Thread: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
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TheLongshot is offline TheLongshot
2011-08-16 , 15:47
Posts: 234 | Thanked: 160 times | Joined on Oct 2009
#95
Originally Posted by shapeshifter View Post
I have to disagree with everyone who is prematurely burying their n900. Yes, it's a chunky piece and it doesn't have enough ram.

I knew that when I bought it over a year ago.

Just because the market is moving along, the n900 isn't getting any worse and at the moment there simply are no alternatives on the horizon. I'm aware that quite a few people are buying a new handset every year for giggles but I'm also confident that there are enough people who will stick with their n900 for as long as possible or until a real alternative arrives. Apart from the USB port, which is not an unfixable issue, I don't see many problems with the hardware. There will be replacement screens and batteries around for a while. Also, there are still plenty of people around using their N800s and that thing is from 2007.

To me, nothing has changed, since there still is no device out there with a keyboard, a proper screen and an (almost) proper Linux distribution that lets me do all the things I usually do when using Linux. For my purposes, the market has not moved an inch since 2009.

In any case, I've got my spare N900 in the drawer...
Which is why I have some issue with the OP talking about working N900s. Mine is still working just fine, and I expect to continue using it for a long time because it does what I want it to do and there isn't anything out there that can replace it.

The post isn't much different from the counsel thread, since is another thread talking about where we should go forward. Certainly for all intents and purposes of the future, Maemo is dead. It can't be easily moved to different hardware and there are some aspects that will never be open enough to modify. That is all a given.

So, the obvious way forward is to support developments that follow the spirit of Maemo, and right now that is MeeGo and Cordia. It doesn't need to be exclusively so, but that is what we have right now. I suspect as things wind down, this forum will be more development-oriented as without commercial hardware, we probably won't have too many consumers.

Cell phones are always going to be tough target for open source, since typically they are not open platforms and manufacturers typically design for a lifecycle of two years. Tablets have a similar problem to a lesser degree. Without a commercial sponsor, it is going to be tough for any open source project to gain some traction. It is why MeeGo is currently the best hope, because it at least is getting support from some big guns.
 

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