From the 'Linux Inside' files:

With all the hype surrounding the launch of Google's Nexus one 'super phone' yesterday was one of the biggest Linux phone releases ever - or was it?

Google's Android sits on top of Linux, but it's my view that Nexus One is not necessarily a good thing for the mobile Linux community.

Remember back three or four years ago - before Android - and there was a lot of talk from various groups LiPS, LiMO and vendors like Motorola about Linux phones. The promise then was a truly open ecosystem where Linux was the base that would help to make phones easier to build and faster to develop applications.

In many respects, Android and nexus one deliver on that promise.

Yet the nexus one isn't about Linux is it? Can applications written for Android run on other Linux based phones in a similar way to how an LSB (Linux Standards Base) application can (potentially) run across any Linux distribution?

Android is about Google. It's an operating system that has its own app marketplace for Google operating system users.

Certainly Google is a good open source citizen and they contribute back to Linux and the broader open source community (so I'm not knocking them on that front, cause they're awesome there). But nexus one grows the Google Android community first and foremost and Linux only by association. It's not the bold vision of the Linux phone world that existed a few years ago, it's a Google vision.

Linux as the power underneath Android is a great thing, and Google's big nexus one launch does help to grow the ecosystem of Linux users. I just hope it doesn't end the dream of a broader system of Linux phones for the future.

http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/20 ... linux.html