Capyloon is an experimental Web-based OS leveraging b2gOS that served as the base for the now-defunct Firefox OS. The developers’ goal is to provide an open-source OS improving privacy and user control through web technologies.
It’s still early stage, and some of the technologies used include the IPFS protocol, WebAssembly plugins, and the Tor network. Capyloon is more like a new phone shell as it replaces Phosh when installing it in a Linux smartphone.
The first version of Capyloon released last month worked on Pixel 3a, other Android phones through a generic system image, and 64-bit x86 Debian machines. But since then, the developers added support for Apple M1, and yesterday they released Debian packages for PinePhone Pro and Librem 5 Linux smartphones to run Capyloon on top of a Mobian image.
Instructions are as follows:
- Download the Debian package for PinePhone Pro or Librem 5
- Install the package with
sudo dpkg -i <path-to-file> - Stop Phosh with
sudo systemctl stop phosh - Start Capyloon with
sudo systemctl start b2gos
The original PinePhone might be able to run the Debian package for the PinePhone Pro, but it should really be sluggish. The JavaScript-based front-end in Capyloon is called Nutria. As of March 25, 2022, the following features are not working, or only partially working: Audio channel management, WiFi (partial), telephony (calls, data, SMS, MMS), Bluetooth, GPS, other sensors (orientation, proximity, etc.)…
You can also try it on by installing a Debian package 64-bit x86 systems, or on Android phones with a dedicated image for the Pixel 3a or a generic system image on other devices. I was unable to locate the Apple M1 image mentioned in the release notes.
You’ll find the source code for the project on Github. More details and download links can be found on the project’s website, which funnily I had to open in Chrome, as the horizontal sliders for the screenshot would not work in Firefox.
Via Liliputing
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Wow, I hope this means FirefoxOS is back as a new rebranded system. I still do not believe that OS died with such a promising environment.
We should stop Android and Java once and for all. So pity phones are focused on sheep users, that’s why I lost interest in them since Android 4.4.
I hope this corrupted and nonsense paradigm gets good someday…
So the solution will be to replace one crap with an even bigger crap?
I would take Java 100 times over Javascript as a base language.
omg, Java is cancer. I do not even understand why this is even something to discuss 🙁
What do you hate so much about java? The language or the JRE? After all android never used the latter and now also allows using other langs like kotlin (never used it so not sure if it also would fall into your category of potentially lethal diseases or not)
It’s like discussing advantages of scurvy over plague…
Firefox OS relied on Mozilla various hacks into the Gecko engine, which were subsequently removed when the organization abandoned it.
Are KaiOS and Capyloon using this old Gecko codebase or have they found a way to more cleanly implement it on top of current, upstream Firefox?
My concern would be browser security.
Why? Now even KaiOS gets official security patches and more from Mozilla.