Matt Millers ‘year of Linux’ article today reminded me to post something about what’s going on in the Mobile Linux world. I posted last week about some progress with RedFlag (who appear to be close to releasing a useable distro) and the start of an Ubuntu project for a Mobile and Embedded distribution. There’s no more news on RedFlag today but I have been following Ubuntu’s team through their mailing list and Wiki. The main thing I’ve noted is that Ubuntu are really just starting on this and although Nokia and Intel are involved, its going to take a while to get a useable product out. Activity on the mailing list is high but the release schedule runs alongside Ubuntu 7.1 (Gutsy) which isn’t due until October 18th. That means you won’t see it in commercial MID devices until 2008.
RedHat (not RedFlag!) has also chipped in this week with news that they will develop their Sugar GUI for mobile devices. Sugar is the interface used on the OLPC XO machine (One Laptop Per Child) and is already available for download but the announcement at RedHat’s partner summit indicates a long development phase. CEO Matt Szulik said:
“You should not expect we’ll give you a finished product in 15 minutes around the Sugar desktop and Sugar client,” he said. “Customers are at an interesting stage to make decisions about what their next-generation client strategies will look like. “
Interestingly, CRN.com feels that Sugar could be a rival to a possible Google desktop. I’m not sure if CRN realise that both Google and RedHat are major investors in the OLPC project. Its more likely, I feel , that the XO would be stripped down, loaded with a consumer GUI and repackaged into the Google tablet that many people predict. Another thing I note about RedHat is that they don’t seem to be involved with the Intel-led MID ecosystem at all. No Gnome Mobile & Embedded Initiative (GMAE) participation and no Mobile Internet Device Innovation Alliance (MIDIA) participation either. I wonder why? Could it be that one of the other sponsors of the OLPC project is AMD?
