MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen [LWN.net]

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 13:27 UTC (Wed) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (20 responses)

Please tell me they didn't just push reset button again and start over. First from GTK+ to Qt, now from Qt to HTML5?

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 13:38 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (4 responses)

We believe the future belongs to HTML5-based applications, outside of a relatively small percentage of apps, and we are firmly convinced that our investment needs to shift toward HTML5. Shifting to HTML5 doesn't just mean slapping a web runtime on an existing Linux, even one aimed at mobile, as MeeGo has been.

Looks like a reset to me. The commenters on that post, one might say, are on the unimpressed side.

Moblin + MeeGo + LiMo + Titzen = Intel's demise

Posted Sep 28, 2011 14:07 UTC (Wed) by kragilkragil2 (guest, #76172) [Link] (2 responses)

And rightly so.

What the hell is wrong with Intel??
Seems to be that they are run by *censored*.

Repeat after me:
People want a stable, easy, elegant, smooth, fast and cheap phone OS. Meego could do all of those(see N9 reviews) With HTML5 you can scrap most of those attributes.
I'll better stop because Intel is just a bunch of lying MBAs like most other companies, they seem to do everything marketing says(Just like crippling netbooks or going for Mhz(P4))
What makes me sad is that the LF goes along with this nonsense. They should be held to a higher standard.
This HTML5 pipedream has been proven wrong so many times I think I don't have to elaborate on LWN.

What a bunch of *censored*

Moblin + MeeGo + LiMo + Titzen = Intel's demise

Posted Sep 28, 2011 17:00 UTC (Wed) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link] (1 responses)

I think you have to be a little careful when pronouncing what "people" want. There are a lot of people. Using a DOM/JS ("HTML5" is mostly a buzzword) layer as the public UI layer isn't a terrible idea to my eyes. Really, the Qt/QML stuff being pushed for MeeGo is a very close technical cousin. And it has plenty of performance problems of its own. At least with DOM coding there's a huge pool of existing developers ready to jump in.

I think the bigger worries are, as detailed in other comments, that we're all of a sudden back to square one with this. MeeGo and Moblin both had flaws, but either could have evolved into a nice platform. Platform development takes time, and these projects never seem to get enough of that.

Moblin + MeeGo + LiMo + Titzen = Intel's demise

Posted Sep 29, 2011 6:28 UTC (Thu) by kragilkragil2 (guest, #76172) [Link]

Problem is that "huge pool of existing developers ready to jump" mostly includes people for applications of a very limited scope.
IMO this has FAIL written all it.

BTW Will the AppUp store now be renamed TitzUp?

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 14:55 UTC (Wed) by sumC (guest, #1262) [Link]

Is there a article on the horizon regarding this cluster****?

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 14:39 UTC (Wed) by ken (subscriber, #625) [Link]

The Intel people is like a 5 year old with a sever case of ADHD in a candy store. They just run around and licks everything that looks good then drops it on the floor.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 16:26 UTC (Wed) by arjan (subscriber, #36785) [Link] (3 responses)

not arguing about your main point, but Moblin never used GTK+... it used it's own toolkit (NBTK) not GTK.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 17:03 UTC (Wed) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link]

That may be a confusion with maemo, the nokia part before meego.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 20:02 UTC (Wed) by berto (subscriber, #58604) [Link]

The first version of Moblin actually used GTK+, and Hildon.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 29, 2011 9:51 UTC (Thu) by jku (subscriber, #42379) [Link]

Parts of the core Netbook UX (not to mention practically all of the shipped applications) were and still are implemented with GTK+.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 29, 2011 13:38 UTC (Thu) by dneary (guest, #55185) [Link] (2 responses)

Reset for whom? Reset for all of the millions of 3rd party application developers who had invested thousands of hours bringing Qt applications to MeeGo? Maybe.

My question (yet to be answered): what was written for either MeeGo or SLP, and now needs to be re-written for Tizen? If the answer is "not much", then it's not a complete reset.

In any case, they're starting over on the release & testing process.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Oct 3, 2011 11:18 UTC (Mon) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (1 responses)

It's a simple problem: you need this OS in hands of people to have any kind of ecosystem going.

Maemo already shipped. You could argue MeeGo hasn't shipped once. Now that it seemed like it might be ready for some real-world usage, they announce a rewrite which is going to take another year.

