Intel and Nokia Provide First MeeGo Release 115
wehe writes "The first fruit of the cooperation between Intel and Nokia is available: the first release of MeeGo. MeeGo is a merge of the former Maemo and Moblin Linux distros. What is available now is 'The MeeGo distribution infrastructure and the operating system base from the Linux kernel to the OS infrastructure up to the middleware layer. The MeeGo architecture is based on a common core across the different usage models, such as netbooks, handheld, in-vehicle, and connected TV.' The images available now for download are suitable for Intel Atom-based netbooks, ARM-based Nokia N900, and Intel Atom-based handset (Moorestown). RPM repositories as well as git source repositories are there for download, too."
Does it come with a brain cannister? (Score:1)
You know, for flying through the cold, dark spaces?
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Re:Does it come with a brain cannister? (Score:4, Funny)
We really need dates (Score:3, Funny)
Um, not what it sounds like.
What I mean is, articles posted should have a date, instead of "5ish" or something.
I mean, Meego actually released for the N900.
India fingerprinting and photographing every resident for a census.
Microsoft fixing 1800 bugs using "fuzzing."
What is truth, what is fiction? What was posted on April 1st? How will an advanced civilization far off in the future know? For that matter, how can I tell?
Or is it in the account preferences?
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"Posted by kdawson on 14:55 Friday 02 April 2010"
That's what I see under the post title. Is that what you're talking about ? If so, yes, you can change the date format in your preferences.
Re:We really need dates (Score:5, Funny)
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You have been trolled
Disappointing (Score:2, Interesting)
I am quite saddened that this new system will not be Debian-based. One of the little joys of my n900 is that it is Debian underneath. I cannot imagine that switching to a Fedora base will make anything better, and I expect it will make many things worse.
Re:Disappointing (Score:5, Informative)
I cannot imagine that switching to a Fedora base will make anything better, and I expect it will make many things worse.
MeeGo is not using Fedora base, it's a new distribution that happens to use RPM.
While it probably was not reason for the switch (they cite existing infrastructure and people intel have in place), RPM packaging is allegedly easier than Debian packaging (only need to edit one file and you are good to go).
Encouraging (Score:3, Interesting)
And thank goodness, I say. One of the little disappointments of my little N900 is that it uses debian packaging system, and I can't even tell what date which packages were installed.
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I believe the package's corresponding .list file in /var/lib/dpkg/info/ is generated at install, so you should be able to get the install date from the date of that file.
Re:Encouraging (Score:5, Informative)
You can't tell only if you don't want to tell. While it's not easily exposed this information is effectively available.
$ ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/info/packagename.list
The datestamp on this should correspond to when you installed it.
Debian is a far, far better platform for building distributions than Fedora or any RPM-based distro that I've seen. I understand that Intel had 'expertise' already in doing it the RPM way, but this is a poor excuse for doing harm to your customers.
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In what way, pray tell?
Re:Encouraging (Score:5, Informative)
Debian package manipulation tools are more advanced/mature and are able to gracefully deal with fringe conditions/scenarios than RPM. While the packages may be easier to make, the end result appears to be:
* Debian distros degrade much more gracefully over time/use.
* Upgrades and non-standard (IE 3rd party repository) packages tend to not break things as severely.
* The package system is somewhat more atomic, allowing for function even with broken packages.
* You are able to (statefully) recover from source-based installs as well as non-packaged binary installs.
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Portage is even more advanced. And I don’t even talk about Paludis.
I don’t get why people still love to live in dependency hell (or DLL hell)...
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Does portage support binary packages as well as apt? I really don't know a lot about it, but it was my impression that it does not.
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Yup, sure does (though you lose a lot of the benefit of portage when using binary packages - the ability to select which features are enabled or disabled in the package, potentially eliminating some dependencies, for example).
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Just wake me up when someone pushes a packaging format/system which can be universallly implemented or which is so great it makes the big distros switch. Or fuck it, just make the damn standards for everyone to easily adopt to make it possible to install any software on any distro that adopts said standards, and I'll switch to whatever distro uses it or make a
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What is this "dependency/DLL hell"? You're going to run into that issue with any binary distribution with a fairly determined set of packages and their versions, but the alternative is far more grisly: infinite combinations of installed packages.
From an administrative perspective, it is much, much more difficult to maintain and control when you're dealing with more than one system. There's a reason why the "proper" way to administer (say) FreeBSD machines is to use a single ports tree for all your machines:
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Could you explain these in a way that somebody used to RPM could understand?
* Debian distros degrade much more gracefully over time/use.
