On 1/24/12, Carsten Munk <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 think this is a key point. We should try our best to ship more devices running Mer. > > 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! >>> >>> >> > > >
