Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters) [LWN.net]

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Posted Feb 9, 2011 16:58 UTC (Wed) by xxiao (guest, #9631)
In reply to: Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters) by drag
Parent article: Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

When meego was out I commented at lwn with similar opinions:
1. rpm is a dead-on-arrival choice, package format matters in real life, and deb-derivative probably owns 90% of the embedded market. Except for Redhat, all rpm followers are either struggling, or dead.
2. QT is just another nail on the coffin.
3. Intel/Nokia does not have a clue to work with open source community,yet.

These combined, Meego can't fly.

On another note, Ubuntu is moving to Qt instead of working/improving Gtk, so I happily returned to the newest Debian6.0.

My 2011 prediction here: Ubuntu will be acquired this year.

to post comments

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Posted Feb 9, 2011 17:03 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (1 responses)

Don't you mean to say to predict that Canonical will be acquired?

-jef

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Posted Feb 9, 2011 19:18 UTC (Wed) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]

Just who wanted to have that, now?

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Posted Feb 9, 2011 17:08 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

>On another note, Ubuntu is moving to Qt instead of working/improving Gtk, so I happily returned to the newest Debian6.0.

So far they seem to be aiming at making QT suck less, rather then worrying to much about abandoning GTK.

Because it's going to take a lot of work on Ubuntu's part to turn KDE into Gnome 4.0 :P

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Posted Feb 9, 2011 17:41 UTC (Wed) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link] (4 responses)

Your comment that "Except for Redhat, all rpm followers are either struggling, or dead" while possibly true... it really doesn't have any relation to rpm as a package format... unless you mean to say that because of rpm they are struggling or dead... which I don't think anyone would agree was the case.

In fact, name the commercial Linux or open source companies that are doing well besides Red Hat? Are there any .deb-based companies doing well? Not that I'm aware of. Of course I'm not saying that they aren't doing well because they use .deb. I think the package format really doesn't matter much... as .rpm and .deb are pretty darn similar and it is more about the quality of the packages and the skills of the packagers than the package format.

Yes, I mean to remind you that the financial status of Canonical and its ability to tread water is still in question. They don't report their financial status because they don't have to... but if they were doing well, I imagine they would want it publicly known. I don't mean that as a bash to Canonical, any of their employees, or any of the volunteers who work on Ubuntu. Just trying to operate with the facts rather than biases.

The Tools

Posted Feb 9, 2011 18:04 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (3 responses)

One reason for people favouring the Debian tools and packaging system has been the relative convenience of being able to bootstrap a distribution, although I would argue that the tools don't really go far enough to permit cross-bootstrapping without messing around with things like QEMU, even though projects like Emdebian are presumably meant to do so. Stuff like debootstrap, although now complemented by febootstrap (for Fedora), at least points to a more sane solution for getting people started than some of the alternatives (OpenEmbedded springs to mind).

That was one of the perplexing things about OpenMoko: there were a bunch of different approaches, but they were all suboptimal. There was the MokoMakefile which did manage to build things, but then complained loudly if run a second time (if, for example, it didn't work the first time); then there was some kind of OpenEmbedded affair which probably needed gigabytes of disk space and days of build time. For many people, what was really required was just a sandbox running natively (not under emulation) on the development machine (not on the device) which gave a basic sense of the constraints of the device, populated with the libraries and tools that would be present on the device (because the sandbox would be populated in the same way). Bringing up a nested X server would provide enough "emulation" without any need for fancy boilerplate graphics showing the actual device casing, LEDs, and so on.

I regard it as a positive sign that there is a Debian Lenny root image for GTA04.

The Tools

Posted Feb 9, 2011 20:20 UTC (Wed) by xxiao (guest, #9631) [Link]

This is going off-topic a bit, but yes OE takes too long to compile and requires too much space, it's the Gentoo for embedded, but even Gentoo has stageN these days to speed things up.

they could prebuild libraries/compilers by default the way Android did under prebuilt, that could save at least half of the time/space.

