LinuxWorld Caters to Developers

EddieC 0 314 Views

AUGUST 7, 2008--There was much to celebrate at the this week in San Francisco's Moscone Center, particularly if you're a developer building applications on or for the platform.

Remember when gOS debuted as the operating system inside Wal-Mart's US$199 PC? The company yesterday introduced , a version of its Ubuntu-based distribution that launches Google Gadgets at start-up. Gadgets are miniature, targeted applications that can be placed on the desktop of a Web page; tens of thousands are already available for free. gOS 3 Gadgets also preloads the WINE Windows API implementation for X, and LXDE, the Lightweight X Desktop Environment. The company was demonstrating gOS 3 Gadgets--now in beta--on a number of laptops at the show.

Open-source mobile device maker Openmoko said yesterday it will publish schematics for its Neo 1973 and Neo FreeRunner Linux-based mobile phones. You might recall that on July 4, the company liberated its FreeRunner Linux phone design. It sold out in a week, according to claims. At that time, Openmoko also published CAD files for the design, saying it would enable device designers to "alter the look and feel" to suit medical, industrial, science and other vertical markets, or make it more rugged or aesthetically pleasing. By publishing schematics, customizations are now possible to all aspects of the design, including hardware interfaces and functionality. Both specifications will be available under the Creative Commons license; schematics will be available "in due course."

Motorola on Wednesday unveiled the ROKR EM30, the latest of 22 devices that now comply with the LiMo Platform for Linux-based mobile devices. The EM30, Motorola's eighth to be based on LiMo, is a quad-band GSM phone to be available initially in Taiwan. The launch follows news on Tuesday of the release of seven other LiMo-compliant devices from Motorola, NEC and Panasonic.

That's just a peek at the news. There were lots of , including a serverless computing technology from Pivot3, a unified e-mail, IM, telecom, calendar and contact management solution from Unison, and the winners of competition.

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As noted, the show highlighted opportunities for developers targeting diverse Linux desktops and devices. Below are concise, practical takeaways and a short workflow that turn event noise into working, maintainable projects — guidance that stays useful long after specific product announcements.

Start here (simple workflow):

  1. Isolate platform-specific code behind a small adapter layer so the core logic is portable.
  2. Use a modern build system and automate cross-builds (local chroots/containers or QEMU images) to produce binaries for each target architecture.
  3. Produce at least one native package per major distro family and a distribution-agnostic bundle for easy testing. Sign artifacts and publish checksums.
  4. Test on real hardware early; iterate on power, driver, and UI issues before release.

Practical tips and pitfalls to avoid:

  • Separate UI and business logic from day one. That keeps ports to small screens, embedded GUIs, or web-based widgets straightforward.
  • Automate reproducible builds and CI so regressions don’t only show up on someone’s laptop months later. Building inside a minimal container that mirrors your target OS catches missing dependencies early.
  • Minimize kernel/module work unless absolutely required; userspace drivers and udev rules are easier to maintain across kernel updates. If a kernel module is unavoidable, document exact headers, gcc versions, and build steps.

Community, packaging and legal notes:

  • Ship clear build instructions, a small test image or VM, and step-by-step deploy notes for integrators. That encourages ports and contributions.
  • Be explicit about licenses and third‑party code so integrators know what must be distributed as source.
  • Prioritize upstreaming fixes where possible; downstream forks cost maintenance time.

This set of practices reduces platform surprises and turns conference buzz into real, ship-ready software.

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