner with someone other than Google.
I think you will find the licensing a huge issue. Android has a much more accepting license compared to principles Fedora Project adheres to.
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 7:16 AM, Joel Rees joel.rees@gmail.com wrote:
Okay, so you know that ARM is a secondary ARCH in Fedora. You're just wanting someone with a bit of spare money (quite a bit, really) to start making hardware with Fedora pre-installed.
Not exactly. Re-read what I said. Fedora should test and build Fedora based firmware images that can be downloaded and flashed by users on popular ARM based tablets.
FC
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 11:15:51 -0600, Linuxguy123 linuxguy123@gmail.com wrote:
Well... given the demise of Meego, more or less, and the pending demise of Symbian and the fact that Nokia just signed a deal with the software devil to use Windows on their handsets, I think there is a huge opportunity for Redhat to go after the mobile device market. Just look at the success of Android. A lot of players in the mobile market would love to partner with someone other than Google.
It seems like a fairly different business than what they are in now. They sell support for servers and business desktops. They wouldn't necessarily be able to command a big price for providing a base OS for phones. Google isn't necessarily making much money directly on phones. I think for them it's a way to make sure someone can't be paid off to shunt people away from Google.
On Mon, 2011-03-28 at 14:35 -0300, Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 7:16 AM, Joel Rees joel.rees@gmail.com wrote:
Okay, so you know that ARM is a secondary ARCH in Fedora. You're just wanting someone with a bit of spare money (quite a bit, really) to start making hardware with Fedora pre-installed.
Not exactly. Re-read what I said. Fedora should test and build Fedora based firmware images that can be downloaded and flashed by users on popular ARM based tablets.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F13-ARM-Beta1 by non other than Redhats Rex Dieter.
On 03/28/2011 11:05 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 7:16 AM, Joel Rees joel.rees@gmail.com wrote:
Okay, so you know that ARM is a secondary ARCH in Fedora. You're just wanting someone with a bit of spare money (quite a bit, really) to start making hardware with Fedora pre-installed.
Not exactly. Re-read what I said. Fedora should test and build Fedora based firmware images that can be downloaded and flashed by users on popular ARM based tablets.
The only people who can realistically target tablets are the ones with commercial backing and a business plan. It is not a market where a volunteer community can easily thrive in. It requires custom built kernels, patching all over the stack etc and since Red Hat is not interested, it is unlikely to happen IMO.
Rahul
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 3:08 PM, Rahul Sundaram metherid@gmail.com wrote:
The only people who can realistically target tablets are the ones with commercial backing and a business plan. It is not a market where a volunteer community can easily thrive in. It requires custom built kernels, patching all over the stack etc and since Red Hat is not interested, it is unlikely to happen IMO.
If you shoot down the idea from the start, obviously it won´t happen.
I think a team of 4-5 people could buy the 2 or 3 most popular tablet models, or at least the ones getting the most press reports (I´d stay away from Apple)... HP, RIM, Samsung, and build Fedore for those.
For me, it´d be a good promotion for the OS and brand mindshare, even if the firm doesn´t directly make money of it. Hint: provide a "donations" button.
And one day, if the project makes good progress, tablet makers might even decide to preload Fedora on their tablets as an option, and THEN RedHat can charge the firm for support and continued development.
But nothing of this would happen until someone does the first step...
FC
On 03/28/2011 11:28 PM, Linuxguy123 wrote:
On Mon, 2011-03-28 at 14:35 -0300, Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 7:16 AM, Joel Rees joel.rees@gmail.com wrote:
Okay, so you know that ARM is a secondary ARCH in Fedora. You're just wanting someone with a bit of spare money (quite a bit, really) to start making hardware with Fedora pre-installed.
Not exactly. Re-read what I said. Fedora should test and build Fedora based firmware images that can be downloaded and flashed by users on popular ARM based tablets.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F13-ARM-Beta1 by non other than Redhats Rex Dieter.
Rex Dieter is a volunteer Fedora contributor and not a Red Hat employee and afaik is not involved much in the Fedora ARM effort.
Rahul
On 03/28/2011 11:35 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 3:08 PM, Rahul Sundaram metherid@gmail.com wrote:
The only people who can realistically target tablets are the ones with commercial backing and a business plan. It is not a market where a volunteer community can easily thrive in. It requires custom built kernels, patching all over the stack etc and since Red Hat is not interested, it is unlikely to happen IMO.
If you shoot down the idea from the start, obviously it won´t happen.
On the contrary, I have no impact on any actual outcome.
I think a team of 4-5 people could buy the 2 or 3 most popular tablet models, or at least the ones getting the most press reports (I´d stay away from Apple)... HP, RIM, Samsung, and build Fedore for those.
You grossly underestimate the amount of work it would take. Even a team of 4 or 5 dedicated people working full time on such a project would be barely scratching the surface
For me, it´d be a good promotion for the OS and brand mindshare, even if the firm doesn´t directly make money of it. Hint: provide a "donations" button.
And one day, if the project makes good progress, tablet makers might even decide to preload Fedora on their tablets as an option, and THEN RedHat can charge the firm for support and continued development.
But nothing of this would happen until someone does the first step...
Red Hat is in the business of enterprise support. Tablets are a entirely different market and one that Red Hat has shown zero interest in it and yes, talk is cheap.
Ubuntu does ARM right now.
Ubuntu has a netbook version.
