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Fragmenting Linux is not the way to beat Apple
- jacquesm 16y agoWhy should linux want to 'beat apple' ? Linux and Apple can co-exist, no need for the one to grow at the others expense. They're both unixes anyway, under the hood the similarities are much bigger than the differences.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoMore importantly, under the hood almost every one of the projects he mentioned are minor variations on plain linux and so already are co-operating in exactly the manner he proposes. WebOS is kind of famous for just being a vanilla linux underneath. Android is famous for the opposite, but it's already resubmitted the major point of contention to the main Linux kernel and apparently it will get merged this time. The fact that Canonical hired this guy is almost enough for me to jump ship to another distro. He's genuinely frightening in his pointy-headed boss-ness.
- macco 16y agoIf you see it from the business side - the are all different plattforms. How many users know that they are using Linux on their mobile? But then again, what is the point of beating Apple? Do want to have more mobile Linux out there than Iphone OS - that is just a matter of time. Do you want to be the plattform that makes their users more happy - that is lot of work. Distros will really have to work together for this. Cheers
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoI would be astonished if there wasn't already (and probably always been) more "linux" phones than iPhones, it's used in all sorts of devices even nearer the low end. I agree that the platforms built on linux can be as different as Tivo and Joo Joo but this particular post is arguing that they should combine at the linux level, which they already have.
- fierarul 16y agoIt's not like the whole industry is fighting Apple, they are all fighting for marketshare. I this the Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha is correct: > I've always felt that owning your OS is important, provided you have an ecosystem, you have all the services and you have an ability and the scale to execute on keeping that OS at the leading edge. And I continue to believe that at some point, if we have all of those attributes, that owning our own OS will be a very important thing.
- MikeCapone 16y agoInteresting. So it's not "beat Microsoft" anymore. That must hurt in Redmond...
- Daniel_Newby 16y agoGood point. When did that change?!
- MikeCapone 16y agoI'd suspect around the time the iPhone 3GS came out, but that's just the way it felt to me.
- tzs 16y agoPerhaps the idea is that if you can't beat Apple, then you can't beat something bigger either, such as Microsoft.
- MikeCapone 16y agoRight now I'd say that by many metrics, Apple is beating Microsoft. Its products are much hotter in the marketplace, its stock is doing better, and its products are considered better by most.
- Tamerlin 16y agoProbably not... MS' dominance on the desktop isn't in any immediate danger, and MS is the puny upstart in the mobile market. (There's also the arrogance thing over there.) It sounds a lot like the UNIX vs UNIX (et all) vs NT thing, too. Back when NT was new, the UNIX vendors had better hardware as well as more mature OS's... but they were too fragmented to stop the rise of the legion of computer vendors using x86 and Windows, and didn't start paying attention until Intel eclipsed almost all of them. (There's really only one left.)
- Zak 16y agoI don't think most of these vendors have any interest in mobile Linux in general beating Apple or anyone else. The vendors are interested in selling devices or software. HP/Palm is competing with Android as much as it is with Apple.