The Tools

Posted Feb 10, 2011 23:07 UTC (Thu) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link] (1 responses)

Bootstrapping an exsting debian arch is dead easy, as you point out. Cross-bootstrapping a new one or a variation, or a new-compiler rebuild is still very difficult, but linaro is doing good work on that front. Emdebian did useful work on this front, but that work showed that without suffient buy-in upstream it was a massive job to maintain. The linaro/ubuntu tie-up has provided that upstream buy-in, so people actually care about cross-buildability as well as native building, and painless developer tools to use that functionality. This stuff, combined with multiarch to remove a whole boatload of cross-path-pain and general bodgery should mean that cross-bootstraping actually becomes something that works, as does cross-building when necessary/useful.

In the meantime of course powerful new arm boxes and convenient form-factors make native-building dead easy too, just like it is on your x86 desktop.

Expect to see some interesting stuff in this area over the next year. It should all be rather spiffy :-)

The Tools

Posted Feb 11, 2011 21:28 UTC (Fri) by xxiao (guest, #9631) [Link]

I tried bootstrap debian from source to no avail, i.e. build debian from source for a new chip, just those perl and texinfo related stuff for setting up the initial native rootfs alone are very difficult...
of course if you want to debootstrap a binary distribution for supported chip it's really easy.

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Posted Feb 9, 2011 18:28 UTC (Wed) by RCL (guest, #63264) [Link] (5 responses)

What's wrong with Qt? It's the sanest C++ widget toolkit available, and probably the most widely used nowadays.

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Posted Feb 9, 2011 19:59 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (4 responses)

Because it's stupid to take something that works and is shipping to customers and destroy it by starting development over from scratch for the sake of a toolkit with better C++ support.

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Posted Feb 10, 2011 17:38 UTC (Thu) by jldugger (guest, #57576) [Link] (3 responses)

In my book, when you make short term sacrifices for long term gains, it's an investment.

Qt is a much broader and better lib than GTK, and will likely stay that way. And with QML, it should be possible to write apps quickly in Python and then switch to C++ to get a perf boost if needed without touching the UI. Conversely, getting Qt on Symbian, Meego, Ubuntu OSX and Windows makes it far easier to depend on Qt and customize the UI to each platform.

This logic isn't very Qt dependent, but you have to look at what's more likely to be the common denominator, and Qt seems to be it. Fortunately, there's a lot that can remain, like the Sharing stuff.

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 10:22 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

> In my book, when you make short term sacrifices for long term gains, it's an investment.

Everything is short term. Long term success is nothing but a long string of short term successes.

This 'short term sacrifice' means that Meego is now dead.

I hope that people seriously learn the lesson here. Potential technical excellence in the future is nothing compared to having something that works right now.

QT4 being better then QT3 didn't stop KDE 4 from sucking and QT4 being better then GTK did not save Meego.

Nokia has moved officially to Windows phone 7 and will continue to develop Symbian. Looks like bad decision making is going to kill Nokia, too.

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 10:22 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

I am NOT happy about this.

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 15:43 UTC (Fri) by albertoafn (guest, #64225) [Link]

I dont think there is a lesson to learn here. Everybody but nokia chairmen thought this was an awful move (even people working for nokia) and they had to have continued with the maemo branch.

It was already there, it was nicer. It was working already.

I have a nexus one, but Id rather have a n900 that I would had bought if they didn't do that weird movement. n900 was one of the greates phones ive seen. Better than the nexus one. And its a couple of years old. N1 is a yeard old.

From my pov, at this point, the most sensible thing for nokia to do is accept the new king and start shipping nice android phones... As this is not gonna happen, I hope eventually meego goes somewhere, even if it copes with the same share of the market as linux have vs windows... ;)

Nokia drops MeeGo phone before launch (Reuters)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 17:27 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

Funny, I see things the exact opposite.

Ok, RPM vs Deb doesn't matter at all
GTK failed so they had to move to something which actually has a shot at appealing to developers who are used to nice stuff on android and iOS (Qt & QML)
Nokia and Intel might not have a clue about working with communities but they are doing well by simply hiring companies which DO have a clue - very smart move.

Now Qt (and qml) are finally mature they can write gui's that actually are on par with android and iOS - and they dump it all for a MS silverlight based platform... Of course, it makes sense. They can stop a lot of R&D and development as well as building their own services platform, saving lots of money - making the company more profitable in the short term. Big bonus for the bosses. Longer term - Nokia dies because it has no unique capabilities and added value anymore, being just another hardware manufacturer. But the current bosses have left the company by that time so why would they care? Their bonus is paid :D