Tizen has a rather convoluted history going back to a number of projects. Most recently, Intel abandoned their Meego platform which they were developing as a OS for all devices, Smartphones, TVs, Desktops, Notebooks, Tablets, and IVI systems in order to shift to Tizen. Going further back, Meego itself was the result of the merger of Intel’s Moblin project and Nokia‘s Maemo, which they used in the N900. Now finally we have a code and SDK release.
While Meego favoured the Qt toolkit for developing applications, while offering alternative options, including HTML5; Tizen is strongly focussed on web technologies as a means for creating applications. Web languages combined with an API for accessing and controlling the device’s functions allow web developers to develop applications that integrate with the system.
The Tizen architecture has a core services running the Linux Kernel. These core services are:
These services are exposed via web APIs for use in applications developed using web standards.
Tizen seems to share a lot with both HP’s WebOS, and Mozilla‘s Boot2Gecko. Hopefully these projects will coordinate and cooperate at some level so we don’t end up with three different web APIs for doing pretty much the same few things.
While Intel intends Tizen to have the same multi-device reach as Meego, their constant shifting goals and lack of direction is unlikely to appease anyone. The quick abandonment of Moblin in favour of Meego and then abandoning that for Tizen, each having a slightly different focus, doesn’t send the right signal to hardware manufacturers who have to support their devices for many years.
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