Will Nokia ever release a consumer friendly and stable version of dual booting for anybody other than the brave, stupid or downright adventurous?
This is a technical opinion really.
But what is a consumer friendly and stable version of dual booting?
If this was a PC, I would claim this would be press F12, select media to boot from. That's the simplest dual boot I know that anyone who can start installing XP on their own or whatever..
Where I'm trying to go first with Maemo-MeeGo 'dual/multi-boot':
* Install package on Maemo 5 that installs the u-boot bootloader to the kernel area.
* If a microsd is inserted that is 'bootable', it will then try to boot from there. If not, it loads the normal Maemo 5 kernel.
Then the variant:
* Hold down key at poweron, menu pops up to select where you would like to boot from.
Random fact to show there's parts of a dual-boot already in Maemo:
The Maemo 5 boot script preinit has had a hook for enabling bootmenu like abilities since PR1.2. This meant you had to install a package to make it show a bootmenu.
These same scripts had ability (since N8x0 times) to select MMC as an alternate root filesystem to boot and so on if you had a serial port access..
I wouldn't mind an Aava like approach where we take the fact that we have a mobile computer to the fullest and if there's a bootable SD, we boot it..
Consumer dual boot would be something that would be easy to setup, easy to maintain, foolproof when deciding which... one-click install.
I know that's probably realistic in what could happen; but let's be honest. Most consumers - not developers, not tinkerers, not hobbyists, not TMO forum members - are like your mother, grandmother, little snot-nosed sibling that like shiny, shiny gadgets but don't want to invest the time to learn how to do much of anything than hit this button and it will do this action.
So with that said, a consumer version to me should be a one-click install, little to no exposure to root, installs the secondary OS (even if in a step-by-step manner) and if anything every goes wrong with it... answer the support phone calls and somehow make sense of "I clicked this, now I can't make a phone call..." where half the adventure is learning what the caller means by "this".
I'd love (personally) to see a boot phone, arrow up/down to select, fully functioning phone/sms/e-mail OS on both sides of my dual boot options, and have it easier to set up than it used to be - think 10 years ago - for GRUB to Windows setup. In those days, I could do it, but couldn't walk somebody that didn't know Linux to save their life... just didn't have the patience. I'd just go over to their house, do it and then leave as opposed to explain what each and every terminal command meant, how to type it, or whatever else you might have to deal with if they're uninitiated.
As it stands, there's no ****ing way I'm the only person that understands the absolute difference between developer and consumer releases. No way.
Let's put it this way. MeeGo as it stands right now. Would you give that to your Mother on her phone as it exists right now, at this very moment? Or would you give her a N900 with Maemo 5.
THAT is developer versus consumer. MeeGo is a dev release at this very moment (duh) and Maemo 5 is more polished, fully functioning, already deployed and "supported" consumer release. Dual boot needs to be "dumbed" down for consumers. No need for developers.
How that is so confusing to anybody is beyond me.
Less savvy people want a push-button release. Not a release they have to tinker with. Take the hint - those folks are not here at TMO. They don't even know what half the terms in half these threads mean. They just see "phone" want to use a "phone" and if they can have two OS's, they'd like it to be as easy as possible too if they're curious.
Devs... we'll take it where we have to script it out, button configuration or even allow less functionality if need be until "it gets there" or we get it there.
So with that said, a consumer version to me should be a one-click install, little to no exposure to root, installs the secondary OS (even if in a step-by-step manner) and if anything every goes wrong with it... answer the support phone calls and somehow make sense of "I clicked this, now I can't make a phone call..." where half the adventure is learning what the caller means by "this".
I do agree with you, for once
The problem is just how much work has to be done for the user.
I mean. It's trivial to let's say, make a 'MeeGo' application/deb that will download the image, ask you to put in a microsd card - then it would flash it and at next boot, if the microsd was there, ask if it should boot into it.
What I'm wondering is however why a mobile phone vendor should support it..? Just like a PC, .. isn't the best when the vendor simply allows the users to dualboot if they so like? (As in, no restrictions on what kernel/bootloader gets run..)
The problem is just how much work has to be done for the user.
Agree 100%. That's why I thought the OP was really asking for the stars. It's nice to want it, but to expect it? There's a lot of support needed to facilitate such a move. That's why if Nokia had actually stated that this was gonna happen for everybody in a commercial release, I would have been totally surprised.
Originally Posted by
What I'm wondering is however why a mobile phone vendor should support it..? Just like a PC, .. isn't the best when the vendor simply allows the users to dualboot if they so like? (As in, no restrictions on what kernel/bootloader gets run..)
And that's the middle of what I've been trying to say/get confirmed. It doesn't sound right... I've never expected support on my dual boot on anything where I was the one that implemented that. I of course have come to expect the ability to do so, it's up to me to do it. And if I screw up, it's up to me to fix it.
But for a consumer pushed dual boot, say like Apple's Bootcamp, they would have to commit to supporting it. And that's an announcement I don't think we'll ever see.