What does this mean? That you can leap several major versions without dependency resolution problems? The feature of debian's system that I miss in a Fedora system is multiple concurrent versions of the same package, so maybe that's what you're getting at?
* Upgrades and non-standard (IE 3rd party repository) packages tend to not break things as severely.
I use several 3rd-
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I use several 3rd-party repos with Fedora and haven't seen any breakage, much less severe.
"Works for me" is not the same as robust and bug free.
Debian has a long history of working well with "third party" repos--this is because Debian was *designed* to be a base with "third party" repos layered on top. Fedora was not designed this way and (last I knew) was a bit schizophrenic when it comes to non-main repos. In Debian this use case was handled years before yum was even written.
There was a time when poor repo maintainers would do things like publish their own kernels randomly with higher version numbers, but that evolved repo prioritization.
Another feature Debian had long before Fedora got it (except that apt pinning can work at the package level, too). This
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"RPM-based" != "Fedora-based", and "rpm" != "yum". You are saying Debian is better than Fedora, but nothing of what you said applies to general RPM packages. In fact, you can use apt to handle RPMs (Conectiva used it a long time ago, and now at least PCLinuxOS does so). In fact, I see no significant advantages between .deb and .rpm; there are more differences when comparing the higher level tools (apt, yum, zypper, etc).
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Debian and apt are synonymous. Forget RPM and DPKG, we're talking apt vs. yum. High level design and actual implementation both conspire to make apt better.
And, in fact, Meego is based on Fedora. Maybe this is "based on" in a "Ubuntu is based on Debian" kind of way more than a pure derivative, but it's still based on Fedora.
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Actually, "Ubuntu is based on Debian" much more closely than than you appear to be aware; a better analogy would be "Knoppix is based on Debian". Many Debian packages have the same package maintainers as the Ubuntu package equivalent, and more often than not, many Ubuntu packages come straight from Debian's sid/testing/experimental releases.
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I am precisely aware of the extent to which Ubuntu is based on Debian.
A pure based on Debian distribution simply uses Debian packages (probably with its own mirror) and adds some of its own. I was not claiming that this is what Meego has done wrt Fedora. I am claiming that the filesystem layout, naming conventions, and even package selections will be based on Fedora's. I don't know the extent to which Meego actually takes Fedora packages and modifies them, if any, but this doesn't invalidate the rest of the
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I have used both packaging systems for quite some time, and I cannot confirm these statements. Both seem quite equally capable when managed well. Which is how MeeGo repositories are supposed to be.
This is interesting, because in Maemo we had a big dpkg whopp
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That may be true, I don't know.
But can we please get rid of the mess that is the cumulative patch? I just don't understand how Debian packagers survive through it. To me it's just a nightmare in maintainance.
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but this is a poor excuse for doing harm to your customers.
In what way, pray tell?
Not trying to be flamebait, but switching from a superior packaging system to an inferior one has great potential to harm the end user.
Debian's packaging system is robust and stable. Upgrading phones should "just work" without any fear of breakage. Using apt this is known to work and it is not known that yum is superior. I would add that I have seen only unconvincing arguments that yum is even as good as apt, so I call it inferior.
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So, you didn't really use rpm, yum, or apt-rpm, you don't know if they are as good, and therefore dpkg/apt is superior. Then there will be harm, mostly psychological in nature. I'm not sure there will be any for other users, you know, people who only see pretty icons on the screen and rarely open the text terminal. And it's those people, I'm afraid, who will decide if MeeGo is a viable mobile platform, or just another geek toy.
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Upgrading phones should "just work" without any fear of breakage. Using apt this is known to work and it is not known that yum is superior. I would add that I have seen only unconvincing arguments that yum is even as good as apt, so I call it inferior.
Whether upgrade works or not is the result of hard work of people preparing the upgrade, not some "magic" provided by apt/yum.
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100% correct.
Having worked with both I like deb/apt better. And in embedded/small environments even more. There's a reason why everything embedded runs debs (apt, ipkg, opkg, etc). Even the N770, N8xx, N900 are deb based.
Regarding the upgrades, usually apt is very capable. You can dist-upgrade debian since 199x? RPM based distros today can't do that. (there is some beta support that doesn't work)
If this was a poll I'd vote for apt.
Modification times? (Score:2)
That's it? That's a system? Using the last modified date on a file? That may work for a make system, but for a supposed database of installed files, it falls short. How do I know those files were not modified for some other reason other than the install?
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I'm pretty sure a fully open source distribution for the N900 already exists, although I'm not sure how well they've reimplemented Nokia's proprietary packages. You could likewise repackage the new MeeGo distribution using .deb files.
