Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Wasn't that the ultimate goal of Mer? or at least as much as possible.

Since the base ran on both the N8x0 and the N900, it may be time to give stskeeps another call.

Sod Nokia! - Use Mer as a base, and build a common Desktop environment on top which will work on both N8x0 and N900, and get the community to do it's own thing and fork the hell away from Meego....

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Didn't you hear? Mer's dead, man.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Isn't it just pining for the fjords...? Seems to be the same place that Maemo seems to be hurtling towards.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

I'm really confused. If you want an open system, like Mer, then why don't you want MeeGo, where the aim is to provide ..an open system?

Stskeeps (and a lot of other familiar names) are helping out with MeeGo, both on the ARM/n900 hardware adaptation, and looking at the unofficial n8x0 port (see http://wiki.meego.com/ARM)

An introspective look at MeeGo from Mer's perspective: http://mer-project.blogspot.com/2010...redshirts.html

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

"...as much as possible". That's exactly it. Mer shows the closedness of Maemo. The browser was Tear because the browser UI is closed in Maemo, the connection manager was NetworkManager because Nokia's ICD2 and libconnui are closed, Powerlaunch had to be used because both MCE and System UI are closed source. None of these performed as well as the equiv. Nokia closed component. Hildon Desktop was built for it by removing the IPHB code (done wrongly, BTW: it should've called the GLib function adding the timeout source) and a newer Hildon Application Manager couldn't be built because it depended on a closed libtime-dev. As for the rest, I don't think Mer got far.

Nokia were happy to say that a Fremantle-like OS produced by the community will allieviate the need for them to bring updates themselves with the FiF fiasco, but, yet, they're not happy to give up their code (in the case of Diablo, code that is neither used nor updated) for the community. Hint: The community (excluding the members who like to be raped by Nokia and will come up with excuses for it) don't like double standards. I mean you're happy to put out that 80 percent of Maemo is open source. Well, that figures - most of that percentage consists of open source code not written by Nokia.

@gazza_d

Agreed. Maemo will die. There's only so much free components that you can bring updates to. Sooner or later, at least one of Nokia's many closed source components will break.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Yes, but its death had meaning. It was a good death.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

I was slightly tongue in cheek when I suggested Mer. In all seriousness, obviously Meego should be a better bet

However, reading this thread does reveal to me a distrust from many people in Nokia's roadmap for the future of what are currently maemo devices.

There also seems to be a concern that previous mis/steps/takes will re-occur, and that closed source components, and application compability breaks between platforms/OSs will cause further fragmentation and other problems within the Maemo/Meego ecosystem.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Dancing the same steps to a new tune...

http://i28.tinypic.com/2qvfuw2.jpg

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Well... kind of open.

Some counter-examples: "Compliance" criteria are starting to become clear - you will be required to ship all of the MeeGo core components, and not any replacement components for them; to be called MeeGo. How these core components are decided on, and by who, has never been clear, and it appears to be as much by negotiation between commercial partners as it is technical merit.

One example: ConnMan instead of Network Manager. Core component, but no compelling technical arguments - and in fact Novell's Moblin used Network Manager, and they are now being forced to move to ConnMan. Every other Linux distribution in the world has settled on Network Manager, and MeeGo is backing a different horse, because one of the commercial partners has invested in it. Not technical merit, not open decision making.

Within workgroups, different components and applications will be included. So, for example, Evolution Express and Banshee were included in MeeGo Netbook, in spite of being GTK+ applications - primarily because a partner (Novell) pushed for their inclusion, and Intel forced them through. Where's the open roadmap & component selection?

Yes, the project aims to be open, and I'd like to see that happen, but plainly it isn't yet. What you have are people like Arjen justifying decisions which are made behind closed doors once they've been announced - the community is faced with a fait accompli. I don't mind a small number of people having a say on components, but I'd like that say to be recorded somewhere so that the greater community can understand the reasons for choices.

Dave.

Re: Maemo Missteps, your thoughts?
 

Sure, if you accept an n8x0 (don't really care about the n800) that cannot charge its battery, suboptimal wifi, no more than 10 minutes of life, no sound (the drivers were specifically removed from the linux-omap tree) you can do that (you could also, possibly, run meego under those constraints).

Edit: didn't read qwerty12's reply which expressed what I wanted to say much more clearly.