Friday, November 6, 2009

Start the engines!

7 comments
JetDroid projectBack in the 1990s when PC's were all gray boxes full of Microsoft DOS or Windows it was a unique pleasure to bring Linux to these poor machines. Compiling kernels with modified device drivers was mostly unavoidable and I enjoyed beeing among these brave people setting their foot onto new operating system grounds.

What has changed since then? The PC's are more colourful now but they are still dominated by operating systems from Redmont. Compiling kernels is no longer necessary if you want ro run Linux on a PC. Installing a modern distribution is now a matter of a few keypresses and just a couple of minutes.

So, where has the fun and the kernel compiling gone? Has it disappeared? I beleive it has not. It has just moved to smaller devices. Mobile phones are now as powerfull computers as the gray box PC's were in the 1990's. And now, as Linux starts to spread on these mobile platforms it is about time to heat up your compilers again and to boldly go where no man has gone before ...

Having said this, it is time for you to enjoy the JetDroid project! It attempts to bring Google Android to the Samsung Jét (S8000) phone and is a small 90's linux revival project. Have Fun!