Access Linux Platform
Encyclopedia
The Access Linux Platform (ALP), once referred to as a "next-generation version of the Palm OS
" is an open source-based operating system
for mobile devices developed and marketed by Access Co.
, of Tokyo
, Japan
. The platform includes execution environments for Java
, classic Palm OS, and GTK+
-based native Linux
applications. ALP has been demonstrated in devices at a variety of conferences, including 3GSM, LinuxWorld
, GUADEC
, and Open Source in Mobile.
The Access Linux Platform was first announced in February 2006. The initial versions of the platform and software development kits for the Access Linux Platform were officially released in February 2007. As of February 2009, the Access Linux Platform has yet to ship on devices, however development kits exist and public demonstrations have been showcased. There is a current effort between Access, NTT DoCoMo
, Panasonic
, NEC
, and Esteemo to use the platform as a basis for a "shared platform" implementing a revised version of the i.mode MOAP
(L) APIs, as well as conforming to the specifications of the LiMo Foundation
. The first smartphone to use the Access Linux Platform is the Edelweiss device by Emblaze Mobile that is scheduled for mid 2009 The First Else (renamed from Monolith ) smartphone that was being developed by Sharp Corporation
in cooperation with Emblaze Mobile and seven additional partners was scheduled for 2009 but was never released and officially cancelled in June 2010
The appearance of the platform is intended to be extremely customizable to provide differentiation for specific devices and contexts.
In the newest releases, they have gone for a much more modern look with gesture support, and are no longer close to the Palm OS.
(Nokia's internet tablet framework), ALP is based on components drawn from the GNOME
project, including the GTK+
and GStreamer
frameworks. A variety of other core components are drawn from mainstream open source projects, including BlueZ, matchbox
, cramfs
, and others. These components are licensed under the GPL, LGPL, and other open source licenses, meaning that ALP is a "free" or "open" environment on the software level.
A number of components from ALP have been themselves released under the Mozilla Public License
as The Hiker Project. These components address issues of application life-cycle, intertask communication, exchange and use of structured data, security, time and event-based notifications, and other areas common to the development of applications for mobile devices.
Applications for ALP can be developed as Linux-native code in C
or C++
, as legacy Palm OS
applications (which run in the Garnet VM emulation environment), or in Java
. Additional execution environments can be supported via the development of a "launchpad" utilized by the Application Manager (part of the Hiker framework).
The ALP SDK uses an Eclipse-based IDE, with additional plug-ins, as did its predecessor Palm OS development environment. The compilers used are EABI-enabled ARM
versions of the standard gcc
tool chain.
to implement fine-grained access controls. The components for ALP's security implementation have been released as part of the Hiker framework. Controls are based on signatures and certificates; unsigned applications can be allowed access to a pre-defined set of "safe" APIs.
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...
" is an open source-based operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
for mobile devices developed and marketed by Access Co.
Access Co.
, founded in April 1979 and incorporated in February 1984 in Tokyo, Japan, by Arakawa Toru and Kamada Tomihisa, is a company providing a variety of software for connected and mobile devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs, video game consoles and set top boxes....
, of Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. The platform includes execution environments for Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
, classic Palm OS, and GTK+
GTK+
GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...
-based native Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
applications. ALP has been demonstrated in devices at a variety of conferences, including 3GSM, LinuxWorld
LinuxWorld Conference and Expo
OpenSource World is a conference and trade show that focuses on open source and Linux solutions in the information technology sector.The show is owned and managed by IDG World Expo, a business unit of International Data Group...
, GUADEC
GUADEC
The GNOME Users And Developers European Conference, is an annual conference taking place in Europe, whose topic is the development of the GNOME desktop environment....
, and Open Source in Mobile.
The Access Linux Platform was first announced in February 2006. The initial versions of the platform and software development kits for the Access Linux Platform were officially released in February 2007. As of February 2009, the Access Linux Platform has yet to ship on devices, however development kits exist and public demonstrations have been showcased. There is a current effort between Access, NTT DoCoMo
NTT DoCoMo
is the predominant mobile phone operator in Japan. The name is officially an abbreviation of the phrase, "do communications over the mobile network", and is also from a compound word dokomo, meaning "everywhere" in Japanese. Docomo provides phone, video phone , i-mode , and mail services...
, Panasonic
Panasonic
Panasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...
