MeeGo: Toward Day One

[Posted March 5, 2010 by corbet]

Valtteri Halla, the Nokia representative on the MeeGo Technical Steering Group, has posted some information on the future of the project. "The most important question is of course about the code. We hope to move on here very quickly now. Nokia and Intel have set the target to open the MeeGo repository by the end of this month. I guess this is something that finally will signify the real 'Day One' of MeeGo project, a genuine merger of moblin and maemo. What is scheduled to be available then is the first and very raw baseline to a source and binary repository to build MeeGo trunk on Intel ATOM boards and Nokia N900."

moblin 2.2

Posted Mar 5, 2010 15:15 UTC (Fri) by cdamian (subscriber, #1271) [Link] (7 responses)

I wonder what this means to moblin 2.2 . I think it was scheduled to be released this week. I really don't want to wait for MeeGo now.

moblin 2.2

Posted Mar 5, 2010 16:03 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link] (4 responses)

Hold on - are you saying you are/were actually a genuine moblin *user*?

I didn't think such a thing existed.

moblin 2.2

Posted Mar 5, 2010 16:11 UTC (Fri) by cdamian (subscriber, #1271) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, I am the one :-)

I use it on my Eee PC, because it works very well for what I use it for. I used Fedora before, but then one of the SSDs died and now I only have 4G of disk space.

And I like that it is based on Fedora, which I use on my desktop.

moblin 2.2

Posted Mar 8, 2010 14:09 UTC (Mon) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

It *was* based on Fedora.

moblin 2.2

Posted Mar 5, 2010 17:00 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

Both Ubuntu and Fedora have Moblin-compliant/configured versions of their distributions. I have not made the switch over to Moblin Ubuntu from UNR Ubuntu on my netbook, but I am holding off to see how this new thing turns out.

That is what I liked about Moblin is that it's more of a standard way of configuring desktops with dependencies and such rather then a entire new distro. I can use all the new fancy Moblin stuff without having to give up anything in terms of software support and maturity (well the maturity of the platform). I need my systems to work and I need them to support the software and configurations I use everyday.

If that is how Meego will turn out; that it can be implemented on top of Ubuntu or Fedora then I would be happy to use it; VERY happy actually. However if it's going to be it's own exclusive distro then I won't touch it with a ten foot pole... My time and my life is worth to much to be now to be wasting it on yet another brain-dead Linux distribution with shitty software support and bad quality control.

moblin 2.2

Posted Mar 6, 2010 0:11 UTC (Sat) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

We'll have to see what Nokia decides to do with regard to software distribution.

I don't think I've seen any indication that Intel wants to position this as just another distribution.. they really seem to want to stand up this up as a project that multiple software vendors can integrate into their offerings across a wide spectrum of devices from a number of OEM partners consuming intel chips. I think I understand to some degree Intel's motivations. Intel wants a strong ecosystem around Moblin/Meego and not a single dominant software/device vendor.

Nokia, on the other hand, I don't think I have a good read on. Nokia makes direct to retail devices, they aren't a component manufacturer. Nokia needs a software distribution on those devices. That means they either create their own like they did with Maemo or they outsource to a software vendor like Novell or Canonical for a Meego stack. If you are really concerned about Meego morphing into a dedicated distribution watch very closely how Nokia chooses how to implement device specific Meego solutions.

My take on the full article by Valtteri Halla is that Nokia is going to ensure that Meego can be its own dedicated distribution and keeping its options open with regard to how Nokia finally decides to deal it product implementation later. You'll note in the comments talk about making a MeeGo developer distribution that targets the N900 as a step towards productization for future Nokia products. Watch very closely how that is handled.

-jef

moblin 2.2

Posted Mar 5, 2010 16:59 UTC (Fri) by xav (guest, #18536) [Link] (1 responses)

And I wonder what that means for the N900. There's a maemo update that should be coming soon, and after that ... will the next one totally switch from maemo (debian-based) to meego (fedora-based) ?
That doesn't sound very good from an end-user point-of-view, because it probably means the device has to be reflashed completely.

moblin 2.2

Posted Mar 8, 2010 14:12 UTC (Mon) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

Reflashing completely is still better than what Nokia normally does with major updates -- stop supporting older devices?

MeeGo: Toward Day One

Posted Mar 5, 2010 18:15 UTC (Fri) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm wondering if they'll code-name their releases things like "Fungi from Yuggoth" or "Shadow Over Innsmouth".

I can't be the only one to notice the Lovecraftian overtones of their new name...can I?

MeeGo: Toward Day One

Posted Mar 6, 2010 2:39 UTC (Sat) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029) [Link]

I noticed that too. I'm still waiting for the Shuggoth distro.