In the meantime, the competitors get better and their ecosystems become more entrenched, and they all already support HTML5 applications. It doesn't seem like writing your entire operating system on top of HTML5 makes much sense to begin with, and I doubt there are huge advantages to doing so.

Wouldn't it have been better just to slap a HTML5 runtime on top of MeeGo and call it a day? If you insist on broadening the scope of HTML5 later, you'll be in position to gradually migrate your system software on HTML5 stack. And you could ship the OS, I don't know, next month?

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Oct 15, 2011 16:27 UTC (Sat) by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497) [Link]

> You could argue MeeGo hasn't shipped once.

Well, I've seen a netbook in a local shop. The info card next to it claimed it was running MeeGo.

And then there's the N9, which, you could argue, is not True MeeGo, but is a damn fine device anyway.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 29, 2011 20:56 UTC (Thu) by mato (guest, #964) [Link] (6 responses)

You forgot first from DEB to RPM, now from RPM to ... what?

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 30, 2011 6:44 UTC (Fri) by kragilkragil2 (guest, #76172) [Link]

If Samsung, Limo and SLP are calling the shots it will back to .deb again.
Intel decision makers are just full of crap PERIOD

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 30, 2011 6:46 UTC (Fri) by kragilkragil2 (guest, #76172) [Link] (4 responses)

If Tizen is mostly SLP it will be back to .deb again.
Intel decision makers are just full of crap PERIOD

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 30, 2011 12:55 UTC (Fri) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] (3 responses)

Yep. As flopping around package managers is rightfully considered the most critical activity in getting a distribution going.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Oct 3, 2011 11:32 UTC (Mon) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (2 responses)

Android seems to get by fine without a package manager.

Spending any time switching between package manager formats must be one of the most futile ways you can waste your life away.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Oct 3, 2011 17:52 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

android has a package manager, what do you think the google marketplace is?

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Oct 4, 2011 8:22 UTC (Tue) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]

For user applications maybe. But it's not at all like dpkg or rpm.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 13:32 UTC (Wed) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link] (6 responses)

"The Linux Foundation will host the project"

One hopes that their contribution will be different than that of e.g. github.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 14:28 UTC (Wed) by gregkh (subscriber, #8) [Link] (5 responses)

The Linux Foundation's role here is just as a facilitator of a working group to come and meet together in a "vendor-neutral" place, it makes no judgment call on the validity of the project, the technical direction, or anything else about it.

So whenever you see a LF workgroup, just remember the phrase, "It's just like Carrier Grade Linux (CGL)", and that will answer any questions you might have had :)

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 15:15 UTC (Wed) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link] (1 responses)

In this case, it will be easy to be vendor neutral. There are no more vendors to speak of! Unless a business sees potential in it and decides to invest, it will be whoever sticks around for the fun or passion of it.

Considering that the skillset (of making Linux work well on phones) is hot, I expect (and hope!) everyone involved in a defunct Linux phone effort will find a new position soon... and the residual inertia of Meego will be nil.

Business is a lot like this -- projects are pushed like crazy, then abandoned on the slightest mgmt or wind change. Life sucks.

But it used to suck a whole lot more when the code was all behind walls. Man-years of effort thrown into the void, and patents sold to a troll.

As it stands, MeeGo will (I hope) have moved the ball forward. Perhaps just one inch or two, but forward. GTK, Qt and the overall Linux stack will have seen patches that fix this, or improve that.

Later projects can grab MeeGo and see the architecture, like it, hate it; steal the best ideas and ditch the rest.

Could have been much worse.

~m

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Oct 4, 2011 1:46 UTC (Tue) by deunan_knute (guest, #290) [Link]

well said.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 15:25 UTC (Wed) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link]

Thx for this. That's an important thing to be said.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 29, 2011 1:58 UTC (Thu) by leemgs (guest, #24528) [Link] (1 responses)

so, in summary in my view,
trizen = meego + limo (+linux foundation)
it seems that the appearance is so in my thinking.
hehe.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 29, 2011 2:09 UTC (Thu) by leemgs (guest, #24528) [Link]

typo.. Trizen --> Tizen.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 13:35 UTC (Wed) by faassen (guest, #1676) [Link] (1 responses)

Maemo + Moblin = MeeGo

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen (== WebOS, given its HTML5 orientation?)

since the MeeGo merger of two projects was such a smashing success, they figure they should merge with yet another project? Yet more transitions, new website, moving over mailing lists and so on? You don't think people will get skeptical about this after a while? (and of course a new UI again...).