, NEC
NEC
, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
, and Esteemo to use the platform as a basis for a "shared platform" implementing a revised version of the i.mode MOAP
MOAP
MOAP is the software platform for NTT DoCoMo's FOMA service for mobile phones. -Versions:There are two versions of MOAP:...
(L) APIs, as well as conforming to the specifications of the LiMo Foundation
LiMo Foundation
The LiMo Foundation is an non-profit technology consortium organization dedicated to creating the first truly open, hardware-independent, Linux-based mobile operating system for smartphone mobile devices...
. The first smartphone to use the Access Linux Platform is the Edelweiss device by Emblaze Mobile that is scheduled for mid 2009 The First Else (renamed from Monolith ) smartphone that was being developed by Sharp Corporation
Sharp Corporation
is a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products. Headquartered in Abeno-ku, Osaka, Japan, Sharp employs more than 55,580 people worldwide as of June 2011. The company was founded in September 1912 and takes its name from one of its founder's first...
in cooperation with Emblaze Mobile and seven additional partners was scheduled for 2009 but was never released and officially cancelled in June 2010
Look and feel
The user interface is designed with similar general goals to earlier Palm OS releases, with an aim of preserving the Zen of Palm, a design philosophy that revolves around making the applications as simple as they can be. Other aspects of the interface include a task-based orientation rather than a file/document orientation as is commonly found on desktop systems.The appearance of the platform is intended to be extremely customizable to provide differentiation for specific devices and contexts.
In the newest releases, they have gone for a much more modern look with gesture support, and are no longer close to the Palm OS.
Base frameworks
Similarly to maemoMaemo
Maemo is a software platform developed by the Maemo community for smartphones and Internet tablets. It is based on the Debian Linux distribution, but has no relation to it...
(Nokia's internet tablet framework), ALP is based on components drawn from the GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
project, including the GTK+
GTK+
GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...
and GStreamer
GStreamer
GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework written in the C programming language with the type system based on GObject.GStreamer allows a programmer to create a variety of media-handling components, including simple audio playback, audio and video playback, recording, streaming and editing...
frameworks. A variety of other core components are drawn from mainstream open source projects, including BlueZ, matchbox
Matchbox (window manager)
Matchbox is a free and open source window manager for the X Window System. It is mainly intended for embedded systems and differs from most other window managers in that it only shows one window at a time...
, cramfs
Cramfs
The compressed ROM file system is a free read-only Linux file system designed for simplicity and space-efficiency. It is mainly used in embedded systems and small-footprint systems....
, and others. These components are licensed under the GPL, LGPL, and other open source licenses, meaning that ALP is a "free" or "open" environment on the software level.
A number of components from ALP have been themselves released under the Mozilla Public License
Mozilla Public License
The Mozilla Public License is a free and open source software license. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker when she worked as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation and version 1.1 at the Mozilla Foundation...
as The Hiker Project. These components address issues of application life-cycle, intertask communication, exchange and use of structured data, security, time and event-based notifications, and other areas common to the development of applications for mobile devices.
Application development
The Access Linux Platform presents standard APIs for most common operations (as defined by the POSIX and LSB standards). Since neither POSIX nor LSB address areas such as telephony, device customization, messaging, etc., there are a number of additional frameworks and APIs defined by Access for these areas.Applications for ALP can be developed as Linux-native code in C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
or C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
, as legacy Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...
applications (which run in the Garnet VM emulation environment), or in Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
. Additional execution environments can be supported via the development of a "launchpad" utilized by the Application Manager (part of the Hiker framework).
The ALP SDK uses an Eclipse-based IDE, with additional plug-ins, as did its predecessor Palm OS development environment. The compilers used are EABI-enabled ARM
ARM architecture
ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...
versions of the standard gcc
GNU Compiler Collection
The GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain...
tool chain.
Security
The Access Linux Platform utilizes a combination of a user-space policy-based security framework and a kernel-space Linux security moduleLinux Security Modules
Linux Security Modules is a framework that allows the Linux kernel to support a variety of computer security models while avoiding favoritism toward any single security implementation. The framework is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License and is standard part of the Linux...
to implement fine-grained access controls. The components for ALP's security implementation have been released as part of the Hiker framework. Controls are based on signatures and certificates; unsigned applications can be allowed access to a pre-defined set of "safe" APIs.
External links
- Official Access Linux Platform site
- The Hiker Project [NOT FOUND]