Afaik, MeeGo is a new distribution based around the existing MobLin and Maemo projects, not RedHat. So ARM should have solid support just like under Maemo. I doubt that Nokia will expect that Intel handles their ARM support, not while their aging Symbian platform gets attack
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Intel's MobLin project was originally based upon Debian too, but they switched to RPMs for various reasons, like the LSB and packaging ease. Nokia then signed on with Intel knowing they were switching package manager.
I believe you, but links please. LSB support under Debian has (in my somewhat outdated experience) been better than RH systems.
I know Nokia knew a distro/package formate/package manager switch was going to happen with the changeover, but I want to know why Nokia acquiesced and did it Intel's way and not the other way around. Where is the mailing list traffic documenting the technical discussion? I know it's two companies and suchforth but if you're trying to build the de-facto open Linux-based mobile platfo
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LSB dictates RPM packages [freestandards.org], or at least highly encourages their usage.
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RPM packaging is not allegedly easier, it's far easier. That said, I think if you learn to make Debian packages you will find that you get a better and more consistent result than with RPM packages. It's harder to make mistakes because the process is less forgiving (just my opinion).
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But RPM still gets you into dependency hell! The same problem as DLL hell under Windows. Just shifted.
Why choose such an outdated old crappy system?
They should have used paludis at the core, and set a GUI on top of it.
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Who still faces DLL hell in Windows? I thought every application just install all the dlls it needs in it's own directory. Do you have any examples of DLL hell that aren't 10 years old?
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That's the thing. I haven't seen a real example of DLL hell in years. Most people either statically compile everything or they just ship all the needed dlls to the installed folder.
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That's the thing. I haven't seen a real example of DLL hell in years. Most people either statically compile everything or they just ship all the needed dlls to the installed folder.
Indeed. And due to this, these days this bloat has gotten so bad, that applications and duplicate DLLs may take whopping 10% of your hard disk space (or even more if you have an exceptionally small hard disk). And better not calculate how much this hard disk space costs, it's mind-boggling!
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Sure. Bioshock installed via Steam on Windows 7 64 bit recently. It just didn't work, and gave no proper error message. I believe it needed some vintage or other of Microsoft's C++ libraries.
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Re:Disappointing (Score:4, Interesting)
Most people who care seem to share your opinion. I'm a little upset about it too, but remember that the original Maemo system wasn't "quite" Debian based -- you couldn't just apt-get whatever you wanted. There were some incompatibilities with the standard Debian repos. That's why they had the easy-debian-chroot package, and that was what I really loved about Maemo. To be honest, I don't care a whole lot whether the Application Manager is a frontend to apt or yum. As long as I have my easy-deb-chroot, I'll be happy :)
Nokia is the biggest hardware company out there that I think really "gets it". So I'm still taking a position of cautious optimism.
Ethan
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I care whether the application manager is a front end for apt-get or yum because when there are 15 pending updates I don't have to click through each one, I can just drop to a terminal, become root and apt-get upgrade. With yum I don't know how to do this and don't care to learn it. I have been burned too many times by redhat-based distros to want to have anything to do with them.
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"yum update"
There now, that wasn't so hard.
Re:Disappointing (Score:4, Insightful)
I care whether the application manager is a front end for apt-get or yum because when there are 15 pending updates I don't have to click through each one, I can just drop to a terminal, become root and apt-get upgrade.
Go root, "yum update". All done tout de suite.
With yum I don't know how to do this and don't care to learn it.
Ah, belligerent and willfully ignorant. That's a winning personality package you've got going there.
I have been burned too many times by redhat-based distros to want to have anything to do with them.
QQ. So don't use MeeGo. I administer both deb and rpm systems, and have for over five years, and they've screwed me equally in terms of package management. Debian is not the Messiah (yes, it's a very naughty packaging system), and RPM is not the Great Satan. Get over fanboi-ism and at least make credible reality-based arguments if you have to take sides.
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I wouldn't call the boy who doesn't choose to keep touching the hotplate screaming "Yowww!" willfully ignorant.
I would say in my experience, Debian packages have sufficient dependancy management to make a mistake, complete your installation and then return to fix it whilst maintaining a working system the whole time. For a long time, Redhat packages seemed somewhat disconnected - it seemed to be impossible for the package manager to just follow your request and follow all dependencies until your request i
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With yum I don't know how to do this and don't care to learn it.
attitudes like this are what lead people to say things like "cry more noob" and RTFM. if you can't be bothered to type yum --help how did you ever learn how to use apt.
or maybe i forgot to wear my troll proof tin foil hat this morning.
