Reverse or Creation?

[dimonik, dimonik]

Paulk wrote:

I suppose one of the biggest problems with hardware is the need of
> producing a new device to implement a new feature. I don't see any easy
> way to fix this. Even if we decided to stick with a device for several
> years, knowing its functionalities are not going to evolve, we'd still
> be stuck with software being more and more demanding (in accordance to
> new devices' abilities). For instance, take the latest Android versions:
> it's harder and harder to make them run on "old" Android devices such as
> the Nexus S, not to mention the HTC Dream. That's not only the case with
> Android: look at GNOME-Shell abandoning its EGL-less fallback (AFAIK the
> fallback gnome-shell is too slow to be usable). However, some software
> still exists (enlightenment), but adapting it and a whole GNU/Linux
> system for mobile devices (i.e. SHR) is more work that porting Replicant
> to a new version on a new device.
>

For what do you think you will need a new HW updates shortly? And what if
we lessen SW apetites?

Just consider that Android OS and even Linux is not the end of the
Universe. They are BIG software driven by constant incrementing of
features. As example, look on this complete OS distro with important apps
only requires 1.44MB   Kolibrios.org/en/index

Look at the end-users - most of the time they do a simple tasks on a device
and very small % of them are really cpu-tough.

What so special HW do you need to implement average daily tasks like:
- text editing
- calendar, contacts, notes
- file management
- web-browser
- photo / video (play capture)
- etc...

Only 1 type of tasks are huge resource eaters - games, oh boy, games easily
may be given to proprietary world though, at least on first time.


Remember Psion and Palm handhelds? Small screens, tiny CPUs - and it was
enough for daily usage!
GNOME shell... huge monster, compare it with i3-WM... see the difference.

To sum up, we all need to re-read an important article: "A Plea for Lean
Software" http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=620152

"ESSENTIALS and SIMPLICITY" is the motto.


--
Dmitry Nikandrov
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