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 17:27 UTC (Wed) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link]

My initial thoughts were kinda along the lines of "how much crack did they smoke". Now I merely sit back and hope that they will evolve this into what is not just essentially but exactly, openWebOS.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 13:59 UTC (Wed) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (4 responses)

Lots of fun gnashing of teeth on IRC, mail, forums today. My favourite was this image from the Maemo forums thread:

http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/3070/tizen.jpg

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 14:16 UTC (Wed) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link] (1 responses)

Sadly hilarious

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 15:17 UTC (Wed) by oever (guest, #987) [Link]

They're just tizen.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 14:59 UTC (Wed) by imgx64 (guest, #78590) [Link] (1 responses)

... which redirects to the ugly frozen frog image: http://imageshack.us/img/blocked_login.jpg

Seriously, why do people continue to use imageshack? There are many other less obnoxious free image hosting websites (e.g. imgur).

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 16:20 UTC (Wed) by steffen780 (guest, #68142) [Link]

Works for me

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 15:36 UTC (Wed) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] (4 responses)

Shrug.

Presumably this will be abandoned or sidelined soon too. What's the point of even starting to look at it?

Let's just stick with the stable things that have been around forever and aren't going to vanish in a puff of corporate decision-making. Like Debian.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 16:02 UTC (Wed) by xxiao (guest, #9631) [Link] (1 responses)

two wrongs do not make one right.

debian, openwrt are the true OSS projects that I love for ages.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 29, 2011 9:39 UTC (Thu) by juliank (guest, #45896) [Link]

> debian, openwrt are the true OSS projects that I love for ages.

For the pedantic reader, that must read "free software", not "OSS" for Debian; as in "Debian Free Software Guidelines".

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 16:09 UTC (Wed) by woooee (guest, #54179) [Link] (1 responses)

"The first release is due in the first quarter of next year."

It Tizen(t) going to take long to find out if this is foolishness or not. You would think that Intel and Samsung have the people to implement something like this, but it's easier said than done. I understand why they don't want to be dependent on someone else i.e. Google or Microsoft, but it will take a secure, competitive end product/unit produced in their 3 to 6 month projection, before anyone gives this more than a yawn.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 16:44 UTC (Wed) by sumC (guest, #1262) [Link]

Actual products aren't predicted to be out until mid year.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 17:27 UTC (Wed) by alceste (guest, #39742) [Link]

The following excerpt was published just a few hours before the Tizen announcement (see http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/09/view... ):

«Intel has been working very hard behind the scenes to bring MeeGo new viability after Nokia announced they won't be doing more MeeGo phones after the N9. There is a big Intel event about it tomorrow so we'll know more then, but a strong rumor says Intel will be announcing a new merger partnership of two Linux based platforms, MeeGo with LiMo. Most Japanese phone manufacturers are familiar with LiMo as it is the basis of many Japanese featurephones as their operating system. With this merger, MeeGo would gain for example Panasonic and NEC to the handset manufacturers and several operators/carriers too. A related rumor says Samsung may migrate/merge its bada OS project with MeeGo/Limo and join thus the MeeGo family. This would be an ironic twist to Elop's [Nokia CEO] misadventures. Nokia abandons the winning platform, Samsung takes Nokia's place and shows how strong it is, while Nokia instead goes with the loser in Microsoft Windows Phone, that may well see most partners deserting it if my gut feelings about this Microsoft Nokia bullying of carriers turns out to be true.»

Linux + HTML5 == Boot To Gecko

Posted Sep 28, 2011 20:42 UTC (Wed) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (2 responses)

This sounds very much like Boot To Gecko, which is also a project building a mobile OS using Linux + HTML5. Why not just join that project, instead of starting yet another OS?

Linux + HTML5 == Boot To Gecko

Posted Sep 28, 2011 20:52 UTC (Wed) by mlinksva (guest, #38268) [Link] (1 responses)

Who would they merge with next year if they join B2G now? The new project will be called Tuuken.

Linux + HTML5 == Boot To Gecko

Posted Sep 28, 2011 22:31 UTC (Wed) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link]

lol, you made my day :)

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 20:59 UTC (Wed) by mcfrisk (guest, #40131) [Link] (4 responses)

Maybe it's time for the real community distros to pickup, package and ship what ever usefull has come out of Moblin, Maemo, MeeGo, LiMo, Tizen etc.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 21:40 UTC (Wed) by paravoid (subscriber, #32869) [Link] (2 responses)

Because packaging things right after upstream abandons them is always such a good idea?