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I've read the yum man page and tried to work with it many times. I don't care to touch it ever again. It makes simple things stupidly complicated and in general does not work. I actually had a far *better* opinion of yum before I ever used it. An equivalent of apt it is not.
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i have used both apt and yum and never had any problems with either that couldn't easily be resolved. the fact that so many people say things similar to what your saying without any context leads me to believe you all haters.
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Just as Maemo isn't quite Debian, Moblin isn't quite Fedora. Moblin 2.0 was based on FC10, with the libraries they needed updated having had this done to them. Unfortunately this causes serious problems trying to bring packages from FC10 to Moblin 2.0; you need to use parts of the FC10 repos. In the end it becomes a terrible snarling mess. There's a Moblin respin of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which won't help you with a phone, but which will probably help a lot of people with intel-based netbooks find a decent,
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I can see years ago when you would want .deb and apt packaging over anything .rpm based, but those days are in the past. Both are fine these days.
This is what people have been telling me for years, and yet every time I actually use Fedora and yum I find that it is laughably inferior. Some part of this is the fact that I am not very familiar with the tools, I am sure, but being unfamiliar should not be such a barrier. Maybe it's time to go and try them all again! Has yum improved that much since Fedora 9? Can you safely do online upgrades between major versions with arbitrary third party packages and repos? If not, I don't want it! I have several syst
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Packages converted with alien can have significant issues. What's more, they require hand installation. I prefer to get my software automatically via apt.
Change for the sake of change (Score:3, Interesting)
The concept of joining the efforts and creating MeeGo is a very good one, but the details that have been announced are not encouraging. Mameo was a mature shipping product with many developers. Moblin was a proof of concept with some interesting ideas. And yet in all the mundane details they seemed to favor what Moblin was using rather than Mameo. Package management isn't a huge deal. Back in the day apt was better than rpm, now aptitude and yum are pretty comparable, with only minor advantages and disadvan
No Intel GMA500 / Poulsbo Support? (Score:4, Interesting)
Half the available netbooks are running the GMA500 / Poulsbo and there hasn't been any support by Intel for Linux drivers since 2008. How can they claim MeeGo will support netbook and MID hardware without accelerated video drivers for their own product?
Re:No Intel GMA500 / Poulsbo Support? (Score:4, Interesting)
Word... I'd love to throw these little mouse-sized computers [fit-pc.com] at everything for work, but can't really use their binary driver packages that can only really be shoehorned in to a particular ubuntu release.
Had to go with a mini-itx nVidia ION platform instead... which admittedly has much better performance and driver support, but is ~8 times the size and thus actually needs space and mounting hardware allocated for it. I wish some manufacturer would sell the nano-itx ION reference platform [fit-pc.com] (hint hint easy money)... that was almost as small as a Fit-PC2 and had all the interfaces we wanted. But blargh.
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That's great! I've been poking through their package mods and it looks like some real he-man coding was needed to get all this working with a more modern kernel and Xorg than it was originally intended. I need to send these guys a beer!
Unfortunately, my big needs aren't as simple as distro that works with the future-ported Poulsbo drivers. People and companies developing Linux products on netbooks and MIDs need those drivers in the mainline Linux kernel and Xorg source to gain wider general use, code review
How about statics (Score:1)
Will MeeGo bring up the Linux OS static up on web sites in future? Linux OS (the monolithic kernel) is great example why Open Source OS works in servers, desktops, mobile devices, embedded systems and supercomputers.
But we should not just stay on Linux. Nokia should start using GNU's OS as well. Even that Hurd is not so mature OS as Linux is, it still has potential to be a such one. Only developers are missing. Maybe problem is that Hurd is with GPLv3 while Linux is GPLv2.
Now when Linux is the OS in the And
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Maybe problem is that Hurd is with GPLv3 while Linux is GPLv2.
Maybe the problem with Hurd is that it's been over 20 years in the making and still not ready for prime time
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Will MeeGo bring up the Linux OS static up on web sites in future?
Only on non-dynamic web sites.
Cool! (Score:1)
Anyone know something about this? (Score:2)
There is an amazing lack of information about MeeGo. What are the features? Any screenshots? I was considering the Nokia N900, but I was disappointed to hear that it didn't come with a word processor and spreadsheet like my old Nokia 9300. Will MeeGo fix this?
Re:Anyone know something about this? (Score:5, Informative)
There is an amazing lack of information about MeeGo.
