Freescale adds Android, Xandros netbook support (ZDNet UK)

[Posted February 16, 2009 by ris]

ZDNet UK reports that Freescale's new ARM processors can now support the Android and Xandros open-source operating systems. "New industry agreements pave the way for non-Intel netbooks, Freescale said, with "dramatically longer" battery life and better portability. Up to half the netbook market — expected to double to 30 million units in 2009 — may go to ARM, the company predicted."

Freescale adds Android, Xandros netbook support (ZDNet UK)

Posted Feb 17, 2009 10:29 UTC (Tue) by Felix.Braun (guest, #3032) [Link] (2 responses)

In my opinion, one major stumbling block for a large scale adoption of non-x86 architectures might be missing support by Adobe's proprietary Flash-plugin. It might be wise for Intel's competitors to support one of the free alternatives and push further development in that field.

Freescale adds Android, Xandros netbook support (ZDNet UK)

Posted Feb 17, 2009 10:52 UTC (Tue) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link]

Why do you believe that Adobe's proprietary Flash-plugin is not available for ARM?

Freescale adds Android, Xandros netbook support (ZDNet UK)

Posted Feb 17, 2009 19:27 UTC (Tue) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link]

TI Omap (i.e. ARM) based Nokia internet tablets which run on top of Linux
have had Flashplayer since the first tablet product[1], so I don't think
this to be much of a problem.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_770

Freescale adds Android, Xandros netbook support (ZDNet UK)

Posted Feb 17, 2009 11:44 UTC (Tue) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link] (5 responses)

What amazes me is the way Xandros has managed to weasel in with hardware vendors as one of the go-to people for preinstalled linux. They clearly have the right contacts and also seem to be able to talk the talk when it comes to proprietary-speak. Decision making execs love talking about IP assurance and don't seem to care about shipping crappy software.

Freescale adds Android, Xandros netbook support (ZDNet UK)

Posted Feb 18, 2009 18:01 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

What specifically about Xandros is crappy?

Freescale adds Android, Xandros netbook support (ZDNet UK)

Posted Feb 18, 2009 19:57 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (3 responses)

Xandros is not that bad: it looks easy to use and flashy enough. Granted, they are not a cornerstone of solid engineering (particularly in the security department), but they have what it takes to sell product.

Freescale adds Android, Xandros netbook support (ZDNet UK)

Posted Feb 18, 2009 20:39 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (2 responses)

This puts Xandros and Canonical squarely in place for a head to head competition for OEM partnerships in the next round of netbook offerings based on the Freescale i.MX515. Xandros had a significant first mover advantage in the first round of netbooks with its Asus partnership so its difficult to do a side by side comparison with Canonical on the current crop of intel netbooks. It just wouldn't be fair to Canonical since they came in so late and had to deal with competition for XP versions of the same hardware. Something Xandros didn't have to seriously compete with initially.

But for the Freescale based devices, both Canonical and Xandros are going to be at the starting gate together without Windows XP or Windows 7 as competition, so it will be an interest head to head competition as to who can provide better value to OEM partners for what is essentially the same underlying Debian bits.

Here's Xandros press release about the Freescale arrangement.
http://www.xandros.com/news/press_releases/Freescale_MWC_...

But that's not all. Xandros is also partnering with Qualcomm for a not-quite-a-netbook-not-quite-a-phone form factor target. I haven't seen a press release from Canonical about Qualcomm yet. Perhaps this is another big opportunity for Xandros to get out in front in a new device market and reap the benefits of a first mover advantage just like it did for netbooks with Asus.

http://www.xandros.com/news/press_releases/Qualcomm_MWC_0...
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7836869314.html

-jef

Freescale adds Android, Xandros netbook support (ZDNet UK)

Posted Feb 19, 2009 2:34 UTC (Thu) by HalfMoon (guest, #3211) [Link] (1 responses)

This puts Xandros and Canonical squarely in place for a head to head competition for OEM partnerships in the next round of netbook offerings based on the Freescale i.MX515.

My first reaction is: how about OMAP 3530 based offerings? OMAP has a much better established Linux community, better power usage, and is (from what I can tell) more mature. Freescale hardware has been a bit flakey, and this chip of theirs is kind of too new for me to consider trusting. Consider the fact that I have four different OMAP3 boards handy ... only one of them being a pure developer board, three being commercial (or soon to be), all running Linux. OMAP3 has a lot of momentum, vs "no major orders yet" for Freescale.

Seriously ... it'd be good to see a comparison of the OMAP vs that Freescale in terms of stuff like completeness of Linux support, battery life, developer familiarity, and so on. All of those things matter hugely.

Freescale adds Android, Xandros netbook support (ZDNet UK)

Posted Feb 19, 2009 17:32 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

I don't believe I've seen Canonical mention OMAP specifically...but they are working on it. There is evidence of ongoing omap kernel work.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDSJaunty/Report/Kernel

You'll also find Mer interesting:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer/About
http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer/Releases/0.8

It has a build for the BeagleBoard. Mer is currently positioned as an Ubuntu derivative distribution using launchpad, but I don't know how involved Canonical is in the effort.

-jef"still finds it amusing that Fedora is listed as a distribution in launchpad..with bug tickets"spaleta