Six-Month Release Schedule
June 3, 2010
By Sean Michael Kerner
The development of Linux on mobile devices may be poised to get a boost thanks to the formation of a new industry group called Linaro, backed by a consortium of chip vendors including ARM, Freescale, Texas Instruments, Samsung and ST-Ericsson.
The goal of Linaro is to enable development of Linux on embedded System-on-Chips (SoC) including ARM-based processors. The effort will also leverage engineering help and resources from Ubuntu Linux vendor Canonical.
The new group’s foundation comes a week after the MeeGo project for mobile Linux, led by Intel and Nokia, issued its first release.
Linaro itself is not a Linux distribution but rather is intended to be a resource that will provide tools and software that other Linux distributions can use, based at least in part on Canonical’s Ubuntu tools. Despite its close ties to the popular Linux vendor, however, the effort claims that it isn’t just an Ubuntu-on-ARM project.
“We aim to work with as many Linux distributions and software stacks as possible,” the Linaro FAQ states. “However, the development will leverage some of Canonical’s infrastructure such as LaunchPad, bringing a tried and tested structure to the organization.” LaunchPad is Canonical’s platform for software development. Canonical has also been active in helping Google in the development of its ChromeOS as well.
With Linaro, the focus is on the low-level silicon interaction. The plan is to develop and release software tools that interact directly with the Linux kernel and the underlying processor. The first tools are set for a November 2010 release with updates and new tools set for release on a six-month cycle.
Richard Phelan, senior strategic software partner manager at ARM, told InternetNews.com that Linaro will operate in two primary ways to enable Linux. The first is by providing engineering resources working with upstream open source projects, improving tools and the boot process, for instance. The other way that Linaro will work is by delivering a six-month release of tools and Linux-based software (such as kernels) available on multiple SoCs.
“The six-month release offers an opportunity for embedded Linux products to have a common base and an opportunity for industry alignment,” Phelan said. “Linaro will help by providing stable, efficient building blocks on which to build differentiated mobile products. Developers can focus efforts on tuning their own code rather than making the basic building blocks fit their platform.”
Linaro joins a long list of mobile Linux efforts that have emerged in recent years. Intel and Nokia’s MeeGo is the most recent, while Google’s Android-based Open Handset Alliance (OHA) and the LiPS and LiMO efforts have all been pushing open source Linux mobile platform development. Linux development on ARM has also had backers before, including MontaVista Linux, which has been pushing mobile Linux on ARM for over five years.
But Linaro’s backers make it clear there’s a significant difference between what they’re trying to achieve and what others have attempted.
“Linaro aims to provide better tools, higher-quality Board Support Packages [and] reduced time to market with a greater focus on optimization,” Phelan said. “A distribution or proprietary Linux-based stack may choose to benefit from the upstream investment or work directly with the validated kernel and tools released every six months.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.