Mozilla likely to partner with LG for MWC revealing of Boot to Gecko OS
We haven't discussed Mozilla's Boot to Gecko OS before here on Pocketables, mostly due to the fact that when it was announced, there were no hardware partners and without them interest seemed to stall after the initial announcement. However, Mozilla has still been hard at work developing the project, and according to inside sources are planning a joint hardware announcement with LG at Mobile World Congress.
Since we haven't covered it before, allow me to explain a little bit about Boot to Gecko. Boot to Gecko is a Mozilla project, very similar to ChromeOS, where users boot straight into a Linux based OS that only runs Firefox. Unlike ChromeOS though, Boot to Gecko is built for smartphones and mobile devices. As such, Mozilla has added to the browser basic functions such as a dialer, contact list, messaging application and system settings. This functionality is packaged into what Mozilla is calling the Gaia UI, which is what you see in the screenshots above.
Just a few days ago, Mozilla also announced their new application platform in Mozilla Labs, which will be open for submissions after their Mobile World Congress announcement. Their app platform will, sensibly enough, add apps, again much like Chrome's, to the Firefox browser. These apps will also run in Boot to Gecko, providing the OS with a much needed app store.
In a recent Twitter post, Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich says that the company will have a presence at Mobile World Congress with plural "partners." Rumor has it that at least one of those is LG, who will be showing off the first native Boot to Gecko device. I certainly can't wait to see if this is true, because now that MeeGo is dead, we need another open-source mobile OS on the market.
[Mobile Burn | ExtremeTech | CNET]
