This blog post is refereed on a session which I run in OpenSUSE collaboration camp 2012 with the title:”Mozilla B2G:Bringing the Open Web to mobile devices ” and had around 20 attendants.
Firefox OS is really known these days as Mozilla’s operating system but nobody knows that under the hood is Mozilla Boot to Gecko.
In my presentation I had the opportunity to explain what is B2G, to present it’s internals and it’s three sub projects Gonk, Gecko, Gaia.
Gonk is the bottom layer of B2G which is responsible for the communication between BG2’s upper layer (Gecko) and device’s hardware. It’s consists a small Linux kernel, with some Android libraries and it’s 100% Open source.
The middle layer of B2G is called Gecko, the known graphics engine which is brought in Firefox too. As you can see, B2G is nothing more than a Firefox in a mobile device.
The top leyer which is the User Interface of B2G is called Gaia and delivers all the revolutionary technologies such as HTML5, WebAPIs and more. Gaia is pure HTML5, JavaScript and CSS which makes it a really easy to edit and hack. Everything is a Web Application in Gaia, even the SMS app. Due to the fact that there are no APIs in HTML5 to make a call, send an sms etc, Mozilla is working on WebAPIs where you will able to control your device writing only pure HTML5 code.
Explaining Mozilla Boot to Gecko in theory is good, presenting it live in a device is AWESOME!
That’s the feedback I received from the audience where they had the chance to play with a Nexus S B2G device. Everyone was impressed and wanted to learn more regarding the mechanisms under the hood such as Gecko and WebAPIs.
I am pretty sure that Mozilla boot to gecko is going to be hacked by a lot of Greek hackers! 😉
Are you interested on hacking Mozilla B2G or Gaia? Visit the project’s hacking page. 😉
Here you can find the presentation file with a lot of details regarding the status and future plans of Firefox OS.
Enjoy 🙂
Christos Bacharakis 
One response to “Mozilla B2G: Bringing the Open Web to mobile devices”
Firefox is a browser that focuses on opening web sites rapidly while keeping those nasty pop-ups and spyware at bay. Firefox was in its final stages last summer and fortunately for the up and coming browser two federal agencies recommended Internet surfers choose a different browser than Internet Explorer due to security issues IE was facing. This timing was perfect for Firefox and when it was placed on the web for download there were so many people trying to download at once the server almost could not handle all of the requests. ^.
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