Which Distro?

[Al Johnson]

On Wednesday 16 July 2008, Vijay Vaidyanathan wrote:
> Hi Carsten ...
>
> On Jul 16, 2008, at 6:14 AM, Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote:
> > all are included. learn the one u like most - that solves the problem u
> > want to solve best! stop thinking that we will only ver ship and support
> > 1 widget set and then u have to learn that. you will be waiting a very
> > long time. with FSO above you STILL will need to make a choice. back-end
> > system functions are stuffed behind a dbus api. front end (widget set,
> > toolkits whatever) is STILL your problem.
>
> Thank you ... okay, I think I see what you are saying, but
> regrettably, that confuses me even further, so let me rephrase mine
> (and probably Dirk's) question.
>
> Assuming that your aspirations for the phone are to create something
> that is more than just a tinkertoy for a few systems nerds like me,
> and that you are hoping to eventually (but in the near future) attract
> widespread interest from end users fed up with current options, surely
> you will have to support just a single supported UI and development
> platform? Even developers of apps will want to code to one UI, one
> toolkit etc to ensure their apps continue to work with new factory
> released phones.
>
> Unless you really don't aspire to make anything beyond phones for
> systems techies, you will have to pick just one distro that the phone
> will ship with, won't you? You surely cannot switch distros from time
> to time, since your existing user and developer base will expect to
> see some continuity.
>
> So perhaps I can clarify: what distro do you intend to ship with to end
> users?
>
> If it is ASU, and I must wait, thats just fine with me, but your
> response above seems to contradict that.
>
> I'd appreciate your helping us out here since I'm probably not the
> only one confused ... what am I missing?

That ASU, FSO and 2007.2 aren't all that different, essentially having a 
different set of packages preloaded? That GTK apps continue to work just fine 
on FSO and ASU? There _is_ continuity, and the apps _do_ continue to work.

The GUI side is there to develop with now. The bit that isn't there yet is the 
set of common dbus interfaces that freesmartphone.org are defining. That's 
where things are moving but it's a work in progress.