Better? We don't know yet :). The current focus of linaro is to drive middleware through full UI stack requirements and enabling driver/hardware vendors and upstream developers to collaborate on getting those stacks stabilized and properly integrated in linaro.
For example, on the graphics driver front, one of our focus areas for the time being is getting clutter + gles working this cycle. For that we are making the mesa/clutter gles packaging available which would then enable driver and hardware vendors and unity/clutter developers to make the drivers fit for that use case [1]. Also on graphics, we plan to do some initial experiments with embedded qt and there qt-lighthouse in particular, which should give us another way to drive the armel graphics stack and make these technologies easily available in some archive [2].
Seems linaro is trying 2 approaches: X based(clutter + GTK?) or Framebuffer based (Qt embedded). I'd suggest to support Qt for X11 too as it can provide unified UI/App framework and hide X or framebuffer details from upper layer.
I understand a lot of effort right now is focusing on GTK but I do see that vendor needs the flexibility to use same app in X or X less environment.
For Qt embedded side, some experiment can be done to strip down the size of it, for example, only including stripped QtCore and QtGui to provide minimal foot print (Maybe it requires Qt to be more modular.)
Another thing is Gallium3D, is there plan to try it out on ARM?
The other focus areas we have selected for this cycle is integrating a telepathy based telephony stack by pairing telepathy with ofono and then shipping an experimental dialer app with desktop integration to easily make phone calls [3].
I think MeeGo is doing the same thing, maybe linaro can share effort with
MeeGo. Will it include Cellular call and SIP call?
Another topic for now - which is currently not a real focus area though - is make an initial push forward on the gps integration. If there are ideas on where we can better integrate GPS solutions, let us know.
OK, if you see other important topics that would deserve some attention in short/midterm on middleware don't hesitate to talk to me. Either here, or on #linaro on irc.freenode.net (nick: asac).
[1] - https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/arm-m-graphics-stack-on-x [2] - https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/arm-m-qt-on-embedded [3] - https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/arm-m-telephony-stack
- Alexander
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