Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

[Posted February 10, 2011 by jake]

Over at Linux.com, Nathan Willis looks at how to get involved with MeeGo, either by working on the core of the distribution itself or by writing applications for the platform. "You can also use the community OBS to host a personal or team package repository, which makes it easy to distribute your work to testers and end users. The community OBS will power the MeeGo Garage, a third-party application repository for community-created, open source applications. It has not launched yet, but it is a direct descendant of the successful Maemo Garage project. You certainly are not required to use the community OBS or MeeGo garage, however: you can distribute your applications individually, or through third-party repositories or 'app stores.'"

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 8:58 UTC (Fri) by xav (guest, #18536) [Link] (18 responses)

Isn't Meego dead now that Nokia announced its partnership with Microsoft ?

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 10:49 UTC (Fri) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link] (7 responses)

It was already dead before the announcement.

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 11:02 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (6 responses)

The thing to worry about now is Trolltech and QT. The pro-QT folks better be right on the level of portability it brings because. The principal platform for it is going to be Windows Phone 7 if it has any future in Nokia.

Sucks

What future for Qt now?

Posted Feb 11, 2011 11:17 UTC (Fri) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link]

Does not Windows Phone 7 / Windows 8 come with its own set of UI widgets? What is left for Qt in Nokia?

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 14:13 UTC (Fri) by Aissen (subscriber, #59976) [Link] (3 responses)

As said by rvhf, WP7 already has it's framework.
And Nokia confirmed that there will be no Qt on Windows Phone:
http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/nokia-developer-news/20...

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 14:22 UTC (Fri) by xav (guest, #18536) [Link] (2 responses)

Lots of negative comments in there.
Oh, and apparently it's not just devs: Nokia's share lost 9% just after the announcement http://gadgets.ndtv.com/shownews.aspx?id=GADEN20110169247...

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 14:26 UTC (Fri) by xav (guest, #18536) [Link] (1 responses)

Oops ... right now it's -11% and counting. Good move Nokia !

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 19:29 UTC (Fri) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link]

Nokia had a good plan, followed up by *TERRIBLE* execution. They can't even figure out how to get their servers running properly. It's sad, because Nokia's incompetence reflects poorly on Linux.

They managed to contribute a good amount of code to Linux, but piss off everyone from low level users to high level hackers.

Their "Open Source Advocacy" was closer to "binary apologist" for proprietary software.

It is really amazing to see how fast all this unfolds and how quickly they self destruct and lose billions of Euros (literally). When the N900 came out, it was the ultimate Linux device, but Nokia totally blew the momentum. Android went from nothing to dominance. I wonder if being able to actually use functioning Google servers had anything to do with it...

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5818 <-- the beginning of the end "We need Servers"

https://bugs.meego.com/show_bug.cgi?id=615 <-- continued failure

Nokia, good riddance.

-Jeff
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jebba

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 18:00 UTC (Fri) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link]

<quote>The thing to worry about now is Trolltech and QT</quote>

Trolltech is long gone. There is only one possible route to go with QT: fork under a new name. Let the forking begin. This is going to be primarily driven by KDE devs.

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 11:09 UTC (Fri) by danielpf (guest, #4723) [Link] (8 responses)

MeeGo is much broader than Nokia participation. Among others Intel is a major actor.

From the quoted article:

"MeeGo takes a different approach, aiming to be a vendor-neutral Linux platform for a variety of devices"

"MeeGo is a different creature in the realm of Linux. In some respects, it is much like any other Linux distro focusing on packaging, integration, building and supporting releases, and helping third-party developers. But in other respects it is very unusual; something like a "metadistribution" because it ships multiple UXes designed for different types of hardware, but it also expects customers to take its code and modify it heavily before delivering it to consumers. Once you dig into the project, however, you can see that it's just Linux underneath although the opportunity it offers app developers to write open source programs for netbooks, phones, and other devices is certainly new territory."

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 11:13 UTC (Fri) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link] (7 responses)

> Among others Intel is a major actor.

