5 ms·

It is two 'champions of FOSS' but only one clear winner for us privacy-conscious users. Long-term Ubuntu user here looking forward to retiring my Android phone

It is two 'champions of FOSS' but only one clear winner for us privacy-conscious users. Long-term Ubuntu user here looking forward to retiring my Android phone for a Firefox model. I just got a Nexus 4 for my wife and for the first time ever didn't replace my phone at the same time. If Firefox releases something a bit higher-end in the next 6-9 months I am very likely to switch.

portmanteaufu 13y ago
I'm pretty torn about Firefox OS. On the one hand: * Mozilla's at the helm. My privacy is more likely to be respected. * Whipping up Firefox OS apps is stupid simple. On the other: * They don't seem to want to target higher-end handsets. * There's no NDK and as far as I'm aware there are no plans for one. While most of my Android apps could be rebuilt easily in Firefox OS, the programs with 3D graphics or C library dependencies seem to be out of luck. * As an extension to the above, I can't write Firefox OS apps with Rust, which is shaping up to be a great language.
- padenot 13y ago
  There has been very interesting results with emscripten ports of apps (I only saw video games, actually), that were using libc and raw gl. It was running ok, but I can understand that the lack of NDK is problematic when pushing the device to the limit. I'm curious on how we will address that (being a native developer working on Gecko myself, I'd certainly interested to do some crazy ARM NEON stuff on FxOS).
- kryptiskt 13y ago
  Thing is, there's nothing else that runs natively, it's just Gecko on SurfaceFlinger. FirefoxOS' UI is entirely implemented above that in HTML+JS. So there is no infrastructure that can be opened up to allow native apps, it would have to be written from scratch.
  - padenot 13y ago
    Nope, we hit below SurfaceFlinger. gralloc and direct gl, actually.
    - kryptiskt 13y ago
      Ah, thanks, I thought SurfaceFlinger was kept from Android.
- shmerl 13y ago
  For high end handsets, consider Jolla's Sailfish.
- bad_user 13y ago
  > They don't seem to want to target higher-end handsets It's only the beginning and I think they are smart for doing this - iPhones are high-end and cheap Androids suck. The low-end market is still dominated by Symbian, or Bada, or Rex, or Asha, all of which suck. They have a real shot at gaining significant market-share with this strategy. iOS and Android have too much inertia to beat by playing the high-end game.
- binarycrusader 13y ago
  No native development kit is a non-starter for me personally. Apple tried to go the same route with the original iPhone and there's a very good reason why it wasn't successful -- and it wasn't just the state of JavaScript technology at the time. If Apple can't do without a native SDK and Google can't, I don't know why Mozilla thinks it can.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > If Apple can't do without a native SDK and Google can't, I don't know why Mozilla thinks it can. Apple is a for-profit corporation that makes money off its market for native apps. Google is a for-profit corporation that makes money off its market for native apps. Mozilla is a non-profit organization whose mission to advance the open web. Different goals, different requirements.
    - binarycrusader 13y ago
      The need for a native SDK is not going to magically go away just because Mozilla is a non-profit organisation. There are real, quantifiable, technical reasons for having a native SDK that I personally believe are not going to be resolvable in the next 2-3 years, even with asm.js and all the other great things Mozilla is doing to advance the web. I'm fine with Mozilla wanting to advance the web; but not at the cost of precluding the possibility of applications that need native SDKs. I personally find your for-profit argument specious at best.
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        > The need for a native SDK is not going to magically go away just because Mozilla is a non-profit organisation. Well, no. Its not going to "go away", its not going to exist in the first place. > There are real, quantifiable, technical reasons for having a native SDK Sure, there are reasons for having one, they just happen to be reasons that are irrelevant to Mozilla's purpose. > I'm fine with Mozilla wanting to advance the web; but not at the cost of precluding the possibility of applications that need native SDKs. Sure, and that's why you might need a native SDK, not why Mozilla needs one.
padenot 13y ago
(Mozilla developer speaking) I've tested FirefoxOS builds for more "high-end" devices (in quotes, because it is nothing like my Galaxy Nexus and your Nexus 4), namely the Geeksphone Peak and the Nexus S (a guy in my office is doing the port on his spare time, so I could play with it for a bit). In terms of scrolling/panning/zooming, say, in a list, in the browser or on the home screen, the phone is basically at 60fps the time, the only slowdown I found were some GC pauses from time to time when doing some weird stuff (opening/closing apps like crazy to stress test the thing, basically, could slow the phone down) or browsing heavy webpages (in terms of js and CSS). From dual core and up, the phone is really nice (I personally found the Geeksphone Keon to be too low in terms of specs, the experience was too far from my Android 4.2 device). Apps are coming (I would not have bet on a decent app map, but Nokia's solution is very decent, tbh, altough we certainly need more than a nice map app), hopefully we have something to announce later this year (I don't work on FirefoxOS specifically, I know as much as you do). I also know we also started working heavily on supporting hi-dpi devices [1]. [1]: The branch where the hi-dpi work is happening https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/v1.1.0hd https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/v1.1.0hd
superuser2 13y ago
>for us privacy-conscious users You're phone's OS is almost entirely irrelevant with regard to privacy. The snooping that we know about (PRISM, AT&T selling private data, etc.) is happening at the carrier level.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

