Nokia, Intel Merge Maemo, Moblin Into MeeGo 162
AVee writes "Intel and Nokia just announced a new project called MeeGo. MeeGo is supposed to be the result of merging Maemo and Moblin, bringing together the best pieces of those (already quite similar platforms). Interestingly this means that Intel will be sponsoring a mobile Linux distro which will run on ARM."
Next version of the n900? (Score:2, Interesting)
Name? (Score:3, Interesting)
Meego?
The mobile OS from Yuggoth
Package management (Score:2, Interesting)
The real important question: What package management system will it use?
Re:Package management (Score:5, Interesting)
RPM, says Intel. Can't find a link, but there is much gnashing of teeth over that at work here. I would prefer to keep the repository apt, at the very least. But apt+dpkg would be lovely.
Re:Funny names (Score:2, Interesting)
Maemo is a mythical figure/creature in Finnish folklore. The name has been made readable for most of western world by ditching the double a.
Nokia and maybe GNOME wins... (Score:2, Interesting)
Now it's obvious that QT will evolve for Mobile devices. And GTK will evolve to be a solid Desktop toolkit for Linux. When maemo project started GTK had lost lots of blood because Nokia contribution had no visible benefit to desktop users. That affected GNOME very much. Now I think KDE will suffer this mobile-movement of QT. I hope they won't, but history is evident for it to happen.
Re:Gtk RIP? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems that functionally Clutter has been superceded by advances in Qt.. Qt supports OpenGL/ES/VG backends and has a new "declarative UI" for designing animated and custom UIs. In fact since the Nokia aquisition Qt seems to have all but forgotten about the desktop and most new features are squarely aimed at implementing fluid custom iPhone-like interfaces on smartphone/netbook targets.
Re:No (Score:3, Interesting)
Please mod that guy up or the parent down. Package management is a completely irrelevant problem.
These are actually important questions:
How long will it take them to cut GTK support?
What does this mean for Nokias Qt support? Many people in the Qt community have been worried that they would cut back on the desktop support in favour of the mobile parts.
Intel controlling a Linux distro? How does this fit into the larger picture? How does this affect the possibility of it getting into the phones from, say, Motorola?
Package management is irrelevant because it is not a general purpose system. So packages of software built for this won't be installed on Debian anyway - why worry about it?
Bo Thorsen.
Re:Gtk RIP? (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't complain though.
That's odd, since people usually don't use words like "ugly", "horrible", "clumsy" unless they ARE complaining.
Do not say dependency hell... (Score:2, Interesting)
...when it's simple negligence. While package maintainers take care of Gtk for linux, Gtk for windows is in ruins.
There's no installer on official gtk page. C'mon guys, it's 2010, and you still package it in zip archives?
Ok, there is an installer on SF, but wait, there's no Glade support in there!
Oh, here is Glade, but oh, it's shipping with its own Gtk bundle, which is outdated and incompatible with the first one.
Ok, let's install the major Gtk app, GIMP... Wait, I already have two gtk bundles installed, I don't need another one! What do you mean, "no choice"?
Hmmm, let's try this Deluge app... At last, I can skip Gtk installation and use one of the previously installed. Hey, why did it crash?
F**k it, even .NET is better.
Re:There can only be one! (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, iPhone is doomed to stay as proprietary garbage, as is WinMo 7. ...
Now what's left: Android, Meego, Palm,
Those 3 could probably work together... Maybe Android is too full of itself and Samsung should join Meego and drop Bada too.
The question for all these is who control the app store, and i think meego allows all of them to control their own while still staying compatible.
This also means open access to an open market of different store for consumers if the platform is to stay open and thus attract people.
Are we seeing the computer software industry transform into a "Label" that distributes apps?
I can't understand this model in a world where everyone can setup their own distribution channel for 20$.
It's only a winning move if you can sell hardware and the only way to compete against the über monopolistic Apple model is this.
So the cycle of proprietary / FOSS reaction goes on ...
Re:No (Score:3, Interesting)
Maemo was Debian-based in the same way that Microsoft is standards-based: buried at some pointless level and entirely irrelevant to users and developers alike. The API and SDK are of far greater consequence.
Re:Package management (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll bet you haven't used RPM in-depth since before YUM became the preferred front-end. If you had, you would have already known that rpm:dpkg what yum:apt, and there really isn't much of a difference between the two stacks, at this point.
It's funny how little some people can be bothered to know about the Linux world outside their own little preferred ecosystems. Last week, I suggested that a co-worker might want use RPMs instead of tarballs to distribute a patched custom LAMP stack to a server farm. Rather than admit that he didn't know anything about writing spec files and couldn't be bothered to learn, he started lecturing me on the evils of "RPM dependency hell".
In 2050, I'm sure some people who use some kind of Linux on a daily basis will still be spouting these old saws, feebly unaware that everybody is just too polite to whack an old geezer with the clue bat.
Re:No (Score:2, Interesting)
Speaking as a nerd on /., I have to say that whether Maemo itself is Debian-based is not as important as it seems. The Maemo repo isn't really compatible with the "true" Debian repos; if you want to apt-get install your pretty little heart out, what you do is install the package "easy-deb-chroot". In other words: getting access to the Debian software catalogue is orthogonal to the packaging system Maemo apps use. I hope that MeeGo still offers an easy-deb-chroot package, but it's fine if it's packaged as an RPM :)
Ethan