I would not be so sure about Intel going on alone with Meego. Moreover, they did not focus solely on it.

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 15:56 UTC (Fri) by gidoca (subscriber, #62438) [Link] (2 responses)

True, especially since Meego also dropped the Netbook UI. What is there left without handsets and Netbooks?...

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 17:27 UTC (Fri) by osma (subscriber, #6912) [Link] (1 responses)

iPad-style tablets would be the obvious third category, no?

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 21:14 UTC (Fri) by gidoca (subscriber, #62438) [Link]

I don't know, I'd always assumed that they used the netbook UI. At least meego.com doesn't specifically list tablets.

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 18:03 UTC (Fri) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link] (3 responses)

<quote>I would not be so sure about Intel going on alone with Meego. Moreover, they did not focus solely on it.</quote>

And by trying to make it look more like RHEL they killed it.

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 19:21 UTC (Fri) by walters (subscriber, #7396) [Link] (2 responses)

How did MeeGo look like RHEL??

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 19:37 UTC (Fri) by alextingle (guest, #20593) [Link] (1 responses)

RPM

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 20:39 UTC (Fri) by walters (subscriber, #7396) [Link]

How can RPM possibly matter to anything?

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 18:35 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]

This all reminds me of SGI's demise in the late 90s with it's disastrous adoption of WinNT. There was a murky pro-Microsoft CEO situation there too.

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 9:07 UTC (Fri) by rilder (guest, #59804) [Link] (4 responses)

I find this article a little ironical considering

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/nokia-execs-given-the-...

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/nokia-and-microsoft-en...

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 11:22 UTC (Fri) by danielpf (guest, #4723) [Link]

I enjoy the Nokia N900 as the most Linux friendly smartphone.

However the trend of merging Nokia to Microsoft was written on the wall when the new CEO took over the company last year.

I say bye bye to Nokia.

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 12:36 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (2 responses)

Whelp, that simplifies my life considerably. Only need to learn Android now.

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 15:23 UTC (Fri) by tstover (guest, #56283) [Link] (1 responses)

I'll keep waiting until I a stronger sign that i can give up on webos also. Maybe by then there will be a java-less driod strategy.

Java-less Android

Posted Feb 11, 2011 16:27 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

How about a strongly-typed Ruby-derivative?
https://github.com/mirah/pindah

I really like Maemo

Posted Feb 11, 2011 13:21 UTC (Fri) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link] (1 responses)

but never got really excited about Meego. Maybe it's because I'm a Debian person, maybe because I prefer GTK+ over Qt.

Good-bye, Nokia. I never had any mobile other than Nokia, but now it's time for something new.

I really like Maemo

Posted Feb 11, 2011 15:31 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

I hear you. I was very enthusiastic about Maemo, lukewarm on Meego. Now that it's pretty much dead in the water, I'm glad I didn't spend *too* much time retooling.

Perhaps if someone (not Nokia; they apparently will have one, dead-on-arrival Meego phone) comes out with a solid Meego phone, I'll get happier about meego. Don't see the point on netbooks; plain Linux works great on them (atom is now my main chip on mobile and small server).

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 15:27 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (2 responses)

And layoffs are coming: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=204356&...

The good news for Nokia is that the stock drop seems to have stabilized at -13%: http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:NOK

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 19:59 UTC (Fri) by yokem_55 (subscriber, #10498) [Link] (1 responses)

About 3 pm EST (market closes in an hour) and now they are down 16%. Sinking your flagship product mix for the next year+ doesn't tend to inspire investors to feel particularly confident about where things are heading overall. Now, if they had kept this quiet until they were ready, or been able to announce a Fenster-ated product for launch in 90 days or such, this would be more credible of a strategy.

I smell a rat....

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 12, 2011 0:44 UTC (Sat) by sumC (guest, #1262) [Link]

The week old E7 will sell like mad now...

Getting Started with MeeGo (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 11, 2011 22:58 UTC (Fri) by xxiao (guest, #9631) [Link]

is meego still relevant?
sigh.