portmanteaufu 13y ago

I'm pretty torn about Firefox OS. On the one hand: * Mozilla's at the helm. My privacy is more likely to be respected. * Whipping up Firefox OS apps is stupid simple. On the other: * They don't seem to want to target higher-end handsets. * There's no NDK and as far as I'm aware there are no plans for one. While most of my Android apps could be rebuilt easily in Firefox OS, the programs with 3D graphics or C library dependencies seem to be out of luck. * As an extension to the above, I can't write Firefox OS apps with Rust, which is shaping up to be a great language.

padenot 13y ago
There has been very interesting results with emscripten ports of apps (I only saw video games, actually), that were using libc and raw gl. It was running ok, but I can understand that the lack of NDK is problematic when pushing the device to the limit. I'm curious on how we will address that (being a native developer working on Gecko myself, I'd certainly interested to do some crazy ARM NEON stuff on FxOS).
kryptiskt 13y ago
Thing is, there's nothing else that runs natively, it's just Gecko on SurfaceFlinger. FirefoxOS' UI is entirely implemented above that in HTML+JS. So there is no infrastructure that can be opened up to allow native apps, it would have to be written from scratch.
- padenot 13y ago
  Nope, we hit below SurfaceFlinger. gralloc and direct gl, actually.
  - kryptiskt 13y ago
    Ah, thanks, I thought SurfaceFlinger was kept from Android.
shmerl 13y ago
For high end handsets, consider Jolla's Sailfish.
bad_user 13y ago
> They don't seem to want to target higher-end handsets It's only the beginning and I think they are smart for doing this - iPhones are high-end and cheap Androids suck. The low-end market is still dominated by Symbian, or Bada, or Rex, or Asha, all of which suck. They have a real shot at gaining significant market-share with this strategy. iOS and Android have too much inertia to beat by playing the high-end game.
binarycrusader 13y ago
No native development kit is a non-starter for me personally. Apple tried to go the same route with the original iPhone and there's a very good reason why it wasn't successful -- and it wasn't just the state of JavaScript technology at the time. If Apple can't do without a native SDK and Google can't, I don't know why Mozilla thinks it can.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > If Apple can't do without a native SDK and Google can't, I don't know why Mozilla thinks it can. Apple is a for-profit corporation that makes money off its market for native apps. Google is a for-profit corporation that makes money off its market for native apps. Mozilla is a non-profit organization whose mission to advance the open web. Different goals, different requirements.
  - binarycrusader 13y ago
    The need for a native SDK is not going to magically go away just because Mozilla is a non-profit organisation. There are real, quantifiable, technical reasons for having a native SDK that I personally believe are not going to be resolvable in the next 2-3 years, even with asm.js and all the other great things Mozilla is doing to advance the web. I'm fine with Mozilla wanting to advance the web; but not at the cost of precluding the possibility of applications that need native SDKs. I personally find your for-profit argument specious at best.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > The need for a native SDK is not going to magically go away just because Mozilla is a non-profit organisation. Well, no. Its not going to "go away", its not going to exist in the first place. > There are real, quantifiable, technical reasons for having a native SDK Sure, there are reasons for having one, they just happen to be reasons that are irrelevant to Mozilla's purpose. > I'm fine with Mozilla wanting to advance the web; but not at the cost of precluding the possibility of applications that need native SDKs. Sure, and that's why you might need a native SDK, not why Mozilla needs one.

padenot 13y ago

(Mozilla developer speaking) I've tested FirefoxOS builds for more "high-end" devices (in quotes, because it is nothing like my Galaxy Nexus and your Nexus 4), namely the Geeksphone Peak and the Nexus S (a guy in my office is doing the port on his spare time, so I could play with it for a bit). In terms of scrolling/panning/zooming, say, in a list, in the browser or on the home screen, the phone is basically at 60fps the time, the only slowdown I found were some GC pauses from time to time when doing some weird stuff (opening/closing apps like crazy to stress test the thing, basically, could slow the phone down) or browsing heavy webpages (in terms of js and CSS). From dual core and up, the phone is really nice (I personally found the Geeksphone Keon to be too low in terms of specs, the experience was too far from my Android 4.2 device). Apps are coming (I would not have bet on a decent app map, but Nokia's solution is very decent, tbh, altough we certainly need more than a nice map app), hopefully we have something to announce later this year (I don't work on FirefoxOS specifically, I know as much as you do). I also know we also started working heavily on supporting hi-dpi devices [1]. [1]: The branch where the hi-dpi work is happening https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/v1.1.0hd https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/v1.1.0hd

superuser2 13y ago

>for us privacy-conscious users You're phone's OS is almost entirely irrelevant with regard to privacy. The snooping that we know about (PRISM, AT&T selling private data, etc.) is happening at the carrier level.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]