Ashton Mills17 April 2007, 1:55 PM
Intel will shortly announce that its future Mobile Internet Devices and UMPCs will be Linux-powered, using a custom version of the Chinese Red Flag distribution.
 Redflag running on a mobile internet device |
Intel will shortly announce that its future "Mobile Internet Devices" and UMPCs will be Linux-powered, using a custom version of the Chinese Red Flag distribution.
The Red Flag distro -- which APC has had a demo of in advance of the announcement -- has a slick, iPhone-like user interface.
For Intel, its future success with mobile devices is now separated from the Microsoft behemoth, but at the same time, it begs the question, will the success of its devices depend on the responsiveness of the open-source community?
In a leaked document obtained by APC today, Intel outlines just what it thinks will constitute MID and UMPCs. Naturally, they are based around an Intel hardware architecture, Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) will generally constitute hand-held Linux-powered handheld devices with 4-6" displays. UMPCs are defined as slightly larger 5-7" devices powered by Windows.
The choice of distribution for the MIDs will be based around the Chinese based Red Flag Linux, a symbolic choice for Intel given its major push to establish an important partnership with the Chinese government to reach a major new market of billions of potential customers.
In the document a focus is put on the open-source development model for MID software -- in part no doubt with cost being a big factor for these hopefully affordable and to-be ubiquitous devices, but also for the software that's already available to provide the functions of a MID, which hinge on connectivity, and the open-source community of applications to build on them.
What's interesting about this is that one of the core functions of a MID is comprehensive media playback -- which would naturally include DRMed and DeCSS media. The document hints that Intel would support the development of playback for proprietary media formats. More than this, in fact, that Intel would also continue (as it has at times in the past) to work on driver development for the platform for Linux -- for everything from CPU features to GPS and WLAN.
The interface for a MID is defined as GTK based (actually, using the streamlined Matchbox window manager) sitting on top of X, and Intel acknowledges there are challenges in the design of the interface and keeping it, and the OS and all applications, running within the 256M and less 500M of drive space limitations of the platform.
Indeed there will be a large focus on optimisation from the kernel through to applications and even the BIOS (which looks to be based on the new UEFI) to deliver the vision Intel has for the MID. Even the boot process will get attention to ensure a rapid boot time and resume from hibernation.
So what about the choice of distribution? Although Red Flag has experience with embedded systems there a range of embedded Linux distributions available. The difference, perhaps, is that Red Flag is based on
Asianux, a collaboration between Red Flag (Chinese), Miracle Linux (Japanese) and Haansoft (South Korean) resources and, naturally, where else would we see an earlier and rapid uptake of MIDs? As Red Flag also includes English translations, that pretty much covers the core markets. At least, that's my theory.
Beautifully, in a section titled 'What we have learned' Intel lists the following:
- Open is good
- With care, close source and open source can get along
- Hacking is easy, stabilising is hard
- Open source needs more Decoration/Coordination/Fix/Documentation
- MID demands more innovations
- We cannot do it alone
I think that says it all.