In the mobile Linux world, some pigs are more equal than others. Android, the highest profile mobile OS with a Linux base, is no longer officially Linux at all, but a ‘fork’. This leaves MeeGo with the purest credentials among the big name variants, and actually hosted by the Linux Foundation. It could be a powerful counterweight to Google for one of its developers, Nokia, but the position of the other, Intel, is more ambiguous. Intel’s rivals are flocking to MeeGo for its modern, web-oriented, ‘true Linux’ properties, so it is questionable how much power it will bring to its co-creator. AMD has already shown a strong interest, and last week Broadcom joined the Linux Foundation, with insiders signalling a MeeGo move. Ironically enough, that came as Intel talked up commercial availability of Android on its Atom processors.
In other words, this will be no tightly coupled Wintel scenario, with Intel tying an OS to its x86 architecture and excluding rivals. Nokia gains from broad implementation of MeeGo, enhancing the credentials of its multi-OS software strategy even while keeping the driving seat of a potentially important platform in the cloud. Intel, however, will have to fight the same x86 versus ARM wars whether it controls the OS or not. As Microsoft gets closer to ARM, even for full-blown Windows, so Intel will see the ARM-based processor makers grabbing for a share of MeeGo.
MeeGo could soon be in the odd situation of being supported by three key Intel competitors, AMD, Broadcom and Qualcomm. Qualcomm has expressed strong interest in the OS, though it is likely to work more closely with Nokia than Intel ‘ for now at least, the two vendors’ strategies and release schedules remain separate, with Intel’s mainly focused on netbooks. However, any activities by rival chipmakers could damage the key goal of using MeeGo as a differentiating software framework for Atom.
In November, AMD joined the MeeGo open source project hosted by the Linux Foundation, and will provide engineering expertise intended to influence future releases and enhancements. “MeeGo represents an exciting, open source mobile operating system we expect to be adopted by mobile and embedded device makers over time,” said the firm’s corporate VP of software development, Ben Bar-Haim. ‘We expect that this operating system will help drive our embedded plans and create expanded market opportunities for our forthcoming Accelerated Processing Units.”
And now Broadcom has signed up for the Foundation, with a sharp eye on MeeGo. This comes after years when Broadcom has been considered a Linux outsider, incurring the anger of Wi-Fi notebook users with only minimal efforts to support Wi-Fi drivers and code for its WLan chipsets. It has gradually softened its position over the past three years, and last September released sourcecode for the ‘initial release of a fully open Linux driver’ for its 802.11n chipsets. This has now been integrated into the latest Linux kernel release 2.6.37.
While better support for Linux/Wi-Fi combinations may be the short term goal for Broadcom, sources said there was a more strategic interest in getting close to MeeGo, as part of the chip developer’s bid to become a stronger force in all kinds of mobile and cloud devices.
Meanwhile, Intel expects the next version of Android, Honeycomb, to run on its x86-based Atom processors as well as on ARM and MIPS designs. This would be a major boost for Intel’s bid to make Atom dominant in large-screen mobile devices, such as tablets, as it already is in netbooks. Beyond the iPad, most new tablets are supporting Android 3.0 or Honeycomb, the first release optimized for larger displays, yet Atom has been confined to other OS options, most importantly Windows and MeeGo.
Nokia is expected to announce Atom-based mobile devices running MeeGo soon, and Google’s own cloudbook system, Chrome OS, will also run on the Intel architecture. But Android will be vital to Atom’s battle against ARM in the tablet space ‘ an important testing ground for the hybrid area of the market where PCs meet phones.
According to IDG, Maulik Shah, an Intel representative, said Android 3.0 will be ready for the latest family of Atom chips, Oak Trail, following an internal port of the Google OS to Atom last April. Oak Trail is already found in tablets such as Samsung Electronics’ Sliding PC 7 Series, which runs Windows 7.
At CES, Intel showed off the Flare tablet from Avaya, running an earlier release of Atom, 2.1 or ‘clair, on Atom. However, Avaya says this particular device is part of a bundle of communications products for enterprises, and is not a standalone offering.
All this makes it clear that any dream of a unified mobile Linux OS is just that, a distant dream. As with other supposedly all-embracing ‘ but in fact fragmented ‘ open platforms like Java, the priority must be to focus on higher layers that make the underlying OS less relevant, but enable companies to differentiate, and to optimize Linux-based systems for specific applications. For instance, the Linux Foundation’s Yocto Project provides open source infrastructure and tools to help developers create their own custom Linux distributions for any hardware architecture, and particularly targets embedded systems.
Linaro is another collaborative body looking to provide a measure of harmony across different embedded devices, Linux variants and chips (as long as they are ARM-based). This is good news for providers of specialized Linux platforms, such as MontaVista’s efforts in set-top boxes, Wind River’s in cars, and Mentor’s in telehealth. Linaro offers a basic kernel plus optimized tools and middleware validated in advance for the participants’ SoCs. These can then be used by virtually any Linux platform.