Firefox OS
Firefox OS (short FFOS, formerly Boot to Gecko or B2G Boot2Gecko or ) is an open source, Linux-based operating system for smartphones and tablet computers, which is developed by the Mozilla Corporation. The aim is to implement the user interface and apps complete with web technologies (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) and therefore but to provide users and programmers maximum openness and compatibility.
History
On July 25, 2011 announced Andreas Gal, head of research at the Mozilla Corporation, on a mailing list, a development project for a full and independent operating system for the open Internet at. The main goal should be to give developers the ability ( also briefly called apps ) with network-based techniques to develop new applications, the usual applications in no way inferior. However, the operating system was initially seen primarily as a replacement for Google's Chrome OS. The approach was a bit cross: Mozilla Firefox OS wanted to create a completely equivalent replacement of the proprietary operating systems iOS, Android and Windows Phone, the completely free software is based. In early March 2012, the first market entry smartphones was announced with Boot to Gecko in summer 2012.
In mid- 2012, when the name Firefox OS replaced the name Boot to Gecko, Mozilla had won the first partners, Telefónica and Qualcomm, five other network operators and manufacturers ZTE and TCL (brand Alcatel One Touch) as allies. In July 2012, the first nightly builds were released with emulators hardware for installation on the most common operating systems on ordinary personal computers.
In September 2012, Mozilla released a first video from the Firefox OS in use. Two months later, a Firefox OS Simulator was released for the ordinary personal computer as an extension to the Firefox browser. This extension was released on 3 December 2012 and the system development tracked. It contains the upper layers of the OS and Firefox should allow application developers to have to have faster and without associated hardware to develop apps for the operating system.
In February 2013 several manufacturers showed new smartphones with Firefox OS at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Your far too many very simple hardware confirmed that the entry was to be expected, especially in emerging markets such as South America.
On April 23, 2013, the public sale of smartphones with Firefox OS for developers began by the Spanish manufacturer GeeksPhone. GeeksPhone as a movable small company of three young founders in Madrid had been contacted for this purpose at Mobile World Congress in 2012 by Telefónica. In addition to the basic model Keon there was also the peak with 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, which secured a unique feature in Firefox OS.
Sales of smartphones with Firefox OS for end users started with the ZTE Open on July 2, 2013 in Spain by Telefónica. A few days later, the sale of the Alcatel One Touch Fire in Poland began by the German Telekom. Its subsidiary Congstar offers this smartphone since mid-October 2013 in Germany. End of October 2013 arrived in Brazil with slightly elevated equipment the first Firefox Smartphone a large well-known manufacturer on the market, the LG Fireweb of LG Electronics.
Components
Firefox OS contains the basic ingredients Gonk, Gecko and Gaia. Gaia is the user interface of Firefox and OS fully in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS ) and JavaScript written. Gaia is processed in Gecko, and Gecko works when used in Firefox OS based on Gonk.
Gonk
Gonk is composed of the Linux kernel and libraries. The libraries are on the one part generally used open source software for Linux and come to the other part as some minor changes to the Android kernel.
Gecko
Gecko is the Application Programming Interface ( API) from Firefox OS, his interpreter for JavaScript, and responsible for the processing of all inputs and outputs.
Application programs for Firefox OS are web applications in HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to control almost all functions on a variety of non-standard web APIs. For example, the WebTelephony API functions for creation and adoption of telephone calls available. Mozilla aims at a standardization of Web APIs. In Firefox OS only HTML-based applications are used, which could also work in principle, offline and across manufacturers in every browser; provided that all use Web APIs are available on the target platform. This demarcates the Firefox OS from iOS and Android, which mainly use proprietary applications that can only run on this system. For application developers, there is a Firefox OS simulator, which can be carried out as an extension of the Firefox browser and allows an examination of the most important functions. It contains among other things a debugger for JavaScript.
Gaia
Firefox OS is similar to comparable operating systems for mobile devices such as Apple iOS, Android or Windows Phone. In addition to traditional applications like phone, messages, contacts and its own browser Firefox, and information about your battery level, time, and GPS are displayed. In addition, can be accessed through the integrated website everything.me to different app - groups such as games, music, movies, weather, television, news, sports and shopping.
Unlike Android there is any app on the home screen. Nevertheless, the user can change the arrangement of these yourself.
A short glimpse of Firefox OS in operation on a demo (850 - MHz processor and 256 MB RAM) is a video that was filmed at the Consumer Electronics Show 2013 in Las Vegas.
Versions
Version designations with two points numbered security updates, and what a possible third point follows is up to each OEM.
At the level of development functionally complete, english complete functional or feature complete, accepts the Supplier of the chipset.