8.1 Officially and unofficially supported devicesįirefox OS was publicly demonstrated in February 2012, on Android-compatible smartphones.Successors to Firefox OS include the discontinued B2G OS and Acadine Technologies' H5OS as well as KaiOS Technologies' KaiOS and Panasonic's My Home Screen. In December 2015, Mozilla announced it would stop development of new Firefox OS smartphones, and in September 2016 announced the end of development. As such, Mozilla with Firefox OS competed with commercially developed operating systems such as Apple's iOS, Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows Phone, BlackBerry's BlackBerry 10, Samsung's/ Linux Foundation's Tizen and Jolla's Sailfish OS. The applications use open standards and approaches such as JavaScript and HTML5, a robust privilege model, and open web APIs that can communicate directly with hardware, e.g. It was first commercially released in 2014.įirefox OS was designed to provide a complete, community-based alternative operating system, for running web applications directly or those installed from an application marketplace. It is based on the rendering engine of the Firefox web browser, Gecko, and on the Linux kernel. More information can also be found on website, especially with regards to software development with the API details, and SDK download link.Firefox OS (project name: Boot to Gecko, also known as B2G) is a discontinued open-source operating system – made for smartphones, tablet computers, smart TVs, and dongles designed by Mozilla and external contributors. If you are a developer, you can apply for one of the 250 units the company will sent for app development. If you are not a big fan of crowdfunding platforms, the device will retail for $25. The first 500 units were available for $12, but they’ll all been taken away, and you can still get a MatchStick for $18, plus $5 shipping if you live outside of the US, with delivery scheduled for February 2015. The company has almost reached it $100,000 funding target in less than a day. MatchStick/Sender/Cloud Software and Network Block Diagram
You’ll be able to control the stick from a PC using Firefox or Chrome (mirroring or streaming), as well as Android and iOS devices. It will let you stream online videos and music from services like Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, Spotify, etc… installable from MatchStick appstore, and since the platform is open to developer, more so than Chromecast, more apps should come online over time. The software however will be completely open source, except the parts that can’t be.īased on these hardware specs, MatchStick will be more like a Chromecast, than a fully-fledged Android TV stick. The board is called netcast-RK3066 in the schematics.
The company claims MatchStick is an open source hardware device, but the schematics are only available in PDF format, at least at this stage. The Firefox OS dongle will come with an HDMI extension Cable, a micro USB Cable, and a 5V power adapter.
SoC – Rockchip RK3066 dual core Cortex A9 processor 1.2 GHz with Mali-400 MP4 GPU.It is now called Matchstick, based on Rockchip RK3066 and has just been launched on Kickstarter. A few month ago, a Firefox OS HDMI streaming stick (codenamed netcast) by Mozilla that would compete with Google Chromecast was previewed.