

Firefox OS Is Coming to Raspberry Pi - franzpeterstein
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fxos_on_RaspberryPi

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HashNuke
The roadmap/goals for post-MozFest 2014 pique my interest. The following
especially:

 _" Users will be able to read from sensors and control motors, LEDs,
solenoids, slave boards, etc"_

That will make it easier for people to start playing with electronics from the
browser on their Raspberry Pi. Chrome has a serial API, which I think is only
accessible to chrome extensions -
[https://developer.chrome.com/apps/serial](https://developer.chrome.com/apps/serial).
If Firefox OS on the Pi comes with no-limits unlike Chrome, then it should be
fun to play with.

Looking forward to it ~!

~~~
niutech
There is already a proposal of GPIO API:
[https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mozilla.dev.webapi/4BC0pBz...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mozilla.dev.webapi/4BC0pBzEC7E/discussion)

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tdicola
Very cool that more operating systems are supporting the Raspberry Pi. However
I think targeting the Pi to completely run a quad copter/drone is a bad idea.
Unless Firefox OS has some special realtime control extensions that allow you
to stop the kernel from pre-empting program execution, putting a mission
critical control loop in a user space program is going to cause problems.

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darklajid
I like the idea. I AM confused though. Currently Fx OS doesn't provide a
decent (imap) mail client and seems to have issues with services/background
stuff (think.. IM client).

If things like the ones described in the post are the goal (media server, low
level hardware access), does that mean modifications to the core system? Is -
and that's my real question - the lack of the mentioned features merely "not
yet written" vs "impossible to do right now and blocking on core/system
changes"?

~~~
zbraniecki
it's definitely in the not yet written category. Background services is
something hard to design right and we don't think any of the other mobile
operating systems got it right (think: battery, data plan drain, privacy,
security, user control).

There are multiple ideas on how to approach that as more and more systems in
FxOS would benefit from it (background music player, IM, various
synchronization services), and I expect us to come with first approach
relatively soon.

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leeoniya
i'll say it again [1]

by focusing on old, cheap and slow hardware, they're losing out on 3rd-party
dev talent that would be interested to run FxOS on more modern hardware and
letting the optimization for old devices trickle down later. i would love to
_easily_ run it on my BeagleBone Black and contribute apps i make back to
their market.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8433121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8433121)

~~~
justin66
> by focusing on old, cheap and slow hardware, they're losing out on 3rd-party
> dev talent that would be interested to run FxOS on more modern hardware and
> letting the optimization for old devices trickle down later.

By focusing on old, cheap, and slow hardware they ensure that the optimization
will happen _at all._

------
hitlin37
hmm.....strange that firefox is being put up on a v6 arch. The current
generation of boards (such as firefly) is based on ARMv7-A. a much more
powerful and matured arch. Next, v8 is coming up with 64 bit support.

~~~
Narishma
Not strange at all. Raspberry Pi is vastly more popular than any other
competitor, perhaps even all competitors combined. It doesn't really matter
that it's slower or that it uses an old instruction set.

~~~
hitlin37
won't affect the performance for checking emails or messages. for task such as
browsing and streaming over mobile, v7 is much more optimized.

~~~
tdicola
There are nearly 4 million Pi's sold now vs. a few hundred thousand BeagleBone
Black boards (which use ARMv7). If you only have limited resources to get your
OS running on one embedded hobbyist board, I think the choice to use the Pi
makes sense.

------
benn_88
Some pictures of it running at MozFest:

[https://twitter.com/graphiclunarkid/status/52643541881717555...](https://twitter.com/graphiclunarkid/status/526435418817175552)
[https://twitter.com/graphiclunarkid/status/52643423950471168...](https://twitter.com/graphiclunarkid/status/526434239504711680)

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1ris
I'd rather put Debian on FirefoxOS phones.

~~~
voltagex_
Want to help me work on that? Contact details are on my profile.

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pjmlp
I wonder why I would ever pick this over the actual OS offerings for the
Raspberry Pi.

The power of a full OS stack or a plain browser. Choices, choices....

Mozilla should really focus on Rust and the other projects. We all know what
happened to WebOS and Symbian Web apps.

~~~
endemic
I dunno, what about Chromebooks? Firefox OS seems like it's the same sort of
idea, but targeted at phone instead of laptops.

~~~
pjmlp
Personally, I also don't see any value in Chromebooks.

And given that I am yet to see any of them being sold in Europe shops or at
any WiFi spot, I am not alone.

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btreecat
This is cool, I have a reason to boot up my RPi again for the first time in a
few months. Looking forward to how this project shapes up.

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seba_dos1
Better finally port FxOS to truly free mobile platforms, like GTA04!

~~~
voltagex_
Truly free but in the hands of very few vs mostly free and in the hands of
many?

~~~
seba_dos1
Since when is Raspberry Pi "mostly free"? My one lays right now next to me and
it still cannot even boot its CPU without non-free firmware.

