Omnimaga

General Discussion => Technology and Development => Other => Topic started by: shmibs on September 15, 2012, 11:27:15 pm

Title: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: shmibs on September 15, 2012, 11:27:15 pm
Firefox OS (formerly known as Boot 2 Gecko) is a new, open-source mobile operating system by the mozilla team. unlike it's competitors, it runs web technology almost directly on top of a linux kernel (it uses Gonk, a stripped-down linux distro with plenty of hardware support for HTML5/javascript etcetera) to make them MUCH faster. basically, the entire operating system is a web browser, with the interface written in HTML5 and completely customisable by the end user.
(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8456/7980043535_c6a39de9c8_o.jpg)
a couple of hardware companies have signed on to produce phones, and prototypes are already making the rounds. so, who's excited?

here are a couple of articles: rawkes.com (http://rawkes.com/articles/there-is-something-magical-about-firefox-os) blog.mozzila.org (http://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/07/02/firefox-mobile-os/)

EDIT (Eeems): Here are a few official sites about FxOS
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS
https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/b2g/
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: ruler501 on September 15, 2012, 11:38:14 pm
Looks nice though I have to wonder how good is its support for hardware? Also if they make a phone how would they distribute apps or would everything be online?
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Eeems on September 16, 2012, 02:00:34 am
I've been following this ever since it was first announced.
Looks nice though I have to wonder how good is its support for hardware? Also if they make a phone how would they distribute apps or would everything be online?
They have a marketplace that is completely open, so from what I understand about it, no gatekeepers. Hardware support is it will run on anything that can run android. They use a custom android kernel. Take a look here (https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G/HardwareRequirements) for more information on that.
You might also want to take a look at https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G for more information on the more detailed parts of things.
If you just want a quick overview of things that aren't so technical take a peek here: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/b2g/

EDIT:
so, who's excited?
Well, I am obviously :P
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Darl181 on September 16, 2012, 02:54:45 am
Looking pretty good.  I just hope it doesn't have the same problem as the browser with the random freezing. the that's fixable if you have the patience I guess? :P
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Sorunome on September 16, 2012, 03:16:54 am
Looking very nice! But how would cam and so on work then?
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 16, 2012, 02:07:46 pm
Seems nice. Hopefully it offers as much freedom in terms of app downloads as Android, if not more. Unlike Apple <.<
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Eeems on September 16, 2012, 07:11:44 pm
Looking pretty good.  I just hope it doesn't have the same problem as the browser with the random freezing. the that's fixable if you have the patience I guess? :P
I use Fx nightly, the random freezing hardly happens. Usually it only happens with downloads. I've also noticed that the random freezing only happens on windows.
Seems nice. Hopefully it offers as much freedom in terms of app downloads as Android, if not more. Unlike Apple <.<
It offers more freedom, see:
I've been following this ever since it was first announced.
Looks nice though I have to wonder how good is its support for hardware? Also if they make a phone how would they distribute apps or would everything be online?
They have a marketplace that is completely open, so from what I understand about it, no gatekeepers.
Looking very nice! But how would cam and so on work then?
They have created a api for handling it. The first link I give in my post is where you can find out about all that. The camera api is actually suppose to become a standard in all browsers too.
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: ruler501 on September 16, 2012, 08:10:58 pm
i havent seen it when browsing through but I may have just missed it but how do they control what apps have what permissions? I'd hate for a random web page to be able to access my camera and call people.
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Eeems on September 16, 2012, 08:14:19 pm
i havent seen it when browsing through but I may have just missed it but how do they control what apps have what permissions? I'd hate for a random web page to be able to access my camera and call people.
They are in the middle of changing how that is done to something that follows html5 standards or something right now. I'm not entirely sure what it's being changed to, I haven't really read up on it.
I'd suggest that if you are really interested in this project that you should follow @Boot2Gecko (https://twitter.com/Boot2Gecko) on twitter. That's how I actually know stuff like this lol :P

EDIT: This might answer your question: https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G_App_Security_Model
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 16, 2012, 09:07:13 pm
Hopefully as time goes by its startup speed will not become as bad as Firefox on anything lower than a dual core system with 8 GB of RAM (about one minute more than IE, Chrome and Opera) and it will not crash every 30 second like Firefox 1 through 3 (I think I had crashes on more recent versions of Firefox browser too) when a site uses Flash or Javascript.
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Eeems on September 16, 2012, 10:25:19 pm
Hopefully as time goes by its startup speed will not become as bad as Firefox on anything lower than a dual core system with 8 GB of RAM (about one minute more than IE, Chrome and Opera) and it will not crash every 30 second like Firefox 1 through 3 (I think I had crashes on more recent versions of Firefox browser too) when a site uses Flash or Javascript.
Startup speed is 12 seconds for a cold boot on older phones. 8 seconds on newer ones. Shutdown is instant.
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 16, 2012, 10:31:11 pm
That is good. My Samsung Galaxy 551 takes like 20 seconds to boot and 12-15 seconds to shut down >.<
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Juju on September 16, 2012, 11:22:23 pm
That is good. My Samsung Galaxy 551 takes like 20 seconds to boot and 12-15 seconds to shut down >.<
I have the exact same phone. Is it released yet? If so, I wonder if you can test it on an emulator already (like how you can with the Android SDK) and/or someone will provide a way to replace our Android roms with it, like Cyanogenmod and stuff like that. Anyway that looks pretty nice.

