The BBC News website is running a story about the mobile version of Ubuntu, the popular distribution of the Linux operating system. There's no information on which handsets it would actually run on, if any, and no manufacturers are mentioned. However, Ubuntu for mobiles is apparently due for a first release in October 2007. The BBC has used a stock image of the E61i, but this doesn't appear to have any connection to the story itself.
Read on in the full article.
Glad to see a story on Linux on your excellent site. The site linuxdevices.com would also be useful to your readers. Symbian has the advantage of being not-Windows but it also has the disadvantage of being not-Linux. It would be simple to set up a Symbian emulation on top of a Linux kernel and there would be many benefits to the Free World if Linux was more widely adopted. If you must focus on Symbian, at least include more article on how Symbian devices interface with Linux computers and Linux-based accessory devices. Ever since Loyal Bushie Ralph Reed started working for Microsoft and before, Nokia CDs only worked with Windows PCs. Be sure to ask them in interviews when they will improve their Linux support.
"If you must focus on Symbian, at least include more article on how Symbian devices interface with Linux computers and Linux-based accessory devices."
I actually did this a short while ago, in a feature on the Nokia N800 internet tablet which uses the Linux OS but can access the internet through any bluetooth phone (including Symbian ones):
There's a Nokia-created open source UI for Linux called Maemo which sits on top of Linux in their N800 and 770 internet tablets, and they also have demos of Maemo running on desktop PCs. You can find out more here:
They've also embraced open source to some extent on Symbian, Nokia's new S60 web browser is an open source one for example.
I actually think Maemo is a better UI than S60, although Maemo would need severe tweaking for it to work well on a physically small screen with no touch sensitivity.
As I said in the news post above, the problem with Linux is that the phone platforms are so splintered. Symbian has the advantage of being unified to just two platforms (S60 and UIQ) whereas Linux doesn't yet have a single clear flavour or flavours that developers can rally round.
What would be interesting is if Nokia put S60 on top of Linux, but that's a huge can of worms as far as the Symbian world is concerned.
From a competition point of view, Symbian is perhaps healthier than Windows Mobile because Windows is entirely controlled by Microsoft, whereas Symbian's ownership is split between many rival phone makers. Nokia is the largest Symbian shareholder, but they only hold a minority of the shares so they need the support of their rivals in taking big decisions. Nokia tried to buy a controlling stake a couple of years ago when Psion sold their shares, but the other owners successfully blocked it.
I heard a rumour from a fairly informed source recently that Series 40 phones might/will be moving to Linux (e.g. presumably the same Series 40 look and APIs but built atop a Linux foundation). Can anyone confirm this at all?
"I heard a rumour from a fairly informed source recently that Series 40 phones might/will be moving to Linux"
Series 40 isn't anything to do with Symbian though, it's just the interface used on Nokia's non-smart phones. It currently runs on top of something called "Nokia OS".
Series 40's only third party software platform is Java, so it wouldn't really make any practical difference what OS Nokia puts underneath Series 40, except perhaps to change Nokia's manufacturing costs. If a switch to another OS under Series 40 happened, we probably wouldn't notice a thing.
