Comment by revolutiongroup | Hacker News Reader

Comment by revolutiongroup | Hacker News Reader

revolutiongroup

Would somebody be able to explain in slightly less technical words what the issues are to doing something like this? In general, what needs to be done before any computer literate person (A+ knowledge level) can buy hardware like N810, throw android or ubuntu mobile on the device, and use it seemlessly. I've just started to toy with linux and have no knowledge of kernel/driver tweaking or coding, but have wished for something like this, but user friendly, for the last 6 years. Is something like this not far off?

  Would somebody be able to explain in slightly less technical words what the issues are to doing something like this?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: the trend is for people to start thinking of cell-phone hardware just as a regular personal-computer, but with a different form factor. However, the architecture of the hardware is not yet standardized like the IBM-PC is/was.

Think of Android as being DOS. What we need now is to have more manufacturers developing devices that are "DOS compatible". That will mean that they are producing hardware and have the drivers for the system.

Once you get that critical mass, you'll see "distributions" of Android much like we see distributions of Linux. These distributions will contain a compilation of drivers for the most common hardware, and will load what's appropriate on boot time.

Thanks - That was pithy, informative, and exactly what I was missing.

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