Which Distro?

Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) raster at openmoko.org
Wed Jul 16 22:17:07 CEST 2008


On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:28:52 -0700 "Vijay Vaidyanathan" <vvaidy at gmail.com>
babbled:

> 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.

i repeat... why ONE? why does everyone think we HAVE to support just ONE? why?
does your desktop linux distro ONLY run gtk apps? you can't use kde or qt apps?
or SDL based games? or java apps? the desktop distro must also just choose ONE
widget set and then all apps must use it? NO! this is wrong. please stop
thinking this way. it's a limiting way of thinking. we have available to
developers their FAVORITE languages and FAVORITE toolkits - they dont NEED to
go learn anything! that is the whole point! use what you already know!

> 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.

switching distro is up to you. OM will ship a distro by default we work on one.
the content and flavor of that distro is aiming at the above - support as much
as possible so we dont alienate people. if we said "only gtk apps in c" then
all the python, ruby, java, c#, qt, c++ etc. devs run away, or HAVE to change.
same if we said qt/c++ only, or phython only, or java only. why should you be
boxed into a single box and a distro is only allowed to have 1 box? why? just
because every other phone maker works this way does not mean we have to.

> 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.

ASU is what openmoko is working on.

> I'd appreciate your helping us out here since I'm probably not the
> only one confused ... what am I missing?
> 
> - VV
> ====
> 
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-- 
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) <raster at openmoko.org>




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