Freescale in the News (and more)
There was an interesting article in the print version of the San
Francisco Chronicle a few days back, all about Freescale.
Some points interesting perhaps :
They have recovered about 1/2 of $15Billion debt, which the article
said was due to slowdown in auto industry and slow recovery. Just
gives you and idea of the size of that market for them currently.
There was something in there about an upcoming design which
incorporated "entertainment systems" in the vehicle along with the
usual control/ diagnostic stuff. Hmmm. Some have speculated that soon
our vehicles will be online with regards at least with regard to maps,
gps guidance, etc. Anyway it seems like there could be opportunities
to involve the Linux community in all that somewhere.
Also noted in the article that Freescale is making chips in both the
Kindle and the Sony E-Reader. That surprised me. I am still waiting
for a good handheld computer, that could run a real version of Linux
like Debian (Android definitely does not count).
I think that people running Linux on powerpc should keep in mind that
if there is a future it may be quite different from the Apple years.
For instance if an industrial developer is working on something you
will only see a few people here dealing with it whereas back in the
old days you would have had a much more consumer market, that is
consumers of macs, rather than industrial designers which is no huge
mob of people but on the other hand perhaps more interesting ...
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One other thing I noticed not too long ago perhaps of interest. I am a
pretty compulsive label reader. On Xbox carton printed in Spanish and
English descriptions of the product. The Spanish version said Powerpc
cpu, and the English omitted that. Funny; usually the Spanish
descriptions are less detailed since the Spanish is more verbose
(requires a fair amount more words to say the same thing).
Some of my most fullfilling experiences in the Linux world have been
with global interactions, communicating with people from around the
world I otherwise would never have had any contact with. One can not
assume that they are dealing with US cast offs, many of these markets
are the hottest places for all kinds of development and are much more
amenable to Linux than either the US or even the European markets.
These are opportunities to strengthen the position of Linux and of
powerpc presence in Linux. As far as Debian goes, at least there are
the bits about Debian being a basis upon which Linux grows in several
ways, or at least it is supposed to be.
Brian
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