24. jan. 2012 04.09 skrev Hui Zhang <[email protected]>: > 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? I think the problem is also that it's hard to compare a four year old system (Android) with a 4 month old one (Mer). It's perhaps easy to see what Mer does different and than evaluate based on this.
For me, what Mer has of primary value is that it enables very easy product making - imagine you have to do a simple device that presents advertisements on a screen, for a shopping mall. That kind of product should take max a day to make with Mer, for software side. Time to market matters a lot for making devices - both cellphones and TVs. Because of the simple fact that time is money in this world - time that could be spent making more products, or doing QA. Mer gives an ability for people without dedicated knowledge of even compilers to do UI designs straight from Photoshop to a running device, without having to learn how to set up a Android image compilation. Mer gives tools that enables you to set up QA teams and designing testcases, build farms, SDKs, easy image creation, etc. So you can move very fast from prototype to final product. For devices, I believe the world belongs to small to medium businesses and startups - big companies have significant difficulties to change. Mer enables small to medium businesses and startups to easily ramp up their efforts starting from an idea to ending up with a product. While there's positive and negative things about both Mer and Android - also downsides of Mer, I'd like to think that we're actually a bit ahead compared to the current offerings on the market - also because we don't have a lot of legacy baggage we're forced to carry in Mer. With Mer, I want our customers (vendors) to be convinced of it's value just by sitting down and trying it out - and by word of mouth recommendations from engineer to engineer that the Mer Core is a great tool for making products. I can say a lot of words about how good Mer is technically or it will be, but it doesn't matter much if we're not there yet - people should feel how good it is. BR Carsten Munk > > 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! >> >> >