Not surprising, really. They take the brains of anyone who finds out too much about them and put them in cases for transport to other worlds for study while the ones on earth use the bodies to blend in with humanity. If you're going looking for info, I'd invest in some big, mean dogs. They don't like dogs.
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Also, the extraterrestrial matter of which they are composed doesn't show up in screen shots.
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The N900 supports reading Word Processor and Spreadsheet files just fine under Maemo, probably even edits them, but you must buy the app for that from Nokia's Ovi Store. Can't you just see the positive impact Apple has had already? Btw, you've also got several other free readers based around various Linux office suites, but Nokia doesn't polish those.
I'm pretty happy with my N900 over all, especially ssh, rsync, and x11vnc. Very solid VoIP integration. Awesome unixy apps like python, latex, vpnc, etc.
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Heh, I'm in the same boat :P . Well, I could list a bunch of features I want (along with a platform that actually provides it)
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usable thin clients like ssh, vnc, rdesktop, etc.
The n900 is good for this, but it really helps to plug in a USB keyboard and video out to a bigger screen helps too--but these are mere device limitations and would not be a problem with maemo in e.g. a netbook.
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Me and my buddy were looking for screenshots when the code merger was first announced. There was one screenshot on the old site, but I think it was a Moblin 2.1 screenshot. I was a little shocked to see no screenshots for this release, either. For some reason, developers completely forget that screenshots are as important to initial adoption rates as trailers are to movies. If I can't see what it's going to look like in use, I'm certainly not going to download it to see what it's like, unless it's the only
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I downloaded meego because I've just downloaded moblin 2.1 and was underwhelmed. My Aspire One D250-1165 won't resume from suspend properly, it just re-suspends itself after about two seconds every time. On the assumption that intel is abandoning moblin support for meego development, I've downloaded this new release. I just want a release of linux where everything works properly on my Aspire. For some reason it takes ages to DD onto my OCZ convertible SD card (it goes into a USB2 port also) so I'm thumb-twi
First DEVEL release (Score:2, Informative)
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It's not suitable for application developers either, there are no application development frameworks unless you count x libs.
If you want to make apps for future MeeGo, you can start now by making Qt apps for N900.
Finally (Score:2)
It has been a long time coming but this is proof that Linux has matured as an OS. Let me be the first to declare that 2010 will be the year of Linux on the brain cylinder.
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My thoughts exactly. I understand this is a very popular distro in the state of Vermont.
--
V pna'g syl n xvgr, V yvir va n oenva plyvaqre.
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I thought FreeMSD and the other MSD variants were more popular out that way.
--
Pna lbh abg grgure lbhe oenva plyvaqre gb bar? Rira ba Lhttbgu gurer'f nyjnlf fbzr sha thlf.
Terminal only? (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, if the UI isn't there, I'm not sure what MeeGo is bringing to the table for netbooks with this release. There are already a bevy of distros tailored for running on the Atom. Without insight into the new MeeGo UI, it's hard to recommend bothering with what is there just now.
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how is it insightful to ask a question that could be easily answered by going to the website?
The phantom os (Score:2)
Meego? (Score:1)
Eww... PHB speak! (Score:3, Insightful)
to the OS infrastructure up to the middleware layer
It’s called libraries and demons! “middleware layer”... shit like that word could only come from a manager with no technical knowledge whatsoever.
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It's called... "Know your audience". Not all people are technical. If you want Linux to be palatable... you have to use easy to figure out vocabulary. If you told someone that Meego provides libraries and daemons... they may not quite get it. You tell them that it provides the middleware... they can figure out(without being technical) that is it the nice cloud of crap that an app needs to run.
Just because a term is too generic for you doesn't mean that it is
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With all due respect, it's daemons.
Now I just need a phone to run it on... (Score:2)
I can't afford an N900, and other than that one there are apparently no phones available for running Meego on as far as I can tell (LG's GW990 isn't due out for several months).
Anyone know how hard or easy it will end up being to re-flash, say, an older Android-based phone to run off of Meego instead?
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Anyone know how hard or easy it will end up being to re-flash, say, an older Android-based phone to run off of Meego instead?
You'll need to take apart the Android image and slap the meego files on top of the existing kernel. That will give you a crippled version of meego with an antiquated kernel. In a similar fashion you can allegedly put Android on some ARM-core PDAs, using OpenEmbedded (Angstrom Linux) as the core... but I haven't even tried to get Angstrom to build in a while, historically I've only succeeded with lots of help from the mailing list, and my last few requests for help have gone unanswered. OpenEmbedded in my as
joan jett (Score:1)
joanjett (Score:1)