Sorry but it's not at all like Linux distros. With Linux distros losing support is not at all such a big issue because everybody always has the right to upgrade to the next version, no cash required.

With Linux distros you can still today probably load the latest release of pretty much any one of them on a computer that has a Pentium processor. Some go even further than that...

Still, I guess this upgrade policy Nokia seems to have is a result of being stuck in the era where phones weren't really yet upgradeable and didn't resemble "real" computers. They need to wake up.

I wish Maemo really was more like a Linux distro, that way we'd have no worries about getting the latest. Maybe we won't now either if Mer develops well but who knows...