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Linux and Mobile Devices

Linux has been a great platform for programmers and webmasters for many years. It is stable beyond most others and users can control the system with more ease than Windows users. Recently, the platform has started growing and has become the platform of choice for most mobile devices. As the world of mobile usage grows so to will the development of software that will enable international and all-in-one configurations for these handheld devices. As Linux matures as a viable operating system for mobile devices the surrounding ecosystem of development tools grow as well.

Trolltech is doing its part to boost mobile Linux adoption with the release today of Qtopia 4, which is based on its Qt (pronounced cute) 4 development platform. Qt is a C++ application development framework providing common application programming interfaces (API). It is well known as the underpinning for the KDE open source desktop, which is included in most major Linux distributions. The new release brings Trolltech`s mobile platform up to date with its popular desktop development platform.

New features from Qt 4 in Qtopia include improved text rendering, multi-threading, model/view architecture and template container classes. The new graphics and windowing capabilities allow for some interesting executions that were not possible with previous versions of Qtopia. Trolltech CEO Haavard Nord SAID that Qtopia 4 allows for transparent overlapping windows, so if a user is browsing on the phone and a call comes in, a transparent window can come up without obscuring what the user was doing. Linux mobility took another step forward with a safety feature already available on Java powered phones. Nord explained that Qtopia allows for something called "safe execution environment" which is similar to a Java Sandbox.