I think this is one of those dividing lines within the Maemo community.

To illustrate that (and the other side of the spectrum from what you're talking about)... I'm going to get on a soap box for a few paragraphs, and then after that I'll come back to trying to be more objective.

I, for one, find the current look of Moblin to be incredibly wrong for a pocketable device. While I do want a Unix _based_ device in my pocketable, and strongly prefer one that gives me access to the command line, and basically supports X based applications ... that's a very different desire than "I want a full-blown (ie. crappy) linux desktop in my pocket".

I say crappy because the vast majority linux desktops are just that, crap, when it comes to usability. Ubuntu is _barely_ usable (and I specifically mean usable, not useful; all linux environments I've been exposed to are _useful_, but almost none of them are _usable_). What I've used from KDE was absolute crap (visually ok, but trying to actually do track down this and that setting, set up different things, etc. -- crap). The ONLY linux GUI I've ever used that has usability factor that I'd consider to be really complete and well done ... is Maemo.

With a desktop, I can tolerate more in usability deficiencies than I can in a pocketable. The pocketable has less screen real estate, and therefore it must use it more effectively/efficiently/ergonomically. That means its usability must be higher than the usability of a given desktop interface. I can easily work with Ubuntu's GNOME environment on my desktop, or even on a netbook. There's no way in h*ll I want to use Ubuntu on my pocketable, and there's no other desktop linux environment I've seen that would better fill that role.

I want a user interface that has been designed to work well on a pocketable. I do not want some desktop user interface crammed down into a 4" screen. It's not just about finger vs stylus ... even if we're talking about a stylus driven interface, I still wont want to use a desktop UI on my pocketable. That would be an abomination.

(end of soap box)


So... back that dividing line I was referring to... there seems to me to be these two extremes for UI in the Maemo community (another axis of preference) ... those who want "a desktop Linux environment in my pocket", and those who want a "pocket optimized Linux environment in my pocket".

The current Moblin, and "KDE on the NIT" both seem to be well grounded into the former group. Android is definitely in the latter group. If we generalize to Unix and not just Linux, the iPhone and iPod Touch are also very definitely in the latter group.

Chinook and Diablo were somewhere in the middle... and it sounds to me like Maemo 5 will be somewhere between Chinook/Diablo and Android. It will still be X based, AFAIK (so you should still be able to port X apps to it, etc.), and I assume it will still give you a terminal into the Linux layer ... so it wont be as extremely "pocket/finger optimized, and damn everything else" as Android and the iPhone. But, it wont be as garish as running a full blown Linux desktop on a 4" or 3.5" screen, either.

To me, that's a good thing. It gives you the capabilities of a Unix environment, but in a manner that is optimized for the actual device in question... but with enough flexibility to be used in a more general manner.


So... what major dividing lines do we have so far?

3.5" screen is acceptable vs 4"+ screen is required
physical keyboard vs virtual keyboard only
convergence device vs specialized device (3G or not 3G, separate phone or not)
finger vs stylus
pocket optimized GUI vs full desktop GUI
dpad placement (on the face vs on the keyboard vs none at all) (allnameswereout reminded me of this one)

... any others? And, I expect that few are actually at the extremes of either of those spectra, and are instead closer to the middle of each one (but still on one side or the other of the center). For example... I'm not that opinionated about the screen size, or finger vs stylus ... I have an opinion, but I'm not in the extremes of opinion about those two arguments.