LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 4, 2014 8:00 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
Parent article: LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

But, then, that's what was once said about operating system kernels, so one never knows.

Linux got lucky by starting out at the right time, when the i386 platform was inexpensive and products from different manufacturers were highly compatible. It was easy to boot a minimal kernel that just supported keyboard and mouse (maybe just a serial console) and get started, and the same minimal kernel binary would run everywhere. Once you got it running, you could compile in drivers for other hardware (and, later, you just needed to insert the right module). Today's ARM hardware is a different matter -- you can't even re-use kernels between different products from the same vendor! If Linux hadn't happened in the 1990s, one of the BSDs would probably have become widely popular instead. But if neither Linux nor a free BSD existed today, I think there would be no hope of having a free operating system running portably across today's devices.

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LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 4, 2014 12:20 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (11 responses)

Today's ARM hardware is a different matter -- you can't even re-use kernels between different products from the same vendor!

That's crazy! I guess we owe a dept of gratitude to IBM and Intel who established de-facto standards for the PC, even though everyone at the time ridiculed it as kludgy!

LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 4, 2014 13:07 UTC (Thu) by kiko (subscriber, #69905) [Link]

To be fair, that the Linux kernel runs at all across such a wide variety of ARM devices is already an incredible win. The need for a specific kernel compile is a technicality that mostly affects distribution like ours (Ubuntu) -- the end user is almost oblivious of the fact they need one or another. But wherever that kernel runs, you can be assured that an application built for that arch on Linux works, and that's a huge deal.

LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 4, 2014 15:20 UTC (Thu) by robclark (subscriber, #74945) [Link] (2 responses)

>>Today's ARM hardware is a different matter -- you can't even re-use kernels between different products from the same vendor!
>
> That's crazy! I guess we owe a dept of gratitude to IBM and Intel who established de-facto standards for the PC, even though everyone at the time ridiculed it as kludgy!

standardized hw really helps, but this is nothing that can't be solved through software (ie. see upstream work for arm kernel consolidation). The problem is more an issue of "doing it right" vs "doing it right now".. the timescales and market pressures in mobile tip the scales strongly in favor of the latter, and no player in the industry who is in a position to tip the scales back the other way (ie. google/android) chooses to do so.

LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 4, 2014 16:03 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (1 responses)

It is a problem that can be solved because Linux exists. My point is that if Linux didn't exist the effort of developing it from scratch in the ARM world would probably be prohibitive. It is also why the BSDs have made limited inroads into ARM.

LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 4, 2014 18:13 UTC (Thu) by robclark (subscriber, #74945) [Link]

> It is a problem that can be solved because Linux exists. My point is that if Linux didn't exist the effort of developing it from scratch in the ARM world would probably be prohibitive. It is also why the BSDs have made limited inroads into ARM.

completely agree.. didn't intend to imply otherwise.

LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 4, 2014 19:55 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (6 responses)

Actually I see it the other way. ARM should be thanking god for Linus. Without Linux being developed ARM would have never went anywhere. Its the power of Linux that makes these chips viable IMO. Without Linux ARM would need someone like Microsoft to come in and bless the platform and provide the OS. I don't think the suggestion that BSD would have filled the void is appropriate, there are far too many developers that simply won't contribute if someone can take that code proprietary.

LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 4, 2014 22:44 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (3 responses)

Mutual benefit, certainly. But ARM does have iOS, QNX, even Windows. It has advantages over Intel for mobile devices - narrowing now, but the gap in power consumption was significant earlier.

LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 6, 2014 9:47 UTC (Sat) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (2 responses)

Except that iOS and Windows only run on specially crafted ARM platforms.

LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 7, 2014 2:38 UTC (Sun) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (1 responses)

And were only developed because ARM had immense success because of Linux. Apple would have embraced it for sure, they were after all involved in the origination of ARM but without the immense success ARM has had because of Linux I doubt they would be as large or ubiquitous as they are now.

LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 7, 2014 18:57 UTC (Sun) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

The ARM platform has been in a large amount of hardware way before Linux was even ported into it. Cars, computer parts, watches etc have used ARMS since 1985 and the ARM chip was shipping at much larger numbers of CPUs compared to Intel and other manufacturers since the mid to late 1990s.

Linux had nothing to do with that.. The market that ARM is known for now (small units like beaglebone etc) is large because of Linux but in numbers shipped they are immensely tiny compared to overall ARM usage.

LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 15, 2014 19:22 UTC (Mon) by TimSmall (guest, #96681) [Link] (1 responses)

> ARM should be thanking god for Linus.

IMO, probably they should be thanking Russell King as much:

http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/docs/history.php

... this was all done in 1995, in his spare time whilst he did his undergraduate degree. To give some context to that, the A5000 which he targeted launched with a spec of a 25MHz ARM2 and 1/2/4MB RAM and either a 40MB hard disk, or no-hard-disk (floppy disk as the only storage).

Incidentally, Russell was a terrible person to have in your high school computer club - he was very knowledgeable and helpful, but he set the bar so high that I nearly took an entirely different career path...

When I found out a few years later that he'd ported Linux to the ARM essentially single-handedly, I felt a lot better.

LuneOS tries to keep webOS alive

Posted Sep 15, 2014 19:47 UTC (Mon) by TimSmall (guest, #96681) [Link]

Sorry, that should have said 25MHz ARM3. Later a 33MHz ARM3 version was made available, upgradeable to 8MB RAM.