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 29, 2011 5:39 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

Some of the bits like MeeGo CE's UX have had a community behind it and can be picked up for further development easier than say completely Intel in-house stuff like the Tablet UX.

There are a lot of touch usable nice applications to package and develop indeed in MeeGo.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 29, 2011 6:18 UTC (Thu) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link]

Eh, like we should have forgotten Nautilus, blender, ur-quan masters and firefox as soon as their original upstream gave up?

A lot upstream abandoned software has got a new life from open source communities. In fact, being able to continue developing software after original authors lose interest is one the key advantages of free software.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Oct 1, 2011 11:02 UTC (Sat) by linusw (subscriber, #40300) [Link]

The most valuable piece of software in Maemo/MeeGo/Tizen is IMHO ConnMan, Marcel Holtmann's and Samuel Ortiz' kickass connection daemon. But if I have understood things correctly it is indeed being picked up.

http://connman.net/

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 28, 2011 22:30 UTC (Wed) by DavidMoffatt (guest, #80219) [Link]

Well why not incorporate LiPs too. Everyone knows that taking a loosing team and adding more loosing players make a winning team....
Face it. Android won.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 29, 2011 0:17 UTC (Thu) by Kluge (subscriber, #2881) [Link] (3 responses)

Judging from what I've heard about the N9, Intel should just license Harmattan, hire the developers, and declare victory.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 29, 2011 0:23 UTC (Thu) by Kluge (subscriber, #2881) [Link]

Of course, they could also stick with HTML5, buy WebOS, hire the developers, and declare victory.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 29, 2011 5:24 UTC (Thu) by alexbk (subscriber, #37839) [Link] (1 responses)

They did the hiring part pretty much right after Feb 11:
"Intel plans to open a new research and development site in Finland, starting with some 200 staff at a time when Finnish partner Nokia is to unveil large job cuts. A spokeswoman for the world's top semiconductor firm said the company has started hiring hardware and software engineers, but was yet to open the site."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/12/us-intel-finlan...

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Oct 1, 2011 10:57 UTC (Sat) by linusw (subscriber, #40300) [Link]

This is correct. When I checked with friends at Nokia the day after the announcement, they were already hired by Intel Tampere.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Sep 29, 2011 5:50 UTC (Thu) by alison (subscriber, #63752) [Link] (1 responses)

Check out this announcement: http://limofoundation.org/en/Press-Releases/limo-foundation-and-linux-foundation-announce-new-open-source-software-platform.html Huh, when LiMo and LiFo discuss Tizen, they don't even mention MeeGo! Only Intel pretends that Tizen will have anything to do with MeeGo. Tizen is LiMo with a new HTML5 interface. Intel's claim that the Qt-less Tizen will be a continuation of the MeeGo project makes sense only from the point of view that it will undoubtedly involve many of the same Intel employees. One wonders if Tizen will contain any more MeeGo code than, say, Ubuntu Core.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Oct 3, 2011 17:05 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I am not why you mention Ubuntu core in connection with Meego? They don't really share any code. Meego was a RPM based distro using packages sourced from Fedora or openSUSE or written from scratch and using the OBS build system.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Oct 2, 2011 10:49 UTC (Sun) by savs (guest, #4957) [Link] (2 responses)

Fore more background and information on what's going on with Tizen, see this blog post: http://www.andrewsavory.com/blog/archives/001574.html. Spoilers: this is Intel + Samsung, not MeeGo + LiMo.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Oct 3, 2011 0:34 UTC (Mon) by pjm (guest, #2080) [Link]

I would read the "not MeeGo + LiMo" part of that claim as saying that Tizen won't be based on MeeGo or LPS, which is not in fact the case according to the linked article. Although the linked article does say that HTML5 will be more part of Tizen than either MeeGo or LiMo, the article does say that it will be based on both MeeGo and LPS, with the proportion initially varying according to target form factor.

MeeGo + LiMo = Tizen

Posted Oct 4, 2011 21:05 UTC (Tue) by alexbk (subscriber, #37839) [Link]

This is the most sane analysis I've seen yet - I'd even say there's not much else an LWN editorial could add to that.