gonk

I believe the name Gonk refers to the small rectangular robots from Star Wars.

Also Firefox OS is divided in three components (gonk, gecko, gaia) and updating Gaia is pretty easy.

On non-posix systems there's a bit more to do in the nspr library, but that's not the case for gonk.

Sure, Gonk is below the application level, but it isn't the kernel nor is it drivers.

Fewer layers between machine and app -- just Gonk (linux layer) and Gecko (application runtime).

I admittedly don't understand the project too well, but they had to port Gecko to work in Gonk right?

No, because Linux is a kernel and Gonk is more than a kernel.

Last time I looked, Gonk used a significant amount of Android code as well that wasn't drivers[1].

I thought Gonk took bits from Android, but was not a direct copy of the kernel.

Firefox OS's base, Gonk is pretty much the same as Android's foundation, so both can equally benefit from a fight with blob-drivers of mobile hardware.

You could say that Gonk is an extremely simple linux distribution.

It uses parts of Android in HAL, but Gonk isn't Android.

From the article: > “DAH-doonk, dah-doonk, dah-doonk, gonk gonk.” That would actually be the Terminator 2 soundtrack.

The soundtrack from The Terminator would go “DAH-doonk, doonk, dah-doonk, gonk gonk.”; i.e.

Firefox OS is based on "Gonk", which is basically the kernel and HAL from Android with some extra bits stuck on.

The implementation is an underlying Linux system (Gonk), and Firefox's rendering/javascript/etc engines.

Gonk being the Linux level of Firefox OS, the parent comment is right.

It lives in comm-central, though, along with Thunderbird/Seamonkey and not Firefox (/Gonk/etc).