On Wednesday 07 April 2010 18:35:49 Dave Joubert wrote: > 1) We should apply our brains to getting Debian to boot and run on as > many pieces of kit as possible. > > Take for example the O2 Joggler; it is a reasonably capable machine > (esp at the current pricepoint), but the boot process is 'hidden' and > once it has booted, the machine is restricted. We should apply our > brains to the problem, and make sure that the first outside OS that > boots on it is Debian, rather than Ubuntu, Meego etc etc.
What a ridiculous waste of time. Why not spend time getting an appropriately targetted distribution (like MeeGo or some other embedded device distro) to boot? Debian is a great distribution. Probably the best. I certainly use it on my desktops and servers. But that is what it is great at: desktops and servers. As such, the goals are to have the largest number of packages available, usable on the largest number of devices, all tested and working together, in a general purpose environment and available in a stable configuration. Those goals are completely opposite to the goals necessary for a phone, a tablet or an embeded device. The goals there have to be minimalist (memory, CPU, power, screen, etc.), extremely UI-focused (really extreme, when considering embedded devices), very rapid change -- none of which are attributes Debian has, or aspires to. In exchange, this world chooses to tradeoff features, compatibility, general purpose and stability (and, sometimes, quality) -- a conscious decision but not one Debian wishes to take. The contributions that Debian can best make to the embedded world are: 1) To provide development environment, build engine, community infrastructure, etc. 2) To provide a very large pool of well maintained, high quality software which can be reused in the embedded world when appropriate. > These three courses of action would fit well with Debian's goal of > being an open system. I would much rather have a system now, that runs > on current hardware (with USB GSM and 3G modems (with voice)) than > wait for 6 months for some vendor to adopt Meego. That is up to you. But I have no desire to run Debian on my phone. > Note the strong emphasis on publicity. Hopefully some of this is > already happening, but the average man in the street (like myself) may > be unaware of this. I am a strong supported of Debian, and I participate in the debian-publicity list, but I would not support Debian claiming to be a viable option for an embedded system. Graham _______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev
