Why did you guys forget about Maemo/Meego

[AndrewFBlack]

It seems you guys used talk about Maemo some at least I even remember when you had Casten(Stskeeps) the guy who was heading up Mer on your show. I met several of you at the first SELF, I was the guy walking with my N810 and my 770, handing out Mer Flyers. It seems like you guys have forgotten about the only Major Cell phone that really uses Linux not just running something on top of Linux. I hear you guys talk about your android phones all the time an I'm not downing Android for some good things I own a backflip myself and I like some of the games and apps but now if I want to play one of those I just boot into NITDroid to play them. Between Maemo, Meego, NITDroid, Debian Chroot, and Ubuntu what more can you ask for in a phone, ohh yeah almost forgot now you can play Pre games on Maemo Natively.

I love your show and I have listened to it every week since I first heard of it. I just disappoints me that you guys talk so much about Android and nothing about Maemo/Meego. If the problem is you just don’t know what’s going on with Maemo/Meego let me know and I will keep you guys updated with the latest information.

[Patrick]

Ultimately it boils down to almost all of us are using Android phones now. I loved my N800 but honestly I completely stopped using it once I got an Android phone. Eventually I sold it on Ebay since it was just sitting around collecting dust. Plus it seems that Nokia's Linux based devices have become almost an afterthought here in the States. A lot of the people who were developing Maemo at Nokia have left the company (including Ari Jaaksi). If someone wants to send me an N900 or it upcoming successor I'll happily talk about it. Android is white hot right now. Developers are coming over in droves. As the raving bald head once said "developers, developers, developers". WebOS is suffering in the same way as Maemo/Meego. It's a perfectly fine Linux based mobile OS but it's losing mindshare and getting left behind. That's the reality. You can go into any store in the U.S. and buy a multitude of Android based devices running on any of the 4 major mobile providers. I have yet to see an N900 in person.

[fabsh]

Isn't that the same for all of us? We constantly get this question on LO too and the truth is just that Nokia has screwed up on this. Honestly, I can't see how they plan to save the mess that is their smart phone strategy...

[bigbrovar]

@Patrick what u said is mostly true. I remembered way back (like some two years ago) my decision to get the Nokia N810 was due to you guys constantly raving about how cool a device it is. Its cool seeing that google has taken android a linux based Mobile OS and made it sing. getting it into the hands of millions of people and right now it has the Platform to be on. The fastest growing Mobile platform out there. I have since sold my N810 and gotten the Nokia N900. It is not there yet and not something I would recommend for the average user. But it is the perfect device for me. I have handled the Nexus one and the motorola droid both of which are really good devices but all of which lack something I enjoy about the N900. Its closeness to the Linux userland.

Why I am sticking with Nokia/Meego.
I find it sad when I see many linux users beat down on the meego effort. It is true that Nokia have made lots of missteps concerning meego/maemo. But what we have to appreciate is the development process of meego as been very open and Nokia has also involved many upstream open source software by employing their developers to work on meego and also send improvement of their works back to their upstream project. Tracker, pulseaudio, clutter, and even the linux kernel etc all benefited from Nokia's work on maemo. And with the move to meego already many free software developers have been paid by nokia to work on various aspect of meego which already uses applications from the linux userland. e.g Koffice developers have been paid to work on porting koffice to meego. same with kontact guys and there is also work on bringing telepathy framework to Qt also sponsored by Nokia working with collabora and the kopete devs (these are the effort I can remember of the top of my head but there are many more) many of the codes generated by these efforts would be sent to the upstream and would benefit Linux users who are not even using Meego.

I know that Android is the new kid on the block its cool and very fly. but we should remember that it too came from an humble beginning and only started to gain momentum with the release of the HTC Magic and hero. Meego is still 8 month old, and already its existence has started to benefit many open-source project. a success of meego would benefit and improve many of the software we use everyday. Android for all its success has been of little benefit to the linux userland. not even the linux kernel gets improvements to the android kernel. that is not to say it is bad. But if I am to pick between the two mobile platform I would stick with meego because it is much more open and also a part of the broader linux ecosystem benefit / improvement to it would always trickle down to my desktop. Just my IMHO

[murph]

Sadly, Meego is not really in a usable form for the n810, and Nokia seems to have stopped supporting the older models altogether.
Not only does this reduce my interest in Meego, but it also discourages me from considering Nokia hardware.

[AndrewFBlack]

Nokia gave out hundreds of free N900 and I'm sure you guys could have goten your hands on some if you would hae asked. Mine was free becuase I used to travel to some Linux shows showing it off and doing talks. Also for doing my Theme Testing. If the only problem you guys don't talk about it is becuase you haven't used on I will see what I can do about getting one for you guys to play with even if I have to send you mine. I know the down side is applications but everything isn't about applications.

As to the people who complain the Nokia has stopped supporting older devices, N810 is over 2 years old and Android phones are not getting updated for that long. Several of Android phones out there are still coming out with 1.5 or 1.6 with a very small hope of getting updated to 2.1 maybe but will never see past that. Even Apple has started to drop there old phones from updates.

[Patrick]

Nokia gave out hundreds of free N900 and I'm sure you guys could have goten your hands on some if you would hae asked.

I asked and was turned down.

[AndrewFBlack]

I'm happy to hear you guys talking about Meego last night. Keep it up.

[Patrick]

I'm happy to hear you guys talking about Meego last night. Keep it up.

Glad you liked it. Intel was nice enough to give us a bunch of laptops, 2 of which we will be giving away with Meego preloaded on them. We plan on having someone from Intel on to talk about it in February. I'm sure it will come up again before then. I also plan on doing some blog posts about it very soon.

[AndrewFBlack]

I've been waiting til Meego on Phones gets better before I really make the move I have been sticking with Maemo mostly but if you ever need someone to talk about it I am a Theme Designer for Maemo and Meego. Still listening to this weeks now, you guys are making some good points.

[AndrewFBlack]

To fix one of your problems you guys are having with your Meego Netbooks.

To Fix touchpad buttons just edit /drivers/input/mouse/synaptics.h so that

Code: Select all

#define SYN_CAP_CLICKPAD(ex0c) ((ex0c) & 0x100100)reads as

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#define SYN_CAP_CLICKPAD(ex0c) ((ex0c) & 0x100000)

Or use recent kernel http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/g ... 2965fa50bb

Or get updated Meego kernel packages from http://bugs.meego.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4807