Re: Movial to enable an ARM Mobile Linux platform

[Antti Ijäs <antti ijas movial fi>]

Hi Lucas,

Lucas Rocha wrote:
> Hi Sampo,
> 
>> Movial is working with ARM and partners to contribute to GNOME and existing
>> projects to help the use and integration of open source technology with mobile
>> platforms. This builds on existing work from open source developers and
>> contributions from companies building mobile devices. The main contributions
>> will be around the UI framework and browser technology. The libaries and
>> techniques used are those familiar from Gnome Mobile stack. New mobile
>> components we will be working with are components like HAL, Gnome Network
>> Manager, Gnome Volume Manager and Mozilla based browser.
> 
> Just some question:
> 
> - What do you mean with "UI framework"? Something like Hildon, Sugar
> or OpenMoko UI?

That should probably have said: Application framework instead of UI
framework :). Having one of the hildon, openmoko, sugar in there is not
technically difficult, so if somebody really insists having them there
(for portability or other reasons), then please raise your hands, but
otherwise we will try to be as close to stock components as possible and
if necessary, contribute to those stock components.

We will of course have an "Example UI" on top of the framework which is
now basically a couple of example applications: mediaplayer, browser,
network-manager applet, battery status indicators etc. just to show that
things work under the hood.

> - Will you target any specific form-factors?

Not really any specific nailed down targets. In the work that we do, we
will try to solve the technically difficult obstacles on the framework
level (read: not visible level) to have a good building block for any
party interested.

This platform already runs on different ARM hardwares which have
different screen sizes.

Because of great work done already in the framework level, by many
individuals and companies, there's not that "much" work to be done
there. Okay much is relative. One of the interesting components I see is
Cairo, because also some versions of the Mozilla browser is using that
for rendering. Mozilla activities is one major effort here as well.

> 
>> This work aims at supporting existing efforts in building a complete set of
>> open source components targeting mobile platforms instead of starting 'yet
>> another new project'. ARM processors are widely used in existing mobile
>> platforms where power, performance and integration are key. Cooperation with
>> ARM and its partners should help in making GNOME and related open source
>> projects more successful in building mobile devices using open source software
>> components. An important goal for the work being done is to contribute to the
>> respective opensource projects and thus to contribute in having a solid and
>> opensource Gnome Mobile stack.
> 
> Do you have any architecture/design docs online or a more specific plan?

Yes, but not available in the public yet :| We're in the beginning of a
path still. I do not want to give you any dates either, because that
might backfire ;) but if you want to influence on a particular
architectural design issue, now would be a good time :)

> 
>> Please feel free to ask questions, send comments and talk about the subjects
>> with ARM or Movial guys on various mailing lists and IRC channels.
> 
> I'm just curious. :-)
> 
> --lucasr

Although I didn't give you much technical answers, I hope I at least
raised your curiosity level a bit ;)

IMHO the main point is that people and companies are interested in the
Gnome Mobile stack and are willing to put effort and resources on to
that and that's really good.

/ Antti