Tizen Reaches 1.0 68
Earlier today, Tizen, Intel's post-MeeGo mobile OS, announced the availability of their first stable release. The H has a summary of the new features: "The source code for Tizen's Larkspur release has seen a number of new features added. The Web capabilities have now got full W3C/HTML5 specification support with 'key' WebRTC features incorporated and APIs to access the local camera and vibration. ... Tizen's graphics are based on X11 with a compositing window manager based on Enlightenment Foundation Libraries ... The SDK's IDE includes a new browser based tool which offers support for the Tizen APIs within a browser; this should allow developers to run and debug Tizen 'web applications' and see how those applications run with various device profiles. The alpha release of the browser based simulator should reduce the need to work with the emulator for many applications." The SDK release notes and source release notes have the gritty details. A new community wiki has been created, and source is available via git. This release comes just before the first Tizen developer conference, May 7-9th in San Francisco.
Not a real succesor or maemo/meego? (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I understand, Tizen runs HTML5 apps. Meego/maemo were close to real gnu/linux OSs, and could run real desktop application, or applications in C, Python, etc. Almost anything that would run on a desktop linux.
In what way is Tizen Meego's succesor if :
1) it can't run meego apps. Or Maemo apps. It's a totally different platform.
2) it isn't a real linux, but just uses linux at a very low level (somewhat like android).
Re:Not a real succesor or maemo/meego? (Score:5, Informative)
Should have included this above; to quote Intel: "Meego apps written for smartphones won't work on Tizen devices"
Re:Not a real succesor or maemo/meego? (Score:4, Informative)
Maemo has plenty of software, and generally of pretty good quality. A great deal work fine on meego.
Aditionally, I find it extremenly easy to port some lightweight Qt app to maemo/meego; while porting that same app to EFL implies a complete rewrite of all the UI, and possibly more.
I'm also pretty sure there are WAY more developers that know Qt/GTK out there, than developers who know EFL. I for one don't personally know anyone who's ever used EFL, but I do know plenty of people who've used Qt or GTK.
Currently, on my N900, I can just SSH in, code some python files, and voilà, I have a maemo application. Using QT, and all out-of-the-box. The same cannot be said for Tizen, sadly. I either learn EFL, or program in HTML5. If I'm willing to write in HTML5, I'd just make a web-app that works anywhere, not Tizen-specific.
more HTML5 apps mantra; versus B2G (Score:5, Informative)
The H summary is good. Tizen is straight-up GNU/Linux and X11, more or less standard packages but with the EFL libraries that Samsung likes. So it should be nice for hackers porting Linux programs. Tizen's message for developers is write HTML5 apps. Note that the message from webOS, Playbook, BBX, Windows 8 — everyone but iOS and Android — is also "write HTML5 apps". See a pattern here? (Yet Linux desktops continue to promote native development with GTK/Qt.)
Mozilla's Boot 2 Gecko is also "write HTML5 apps", but the phone's own software is also written in HTML5. It shows a commitment to the same code and development tools you're telling developers to use. And only Mozilla seems committed to open Web apps [mozilla.org] you can install from any web site or from independent app stores; the other platforms seem to be "write your app in HTML5... and then package it for our platform and offer it in our store." B2G's current stack is different from Tizen, it's being developed on Android kernel and runtime. In theory as the Web APIs get standardized the difference won't matter for HTML5 app writers.
If that's really the case you would think somewhere there's a web site you can browse to run it, but like Tizen 1.0 screenshots I can't find it. You can run B2G's "Gaia" UI in your browser with lots of caveats (probably requires a Gecko browser like Firefox Aurora, your PC lacks many APIs), see an early demo at http://paulrouget.com/e/b2gdemo/ [paulrouget.com]
Re:Not a real succesor or maemo/meego? (Score:5, Informative)
In what way is Tizen Meego's succesor if :
1) it can't run meego apps. Or Maemo apps. It's a totally different platform.
2) it isn't a real linux, but just uses linux at a very low level (somewhat like android).
3) the SDK is as closed source [tizen.org] as it can get.