What is Boot to Gecko?
Rumors of a Firefox OS have been swirling for some time. Now, Mozilla’s offering an early glimpse — but what’s it all about?
Shopping for a new smartphone? Right now you’ve got a choice of several mobile operating systems. There’s iOS on the iPhone 4S, BlackBerry OS 7 from RIM, Android 4.0 on the Galaxy Nexus and 2.3 on dozens of others, and Windows Phone from Microsoft. Beyond those more well-known options, there’s Samsung’s Bada OS and Tizen, the latest evolution of Intel’s Linux-based Moblin. HP’s webOS is still floating around, too.
And soon, there will be Boot To Gecko, a totally new mobile operating system from the Mozilla Foundation. So what exactly is Boot To Gecko and why do the people who develop Firefox want to build it?
Boot To Gecko is a different beast than current mobile OSes. It’s a little like Chrome OS, in that there’s a thin Linux “wedge” that boots up a browser-based user interface. Traditionally, however, a web browser hasn’t had direct access to the hardware inside a computer, tablet, or smartphone. That’s started to change recently with the advent of hardware-accelerated rendering, a speed-boosting feature that’s now common in both desktop and mobile browsers. Lots of modern web apps also offer geolocation features that tap into a phone’s GPS sensor.
Mozilla is pushing for even greater access, so that browsers can access everything under the hood — from microphones and cameras to charging subsystems and Bluetooth radios. Cellular hardware, too, will be utilized to send and receive SMS and MMS messages and make voice calls.
Do we really need another mobile operating system? Perhaps not, but Mozilla’s ambitions go beyond simply giving consumers another option to boot up on their smartphones and tablets.
Boot To Gecko is a way for Mozilla to show people what the Web can really do — that web apps built with open, standard programming languages can provide the exact same functionality that we’ve come to expect from Windows, Mac, Android, or iOS apps. The advantage is that a single Web app could run everywhere — saving developers time and money and giving users the same experience on all their devices.
That’s another way Boot To Gecko is similar to Chrome OS. Google, too, wants to show people that the Web is the platform of the future and that Web apps can offer powerful functionality and a greatly simplified development process at the same time.
In a little over a week, Mozilla will reveal the names of hardware manufacturers that they’re partnering with on Boot To Gecko. Mozilla has already produced an image that can be booted on the Samsung Galaxy S II, so it’s possible that the world’s number one seller of phones will be on the list. It’s important to remember that doesn’t mean they’d be building a Boot To Gecko phone.
Mozilla’s goal has always been — and will continue to be — to push the Web forward and encourage the adoption of open standards. It’s not important that phones make it onto retail shelves running Boot To Gecko, as long as Mozilla and its partners can help bring about the next evolution of the Web.
[Source: Mozilla and Ars Technica]
There are too many phone choices as it is too many differing OS’s open source or not can anyone justify another OS? As we are finding out now, applications for Apple are not being policed to ensure user security. We must assume that to be true of the Android market, the RIM market etc. Instead of industry, hammering us with new, this and that, industry needs to get their act together and make it a safe user environment while doing new and improved.
Why hasn’t anyone come out with an application that ensures no other application can just take our address book(s) and personal data without expressed permission(s)? Where the hell is Symantec, McAfee, Kaspersky, Bit Defender and others in all of this?