TECH

Capyloon is the new Firefox OS platform mobile operating system

The developers presented an experimental version of the Capyloon mobile operating system, based on web technologies and developments from the Firefox OS platform, as well as the Boot to Gecko (B2G) project. The project is being developed by Fabrice Desre, former Firefox OS developer at Mozilla and chief architect at KaiOS Technologies, which develops KaiOS, which is a fork of Firefox OS.

Capyloon is supposedly based on the gecko-b2g engine, forked from the KaiOS repository. The presented version of the platform is ready for use on PinePhone Pro(image below), Librem 5 and Google Pixel 3a smartphones. Capyloon can probably run on a PinePhone smartphone, but the device's performance may not be enough for comfortable work. OS builds are available as packages for Debian, Mobian Environment (Debian version for mobile devices) and as an Android-based base system image.

The source notes that the environment can be compiled for installation on KaiOS-enabled mobile devices, use in an emulator, on Android-based firmware, as well as on stationary PCs and laptops shipped with Linux and macOS. The environment is positioned as experimental, so some important features, such as telephony access, are not supported at this stage.

Applications for Capyloon OS are formed using the HTML5 stack and the Web API programming interface, which allows organizing web application access to hardware, telephony, etc. The UI is also based on web technologies and is made using the Gecko browser engine. There are configurators to set language, time, privacy, screen settings and search engines. The use of the IPFS protocol for storing sensitive data, support for the Tor network and the ability to connect plug-ins in Web Assembly format is noted.

AVnews