As for the market, they already have experience with their addon site, I guess they'll use the same technology.

EDIT: After reading the blog posts, I'm like, omg can't wait installing that thing on my device, then telling DJ_O about it how it runs faster and everything.

EDIT2: It's all there: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Eeems on September 17, 2012, 12:27:42 am
That is good. My Samsung Galaxy 551 takes like 20 seconds to boot and 12-15 seconds to shut down >.<
I have the exact same phone. Is it released yet? If so, I wonder if you can test it on an emulator already (like how you can with the Android SDK) and/or someone will provide a way to replace our Android roms with it, like Cyanogenmod and stuff like that. Anyway that looks pretty nice.
For the nexus s there have been a few roms packaged. It's not always up to date though.
As for the market, they already have experience with their addon site, I guess they'll use the same technology.

EDIT: After reading the blog posts, I'm like, omg can't wait installing that thing on my device, then telling DJ_O about it how it runs faster and everything.

EDIT2: It's all there: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS
Thanks, I completely missed that lol.

I'm going to put all the links into the first post
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Jim Bauwens on September 17, 2012, 03:16:01 am
Do they make use of enough threads ? :P
That's actually one of the reasons I use Chromium on my computer, because (my computer is not that fast) pages regularly freeze and that causes the entire browser to hang.
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Eeems on September 17, 2012, 02:18:24 pm
Do they make use of enough threads ? :P
That's actually one of the reasons I use Chromium on my computer, because (my computer is not that fast) pages regularly freeze and that causes the entire browser to hang.
I think having a different process for each tab is a waste of RAM. That's why I don't use Chromium or Chrome.
I have no idea how they structure threads etc on Fx OS
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: aeTIos on September 17, 2012, 02:57:19 pm
looks awesome. I dont have a smartphone tho. (nor any other 'smart' device except calc lol)
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Eeems on September 17, 2012, 07:23:19 pm
looks awesome. I dont have a smartphone tho. (nor any other 'smart' device except calc lol)
You can test it on your computer :)
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Gaia/Hacking#ATTENTION_-_Desktop_builds_now_available
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 18, 2012, 04:31:53 am
installing that thing on my device

We can remove Android from a phone?? O.O
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Juju on September 18, 2012, 08:12:30 am
installing that thing on my device

We can remove Android from a phone?? O.O
Yes, well, you can put a modified Android rom on your phone, so you can replace it with something else.
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Sorunome on September 18, 2012, 07:23:12 pm
There are always possibilities to do such stuff ^^
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Juju on September 18, 2012, 09:33:50 pm
Free software FTW!
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Eeems on September 18, 2012, 09:51:49 pm
Free and open source software FTW!
;)
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Juju on September 18, 2012, 10:40:35 pm
Well, you're right. FOSS FTW.
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: willrandship on September 18, 2012, 10:59:56 pm
To many folks, Free Software refers to Open Source (It was actually the first catchphrase). FOSS is a fair amount more recent.

@Eeems I doubt the threading on B2G will be any different than current firefox. But on the Tab memory wasting point, keep in mind that RAM is currently very cheap, computation-wise. The extra ~100 MB I might use, max, is made up for by the advantages, like allowing one tab to crash while the others live on, and I don't mind because I have another 6 GB of RAM free either way.
Title: Re: Firefox OS / Boot 2 Gecko
Post by: Eeems on September 19, 2012, 02:35:13 pm
@Eeems I doubt the threading on B2G will be any different than current firefox. But on the Tab memory wasting point, keep in mind that RAM is currently very cheap, computation-wise. The extra ~100 MB I might use, max, is made up for by the advantages, like allowing one tab to crash while the others live on, and I don't mind because I have another 6 GB of RAM free either way.
I have 8GB and I don't like anything filling up more then 1GB of it. While I know ram is cheap, I have regularly filled up all my ram due to things I work on ( VM's etc ) so having a separate process per tab taking up extra ram, and filling up my task manager. No not ok with it. I'd rather it was a separate thread per tab, which makes more sense in my mind. I very rarely have Fx crash on me and when it does I just restart it and get back to where I was.