Dual booting of Smartphone

[Shahbaz khan]

Hi everyone,

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 3:41 PM, Anand Arumugam <anand.arumug at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 12:35 AM, Abhijit Pawar <apawar.linux at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > I know its pre-mature to ask this question but is there any support of
> > dual booting in smartphones which can allow me have two different OS's
> > ( for ex. Android 2.1 + Android 2.3 ) on a single phone? There may be
> > other combinations as well. Is this something which we are looking at
> > near future or is it just a dream at this moment?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Abhijit Pawar
>
>
> If I'm not mistaken android is not the OS but a software stack
> (quoting from http://source.android.com/ "Android is an open-source
> software stack for mobile devices...") which runs on top of linux.
>
> Maybe you might want to look at ways to install different versions of
> the software stack instead of the linux kernel.
>

I think a software stack also includes the kernel. And in case of Android
there are changes to the standard Linux kernel .. for instance the binder
interface. Anyway, one can dual boot if you have a developer phone. I have
had experience with uboot for other platforms but I am not an Android
person. Just some discussion with other professional friends.

If you can change the boot loader configuration as you would do for the
Linux box then surely you can dual boot.

You can also do it the way Anand mentioned but that would mean that the
Linux kernel for both Android versions are same. Somewhere you would be
managing the initialization. Not sure how Android platforms do it :(

You can also use para virtualization like the L4Android project. They run
multiple platforms on L4Re, atop L4 micro kernel. Very interesting work. Do
Google for it!

Shahbaz Khan
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