Ubuntu has Unity.
http://www.canonical.com/engineering-services/oem-services/why-ubuntu/produc...
If Redhat isn't going to cater to this market, I have a feeling someone else will.
Its great that Redhat focuses on its markets, but I think they have been/ are a little too one dimensional.
On Mon, 28 Mar 2011 15:36:40 -0600 Linuxguy123 linuxguy123@gmail.com wrote:
Ubuntu does ARM right now.
Ubuntu has a netbook version.
Ubuntu has Unity.
http://www.canonical.com/engineering-services/oem-services/why-ubuntu/produc...
If Redhat isn't going to cater to this market, I have a feeling someone else will.
Its great that Redhat focuses on its markets, but I think they have been/ are a little too one dimensional.
Firstly Red Hat is not Fedora - Red Hat is a SEC listed business whose primary job is making shareholders and customers happy by generating a regular profit.
Fedora is whatever the community makes it - but if you want to make it something then you have to actually go *do* something rather than talk about how it should be done.
The Debian ARM port to one of the older Android tablets was I believe a one person job, a one person *doing* not *talking* job.
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 6:45 PM, Alan Cox alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk wrote:
Red Hat is a SEC listed business whose primary job is making shareholders and customers happy by generating a regular profit.
Wow, I´m sure nobody here knew that. *sarcasm*
In which way can porting Fedora/RH to run on tables contributes to MAKING A LOSS or NOT generating a profit?. In fact, having people talk about your brand/name creates mindshare, and thus indirectly boosts sales.
The contrary is to have everyone talking about HP´s WebOS and RIM´s Paybook OS based on QNX. So sinking Linux into irrelevance as far as tablets are concerned helps Red Hat and its profits exactly HOW?.
Fedora is whatever the community makes it - but if you want to make it something then you have to actually go *do* something rather than talk about how it should be done.
Look, this is a mailing list. I can talk about anything I want. In fact, I can theorize and contribute my thoughts on what I _think_ Fedora and Red Hat could do do boost mind share. People *talking* and telling others to *do instead of talk* do not contribute to the debate. On the contrary, silences debate.
The Debian ARM port to one of the older Android tablets was I believe a one person job, a one person *doing* not *talking* job.
I don´t currently have time to code, however, nothing prevents someone from picking the ideas discussed here and *doing*.
FC
On 3/28/11, Fernando Cassia fcassia@gmail.com wrote:
In which way can porting Fedora/RH to run on tables contributes to MAKING A LOSS or NOT generating a profit?.
By having to pay people, infrastructure, whatever.
In fact, having people talk about your brand/name creates mindshare, and thus indirectly boosts sales.
Or not. People who make decisions in IT departments on which OS to run on their servers are hopefully not basing those decisions on who's supplying the OS for their gadgets.
I don´t currently have time to code, however, nothing prevents someone from picking the ideas discussed here and *doing*.
Maybe it's just me, but I haven't seen an idea here so far.
Andras
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 8:01 PM, Andras Simon szajmi@gmail.com wrote:
Or not. People who make decisions in IT departments on which OS to run on their servers are hopefully not basing those decisions on who's supplying the OS for their gadgets.
Exactly, that must be why Novell never lost any market share and Windows 9x didn´t conquer the minds of people at home first before NT started making inroads in IT depts.
FC
On 3/29/11, Fernando Cassia fcassia@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 8:01 PM, Andras Simon szajmi@gmail.com wrote:
Or not. People who make decisions in IT departments on which OS to run on their servers are hopefully not basing those decisions on who's supplying the OS for their gadgets.
Exactly, that must be why Novell never lost any market share and Windows 9x didn´t conquer the minds of people at home first before NT started making inroads in IT depts.
Have you checked the financial health of Novell and Red Hat recently? I'm not sure Red Hat would like to be anywhere near where Novell is... As for MS, I think it's fair to say that it's playing in another league. Apart from everything else, they had enough money to bribe anyone into using their server OS. (Note to MS lawyers: I didn't say they did bribe someone...) If RH wants to follow their example, they should probably study what MS did in the 80's, not what they did in the 90's.
Andras
On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 8:25 AM, Andras Simon szajmi@gmail.com wrote:
Have you checked the financial health of Novell and Red Hat recently? I'm not sure Red Hat would like to be anywhere near where Novell is...
Andras, you must have reading problems. I was citing Novell not as an example of what to do, quite the contrary. Novell has a sever OS lead, and they sit on their niche market, while Microsoft took the server market from the bottom up, starting with home desktops, conquering the minds of people, and then moving upwards to the IT sysadmins´ turf.
FC
On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 10:10 AM, Fernando Cassia fcassia@gmail.com wrote:
Novell has a sever OS lead,
Sorry I meant "had".
FC
On 3/29/11, Fernando Cassia fcassia@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 8:25 AM, Andras Simon szajmi@gmail.com wrote:
Have you checked the financial health of Novell and Red Hat recently? I'm not sure Red Hat would like to be anywhere near where Novell is...
Andras, you must have reading problems. I was citing Novell not as an example of what to do, quite the contrary. Novell has a sever OS lead, and they sit on their niche market, while Microsoft took the server market from the bottom up, starting with home desktops, conquering the minds of people, and then moving upwards to the IT sysadmins´ turf.
Right, sorry, I misread what you wrote. But I hope I'm misreading you again and you're not seriously suggesting that RS should go into the gadget business because MS did and they're thriving, and Novell didn't and they're not.
Andras