The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative

[Posted April 19, 2007 by corbet]

A few days ago, LWN looked at the discussion surrounding the GNOME project's mystery announcement at the 2007 Embedded Linux Conference. That announcement turns out to be the GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative, a determined push to bring about world domination in the embedded area.

GNOME hacker Jeff Waugh started his presentation with a brief history of the GNOME project. He pointed out that there is a lot of innovative, bleeding-edge technology in the GNOME platform - developments which have pushed the edge within the desktop and beyond. Examples included the libxml2 library, Pango, Project Utopia (which had the goal of making hardware "just work"), Network Manager, and now the Power Manager work. Another stage in this history was the creation of the GNOME Foundation, which showed that the free software world can work with commercial interests to the benefit of both.

In recent times, the shipments of desktop PC's are in decline. On the other hand, laptop shipments are growing, and the shipments of other mobile devices are growing rapidly. There are, says Jeff, more developers paid to work on the GNOME platform for embedded use than for the desktop. Mobile devices, it seems, are the future. This is the situation that the GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative was created to take advantage of.

There is a long list of companies and projects which have signed on to this effort - see the obligatory collection of quotes for details. Much was made of the fact that the initiative is a cooperative effort including both companies and free projects.

The initiative, says Jeff, is about writing code. All of that code will have the full GNOME platform available to it (if it needs it), and will be ABI-compatible with the desktop platform. This "is not toy GNOME," it's the full thing. The platform will carry the GNOME LGPL license, making it available to proprietary applications - royalty-free, of course. And it's shipping today, though the first official release will be with GNOME 2.20 in September.

A wide variety of devices is covered by this platform. Examples given at the conference include the Nokia N800 (an Internet tablet device), the One Laptop Per Child XO system, the OpenMoko phone, and, at the novel end of the scale, the upcoming Vernier LabQuest, a handheld data acquisition and display device with a vast list of sensors available to it. The LabQuest was held up as an example of a device which was developed by a company with little software expertise; the Linux and GNOME platform made the whole thing relatively easy. All of these, says Jeff, are "beautiful new ideas" enabled by the open source stack.

The initial code from the GMAE initiative is available now. Possible additions in the near future include display frameworks from a number of sources (examples include the OpenMoko framework and the Hildon desktop used on the N800), applications like TinyMail, integration of GeoClue, and more. There's also low-level initiatives like better touchscreen support in GTK, fixing the floating-point usage in Cairo, etc. Beyond that, time will tell; chances are it's going to be interesting.

Gnome.org down

Posted Apr 19, 2007 18:20 UTC (Thu) by JesseW (subscriber, #41816) [Link] (1 responses)

At least for me. But the Coralized version works:

http://www.gnome.org.nyud.net:8090/mobile/

Gnome.org down

Posted Apr 19, 2007 18:28 UTC (Thu) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]

gnome.org works fine here.

The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative

Posted Apr 19, 2007 19:10 UTC (Thu) by atai (subscriber, #10977) [Link] (3 responses)

Not GNOME LGPL license, but the GNU LGPL license, right?

The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative

Posted Apr 19, 2007 20:27 UTC (Thu) by Lucas (guest, #31413) [Link] (1 responses)

They probably wanted to mean that Gnome used the LGPL for all of its codebase.

The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative

Posted Apr 20, 2007 1:17 UTC (Fri) by newren (subscriber, #5160) [Link]

Not all GNOME projects are distributed under the LGPL. LGPL is a requirement for modules wanting to be considered a GNOME platform library, but most GNOME apps are GPL.

The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative

Posted Apr 19, 2007 20:34 UTC (Thu) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link]

It's both (or either), depending on how you look at it. To put it in programmatic terms, the GNU license is the class; the GNOME license is the instance. Anyway, the "G" in GNOME stands for "GNU", and the GNOME project is loosely under the wing of the GNU project (though not, as I understand it, under the control of the FSF). From http://www.gnome.org/about/ : "GNOME is Free Software and part of the GNU project [...]"

Gnome Reality check

Posted Apr 19, 2007 20:24 UTC (Thu) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] (4 responses)

Excuse me for ruining the party, but: "...which have pushed the edge within the desktop and beyond. Examples included the libxml2 library, Pango, Project Utopia (which had the goal of making hardware "just work"), Network Manager, and now the Power Manager work."

How were any of these examples pushing the edge of anything but implementing stuff that was available in Windows and Mac already? Ok, so maybe Pango, but still... I know that our free desktops have innovated lots of stuff - beginning with the ability to have several virtual desktops in all ancient X desktops to kio_slaves in KDE. But sometimes I'm amazed at how some (especially this seems to be Gnome) developers seem to be living in a cave and rejoicing of their landmark innovation of a circular device used for transportation (the wheel).

Other than that, going back to our main topic, looks like an interesting and timely effort. I'm sure GTK/Gnome will be a heavy contender in the mobile arena.

Gnome Reality check

Posted Apr 19, 2007 20:38 UTC (Thu) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (1 responses)

In most cases, it was very much stated as "pushing forward the Linux desktop" rather than necessarily about competitive features.

