Verizon Wireless Joins Linux Consortium
Verizon Wireless begins development of a Linux based mobile operating system and AT&T backs Android, Google's Linux based mobile operating system.
Linux Penguin
Verizon Wireless is beginning the transition to a completely new, mobile operating system, LiMo. LiMo is based on Linux. Google is also developing Android, a similar Linux based mobile operating system and AT&T is backing Android. Android and LiMo will ultimately compete and all of the future cell phones will run on these operating systems. The new platform will ultimately mean that phones which are available for sale at Verizon stores, will run on the LiMo operating system.
Similarly, AT&T stores will sell phones which are based on Android. This is an exciting event. For the first time, much of America will save money on replacing cell phones because of software malfunction. The Linux kernel was designed with preemptive multitasking since day one. Job control and process scheduling within the Linux kernel have been extensively worked on for several decades. Linux memory management is very efficient. Linux has solid, reliable, and efficient user-space and kernel-space thread implementations. Interestingly enough, Palm has announced that it will be moving to a Linux based operating system.
Windows was initially created as a cooperative multitasking, operating system. Microsoft finally realized that they needed to be using preemptive multitasking. When they realized this, SYSV and BSD development communities already had years of experience programming preemptive multitasking kernels. Consequently, Microsoft modified their kernel code to use preemptive multitasking.
The move to Linux based mobile operating systems could ultimately save quite a bit of money for consumers.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKWNAS409920080515
