Re: [PLUG] Linux on Iphone

[brent <brent.saner@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 7:00 PM, gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net> wrote:

That's a wonderful strawman you built so that you could link to a
completely irrelevant article in a biased way. Never mind having
nothing to do with the iPhone beyond a pattern search. Were you
Feeling Lucky or something?

Installing something that's not Mac OS X on an iPhone, besides being
technically difficult, makes it completely useless as a *telephone*.
There are (as others, including OP have pointed out) far more
productive telecommunications devices on which to hack.

goodness! switch to decaf. it's NOT irrelevant NOR biased; it's a documented and current example of Mac's decreased motivation in development. i didn't even google for it; i KNEW about it and was referencing it. would YOU want a phone with software on it that was even buggier and under-developed than an OS that was cracked in 2 mins? i wouldn't. tiger era i'm okay with. but both the iphone and leopard... Mac devs are getting lazy and there's no disputing that. "release early and release often" is a rule i live by when it comes to patches- they've only got half of that equation right, and it sure as hell ain't "release often". i'm not an anti-fanboi or anything; rather, i think they took a great product they were offering and are starting to break it simply to pack more "stuff" into it without increasing the development resources/effort.

however, the telephone argument in and of itself is certainly valid- due to comm. signal regulations and the like, it's a bit difficult to create a completely open mobile phone. to be perfectly honest, i'm not sure how openmoko is getting away with it in the US- i'd imagine the FCC would try to skin them alive for that. essentially, getting linux on an iphone would turn it into a pretty palm pilot you could shell into, and that's about it. and that's IF the hardware/specifications were actually documented. and they're, um, not.

while not a phone, my cousin loves the Nokia N810 which runs GNU/Linux.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N810

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