Gnome Reality check

Posted Apr 20, 2007 7:13 UTC (Fri) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link]

Ok, that would indeed make much more sense. Stated like that, Gnome (and KDE) deserves praise for bringing us to where we are with the Linux Desktop today!

Gnome Reality check - Question

Posted Apr 20, 2007 11:03 UTC (Fri) by TxtEdMacs (guest, #5983) [Link] (1 responses)

Your comment: " ... rejoicing of their landmark innovation of a circular device used for transportation (the wheel). "

Was the explanation given for dense Gnome developers or lwn.net readers in general? If it was the latter, we might change the site logo to include the saying about being read by more block heads than any other site ... but that might be ingenuous considering the readership and commenting corps from slashdot and digg. OK, forget it!

Gnome Reality check - Question

Posted Apr 20, 2007 15:40 UTC (Fri) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link]

Heh, at work I always get into trouble when trying to be funny in my emails, I guess it has taken to me and I have become a bit insecure. Thanks for letting me know that there are still people in this world who would have understood this without any explanation, for some reason your post gave me an incredible amount of newfound peace and happiness :-)

The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative

Posted Apr 19, 2007 21:32 UTC (Thu) by ehovland (subscriber, #2284) [Link] (2 responses)

I am encouraged by the fact that GNOME is making a public display of support for a good mobile/embedded platform. I think it is a great step. Hopefully it will encourage companies to share more. It can only help to have GNOME participating as well in this arena. The website is a bit sparse. My major complaint is that it does not link to any code (like say to the hildon framework). Nor does it provide any help to people who may want to participate. But I am sure that will improve over time.

The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative

Posted Apr 19, 2007 22:12 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

I like it because it means that Gnome is going to be concentrating more on keeping smaller and tighter code bases.

Generally speaking, the less code there is, the less bugs there are, and the faster it runs with less memory usage. Win, win, win, win for end users.

If a average PC user can go from something slow like Vista to something fast like Gnome could be without having to sacrifice any important features or comforts then it'll make Linux look that much more attractive.

Plus having open embedded systems and be able to integrate well with Linux desktops would be a great thing.

The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative

Posted Apr 20, 2007 9:07 UTC (Fri) by PhilHannent (guest, #1241) [Link]

What are you talking about? Vista slow? On my Dual Xeon with 4GB of ram and 512MB of graphics memory it runs fine ;-)

This would be a lot cooler...

Posted Apr 19, 2007 22:14 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link] (6 responses)

If one could actually _buy_ one of those OpenMoko phones. Or if the Maemo had a GSM chip. Or if this project had a catchy name. :-]

But hey, I'm just a spoiled generation X:er who wants everything _now_. Hopefully, GMEI will rock once it actually starts existing!

This would be a lot cooler...

Posted Apr 19, 2007 23:28 UTC (Thu) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (3 responses)

The GNOME Mobile Platform is already out there on shipping devices. The Nokia N770/800 web tablet, the Vernier LabQuest, and devices produced by plenty of others who were not involved in our founding announcement.

This would be a lot cooler...

Posted Apr 20, 2007 18:57 UTC (Fri) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link] (2 responses)

Right, I didn't mean to slam the platform, I was lamenting the fact that I can't buy a Linux cellphone, even though I have money to burn.

I can't help but feel frustrated by how painfully close to awesome the Nokia Maemo/N800 is. Not including a cell chip and keeping a few lines of random code secret moves it from perfect to *bleh*. The prorietary code should be possible to replace, but it such a completely pointless thing to do that it makes me distrustful regarding the cluefulness of the people at the top, and quite frankly, forcing the community to jump through those kinds of hoops is exactly the kind of thing that makes a budding community ask itself why should I bother?

This would be a lot cooler...

Posted Apr 26, 2007 5:59 UTC (Thu) by carlistixx (guest, #40102) [Link] (1 responses)

It doesn't run GNOME but it's certainly a "Linux cellphone".

This would be a lot cooler...

Posted Apr 26, 2007 6:13 UTC (Thu) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link]

Not that anyone (least of all Trolltech) would recommend it for production use. :-)

This would be a lot cooler...

Posted Apr 20, 2007 8:52 UTC (Fri) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link] (1 responses)

The first versions of the OpenMoko phone should be available soon:
http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2007-Januar...

The second generation, for the mass marked should be available in september. That's not too far out.

This would be a lot cooler...

Posted Apr 20, 2007 12:42 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

This is _realy_ something I've been waiting for for a very long time.

I always thought PDAs were cool.
And I always thought that Cell phones were cool.

But I always thought that it's stupid that one isn't the other and if they were they were both very expensive and very restrictive.

OpenMoko looks to solve that problem for me quite well.

The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative

Posted Apr 21, 2007 15:25 UTC (Sat) by bluefoxicy (guest, #25366) [Link] (1 responses)

handhelds.org used to have a nicely developing iPaq OS (Familiar), but it seems to have slowed development to a crawl. I would love to see some 14MB GNOME install for my h3600... on Ubuntu iPaq....

The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative

Posted Apr 26, 2007 20:57 UTC (Thu) by ehovland (subscriber, #2284) [Link]

handhelds.org familiar development has slowed to a crawl. But we intend to improve on that situation quickly this summer.