[CSDN Editor's Note] In the mobile operating system field where Android and iOS are divided into two parts, the new system seems to have herald a tragic result since its birth. Firefox OS, which aims to replace Android, was created in 2010. The good times did not last long and wa

[CSDN Editor's Note] In the field of mobile operating systems where Android and iOS are divided into two parts, the new

system seems to have herald a tragic result since its birth. Firefox OS, which aims to replace Android, was created in 2010. The good times did not last long and was abandoned by the official 6 years later.

However, Firefox OS has shown signs of revival recently. What is going on?

Original link:

https://tuxphones.com/capyloon-firefox-os-b2gos-Linux/

Author | Raffaele T.

Translator | Crescent

Produced by | CSDN (ID: CSDNnews)

People dream of an operating system based on HTML, which is no longer new. In fact, we have seen such operating systems in early 2000. As the popularity and complexity of the Internet exploded, people are eager for browsers to develop into the ultimate graphics renderer, and CSS becomes the ultimate markup language for designing complex UI elements.

However, imagination and reality have a lot of conflict. Throughout history, many projects have come up with the idea of ​​

Many people have tried this direction, and one of the most important open source projects is Firefox OS (Firefox Operating System), an operating system created and promoted by Mozilla in early 2010, aiming to replace Android.

Firefox OS history

Firefox OS is also known as Boot2Gecko because the rendering engine of Firefox is called "Gecko". This browser operating system provides a clean and smooth experience, but was officially abandoned in 2016. The reason behind it seems that more pressure comes from market application prospects rather than technology. In fact, based on the browser, letting applications interact directly with the kernel is a very intuitive idea, and the implementation difficulty is not higher than that of most other modern UI.

In addition, Firefox OS has a very good user interface design, inspired by HP WebOS and Palm OS. The simple lines, vivid graphic design and easy-to-use app development kit make it an ideal alternative to Android and iOS in the minds of many. However, it was not really accepted by people until it was officially abandoned in 2016.

First Firefox OS mobile phone (2013)

ushers in revival?

However, in the past few months, Firefox OS has shown signs of revival, like HP webOS (later LuneOS) and Nokia 's Maemo (now Leste).

The first commercial application to use B2G/Firefox OS is KaiOS, which appeared around 2018. It is a popular commercial version of Firefox OS that is expected to become a modern operating system for cheap feature phones. Although KaiOS ended up failing, GerdaOS soon built its own version, a custom ROM with the goal of bringing the openness of Firefox OS back to KaiOS devices (such as the new Nokia device) and eliminating invasive user trackers.

In addition to this, there is also a heavyweight project Capyloon, which is not just a heavily modified KaiOS like Gerda, but its goal is to provide a complete open source Firefox OS for modern Linux phones such as PinePhone Pro, Purism Librem 5, and Pixel 3A.

Despite its clear goal, the marketing of the Capyloon project is fascinating: they define it as an "experimental user agent" that provides better network privacy and GUI, but they do not state that the main goal of this product is an operating system that is fully user-oriented. In addition, the Capyloon homepage also recommends priority integration of WebAssembly and IPFS, but it is not clear how this integration can be achieved in practice.

Capyloon's front-end Nutria comes with an SDK for developing applications, which can run older Firefox OS applications with just a little tweak.Additionally, you can test Nutria on most of the latest Android devices and test the Firefox OS UI on top of the Android kernel. For unsupported phones, Capyloon virtual machines can be built using Rust-based build scripts, executed via the command line, or downloaded as Debian package.