The pros and cons of Mozilla’s super-open Boot to Gecko mobile OS

A Mozilla OS? Why? We have Windows 8 and it has tiles and...stuff.

Mozilla, the folks behind the Firefox web browser, launched a project last year to create a totally open mobile operating system, and now that dream is nearly a reality. Boot to Gecko (B2G) is built entirely with standards-compliant web technologies like HTML and JavaScript. It gets its name from the Gecko rendering engine in Firefox, which is also the platform that will run B2G. Android has a number of things in common with B2G, for instance it is open source, and uses some of the same underlying technology. Designing the entirety of a mobile operating system on web standards is a risky proposition, but B2G does have some advantages over Android.

Clearly in the “win” column for Mozilla is the multi-layered architecture of B2G. The lowest level is called Gonk, and includes the Linux kernel, hardware interface, and other low-level features. Next up is the Gecko rendering engine, and on top of that is Gaia. Mozilla has built Gaia to be the user interface layer, and it’s all HTML and JavaScript. This system is modular, and an OEM or developer is free to swap components out.