The road to freedom in the embedded world [LWN.net]

The road to freedom in the embedded world

Posted Mar 21, 2007 10:02 UTC (Wed) by Hanno (guest, #41730)
In reply to: The road to freedom in the embedded world by greve
Parent article: The road to freedom in the embedded world

I have seen it installed on a Nokia 770, and saw it browsing the web.

It is still quite beta and it is not an actual replacement of the built-in browser. (As a user, you can't remove the original browser and just continue using Minimo. It's an alternative, not a replacement.)

I was wrong about it not being developed anymore: a new release for Maemo just came out, yet this older message from the Minimo developer gave the impression that there is no active development is going on for the original project.

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The road to freedom in the embedded world

Posted Mar 22, 2007 21:33 UTC (Thu) by greve (subscriber, #8385) [Link]

It is still quite beta and it is not an actual replacement of the built-in browser. (As a user, you can't remove the original browser and just continue using Minimo. It's an alternative, not a replacement.)

To date I've seen no indication that it was impossible to uninstall/remove Opera and in fact saw more than one discussion and request about switching to a Free Software default browser instead of Opera.

So if it is indeed impossible to uninstall Opera, I'd like to have some technical background to this with which I could approach Nokia. Can you provide me with a reference for this?

The road to freedom in the embedded world

Posted Mar 23, 2007 6:49 UTC (Fri) by Hanno (guest, #41730) [Link]

You misunderstood me. (English is not my first language.)

It is certainly possible to remove Opera. It would be possible to replace it with an open source browser, if one existed that worked as well.

BUT what I was trying to say is that Minimo is not (yet) an equivalent drop-in-and-forget replacement for Opera on the N800.

So if it is indeed impossible to uninstall Opera, I'd like to have some technical background to this with which I could approach Nokia. Can you provide me with a reference for this?

Once again: You misunderstood me and there is no need to approach Nokia or Opera about this, since they are not at fault for this.

There just isn't an open source browser package for the N800 that a user can install INSTEAD of Opera. Because noone made an equivalent, yet. It is possible to make an equivalent browser and Nokia won't stop anyone trying to make one, but there isn't one available so far.

(To compare it with the flash situation: You can of course use open source flash implementations, but they are not equivalent to the closed source flash player, yet. So as a user, it's not possible to just use swfdec or gnash as a full replacement for the flash player, because the open source alternatives don't work as well.)

The road to freedom in the embedded world

Posted Mar 26, 2007 10:35 UTC (Mon) by greve (subscriber, #8385) [Link]

You misunderstood me. (English is not my first language.)

No problem. It is also not my first language, so the misunderstanding might as well have taken place on my side.

BUT what I was trying to say is that Minimo is not (yet) an equivalent drop-in-and-forget replacement for Opera on the N800.

From some of the discussions it seems that people aren't exactly happy with Opera on the grounds of technology, either. So I am not entirely sure how the technological comparison would work out in the end. But this is somewhat besides the point: People who value their freedom high enough to allow for some inconvenience can choose to install a Free Software browser already. This to me is good enough to talk about "replacing" Opera.

And if enough people go down that road and also let Nokia know that they are unhappy about a proprietary browser on their tablets, maybe they will reconsider their default choice.