thank Hillel's reply! from this point of view,if vendors chose android,they cannot benefit from some efforts of linux community,and so abducted by android in some extent. As far as openness is concerned,Mer is better than android. but does Mer have some techinical advantage over android? or just a good replacement for android without any techinical advantage? 在 2012-1-24 上午12:36，"Hillel Lubman" <[email protected]>写道：
> I see a key advantage in conventional Linux over Android - it promotes > collaboration and values of open source and free software better. If you > look at Android's history, it started as closed proprietary project, which > led to certain key design decisions which affected Android's future forever > on. One key example is Android's graphical stack and graphical drivers > architecture. > > Since X11 was considered overengineered and in need for replacement, > Android's designers decided to create something new, but they didn't take > in account any community considerations and any previous effort of Linux > graphical drivers. On the other hand, around the same time Wayland was > started as a project to replace Xorg as Linux graphical server. Wayland > however takes in account collaborative effort and previous work of graphic > drivers. From http://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html : > > *Wayland is not really duplicating much work. Where possible, Wayland > reuses existing drivers and infrastructure. One of the reasons this project > is feasible at all, is that Wayland reuses the DRI drivers, the kernel side > GEM scheduler and kernel mode setting. Wayland doesn't have to compete with > other projects for drivers and driver developers, it lives within the > X.org, mesa and drm community and benefits from all the hardware enablement > and driver development happening there. * > > > Android designers didn't care about this at all. This resulted in totally > independent and incompatible infrastructure, which creates unneeded > competition and distraction for hardware manufacturers, and this backfires > on global Linux community. > > To put it in practical terms, imagine some hardware vendor releasing a > device targeting Android OS. You can't reuse GPU drivers of that relase for > anything except Android, because of incompatible architecture. And as > practice shows, most vendors aren't eager to release drivers for X11, let > alone Wayland for these devices. In practice it means, you can't easily > have accelerated graphical experience on this device for anything except > Android. If vendor would work with X11 or Wayland, it could allow more > functional ports of various community OSes on those device (including Mer > derivatives). And that would probably help improving upstream projects > themselves (i.e. Xorg / Wayland) which will in its turn benefit even the > desktop Linux at large. > > So, Android defacto doesn't promote anything except Android, and doesn't > benefit global Linux community. Projects based on conventional Linux > architecture on the other hand benefit Linux community and promote > collaboration. So from Linux community perspective, Mer is definitely > preferable. I'm sure others can give different reasons as well. > > Regards, > > Hillel. > > > On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 7:15 AM, Hui Zhang <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi all, >> I am considering one important question: What is Mer's advantage over >> Android? In technical point of view, in marketing point of view, etc... >> Any are appreciated:) >> >> In 2012 Q1, an important task for me is to convince TV vendors (even >> chip vendors such as MSTAR and MTK) that Mer can replace Android well. >> If I can say something about Mer's advantage, it will do great help. >> >> Thans a lot! > > >
