5 ms·

Oh yay... another OS.

by johnmmurray 14y ago

javis 14y ago
What's wrong with a variety of OSs?
- darkstalker 14y ago
  Nothing wrong. It's just not hype-worthy because it doesn't contain the words Apple/Chrome/iOS. So most people will just ignore this.
  - shardling 14y ago
    They're not trying to sell a brand, though -- I believe the starting goal is to get this on low end commodity phones in South America. (Notice how everything in the original link is also available in Portuguese?) To that end they already have deals with carriers there. Since Mozilla actually has the health of the web as their main mission, they have a role catering to markets that others will neglect.
sp332 14y ago
Hint... it's Linux.
- bvdbijl 14y ago
  That's the kernel, not the OS.
  - sp332 14y ago
    OK, you got me. It's GNU/Linux.
    - zobzu 14y ago
      Actually its Android/Linux A lot of parts are non-GNU. Specially the proprietary drivers.
      - sp332 14y ago
        Oh! Actually I had no idea it was based on Android, which actually makes a lot more sense for phones than the regular GNU userland. Thanks!
        cpeterso 14y ago
        Using an Android kernel also allows Mozilla to leverage Google's Linux work and get hardware support "for free" from hardware vendors who won't bother writing drivers for non-Android Linux.
      - shardling 14y ago
        There's a brief description on wikipedia; it's called "Gonk". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS#Gonk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS#Gonk
        cpeterso 14y ago
        I suspect "Gonk" is a pun on "Gecko" and "Android" based on Star Wars' GNK power droid: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/GNK_power_droid http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/GNK_power_droid
      - lbenes 14y ago
        So basically, you're getting an Android phone, minus the 700,000 Apps? Thanks, but no thanks. The whole idea of using HTML, CCS, and JavaScript as the back end technology for a low-end smartphone is nuts. Even the best HTML rendering engines are CPU and memory hogs. CSS was never designed for and is nearly impossible to hardware accelerate, and JavaScript is notoriously difficult to optimize and even the best VMs like V8 run orders of magnitude slower then Native code, while the VM itself takes up a massive amount of memory. Mozilla should focus on building a competitive browser. At the end of the day, I want a responsive fast phone, like the iPhone or Galaxy S3, not some dog slow HTML5 monstrosity.

Oh yay... another OS.

javis 14y ago

What's wrong with a variety of OSs?

darkstalker 14y ago
Nothing wrong. It's just not hype-worthy because it doesn't contain the words Apple/Chrome/iOS. So most people will just ignore this.
- shardling 14y ago
  They're not trying to sell a brand, though -- I believe the starting goal is to get this on low end commodity phones in South America. (Notice how everything in the original link is also available in Portuguese?) To that end they already have deals with carriers there. Since Mozilla actually has the health of the web as their main mission, they have a role catering to markets that others will neglect.

sp332 14y ago

Hint... it's Linux.

bvdbijl 14y ago
That's the kernel, not the OS.
- sp332 14y ago
  OK, you got me. It's GNU/Linux.
  - zobzu 14y ago
    Actually its Android/Linux A lot of parts are non-GNU. Specially the proprietary drivers.
    - sp332 14y ago
      Oh! Actually I had no idea it was based on Android, which actually makes a lot more sense for phones than the regular GNU userland. Thanks!
      - cpeterso 14y ago
        Using an Android kernel also allows Mozilla to leverage Google's Linux work and get hardware support "for free" from hardware vendors who won't bother writing drivers for non-Android Linux.
    - shardling 14y ago
      There's a brief description on wikipedia; it's called "Gonk". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS#Gonk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS#Gonk
      - cpeterso 14y ago
        I suspect "Gonk" is a pun on "Gecko" and "Android" based on Star Wars' GNK power droid: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/GNK_power_droid http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/GNK_power_droid
    - lbenes 14y ago
      So basically, you're getting an Android phone, minus the 700,000 Apps? Thanks, but no thanks. The whole idea of using HTML, CCS, and JavaScript as the back end technology for a low-end smartphone is nuts. Even the best HTML rendering engines are CPU and memory hogs. CSS was never designed for and is nearly impossible to hardware accelerate, and JavaScript is notoriously difficult to optimize and even the best VMs like V8 run orders of magnitude slower then Native code, while the VM itself takes up a massive amount of memory. Mozilla should focus on building a competitive browser. At the end of the day, I want a responsive fast phone, like the iPhone or Galaxy S3, not some dog slow HTML5 monstrosity.