On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 02:00:53PM -0800, Chris Cappuccio wrote: > Chris Cappuccio [ch...@nmedia.net] wrote: > > openda...@hushmail.com [openda...@hushmail.com] wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > What are the ups and downs of replacing Linux with OpenBSD in Google's > > > Android operating system? I guess this question would apply to the new > > > Sailfish OS as well. > > > > OpenBSD is designed for mobile phones. Of course Google should have used it. > > Ok instead of my stupid smartass answer. > > How about this: > > 1. OpenBSD now includes KMS and could support systems like Wayland that, > in theory, are probably better suited for mobile (or any modern graphics > in general) than X11 (At least, the Nokia developer who spent years > hacking X11 into the N900 series thinks so)
> > 2. OpenBSD has a license that is well suited for inclusion into devices, > even more so than GPLv2 (Although most manufacturers don't seem to mind > the GPLv2 because Linus built in various exceptions into his model) > > 3. The chips that support these various phones are all proprietary, > undocumented, and the manufacturers only produce support blobs to match > the Linus licensing model and the Linux kernel on these devices. > > 4. OpenBSD has a tight and compact model that should be easy for > embedded developers to embrace > > 5. OpenBSD does not currently do much to support various phones > although it does have ever increasing support for ARMv7 chipsets which > is what all of them run on (that and ARMv8 now) > > Obviously the biggest hurdle is #3 and of course someone has to > have the interest, which is invariably going to be a manufacturer, > and currently manufacturers embrace Linux, because it has > a lot of knowledge/attention/momentum in this area. > Yes, and also the fact that the userland for a phone or a tabled has to be quite different from the userland for a desktop/laptop kind of machine. Without a keyboard, you need touch-screen enabled applications to install the system, set it up and interact with it. And there are specific needs in terms of kernel services to be able to route audio to/from the "phone" part of your device, wake it up on incoming calls,... So this would not be OpenBSD, but merely a system based on a BSD-ish kernel plus some BSD base libs (libc, libm, what else). Most of the rest would need to be rewritten or ported from Android/Sailfish/Mozilla OS/... At EuroBSDCon 2004 in KA, in his Keynote lecture¹, Jordan Hubbard said he was seeing a future for NetBSD in this area, since they already had all the tools to cross-compile the base system in a much nicer way than linux. Well 9 years later this has not happened. ¹) http://2004.eurobsdcon.org/uploads/media/EBSD04_keynote.pdf page 48 -- Matthieu Herrb
