Agreed, in principle.

If what you are deveoping fails, and it's far from callin it one way or another, it's good to have alternatives. It's understandable that the alternative is less that desirable.

That was my point, it's not persistent. It's not persistently bad, for one, and it's persistently good for anyone who understands the release cycle and does their homework.

a) I believe the reson people try to make something of what they have is partly because they already bought the device and because RIGHT NOW there is no real alternative to N900. But some are getting close.

b) You can't really belive I'd imply idiocy on behalf of a single choice. What I'm implying is that many people here exhibit loyalty. Loyalty is good and I actually understood it when Maemo had a future. Now, not so much. What I said is that while a good idea and a noble enterprise, I am not loyal enough to Maemo/MeeGo/Linux to not switch if the grass is greener. Also, open source is not incompatible with closed OSs in MS class. My Firefox browses my Apache just fine, getting its Postgres data over OpenSSH. There is nothing W7 is keeping me from.

I was referring to Nokia's software and Maemo.

Oh come now. I never bought a PC, ever. Nor did anything come preloaded. What I ment was, of course, the percentages we see now. That is, Windows might still have a good future, with Linux behind it and iOS last unless they get a clue (say what you will they ARE improving. Not for me, though.)

But then you don't know what you refuse, now do you? Do you think that someone that used KDE for 20 minutes has any idea about Linux, OSS or administration?

And, WM7 does break compatibility because of a redesign.

Said it before, linked it, nobody cares. WM7 is multitasking just fine. They have imposed limits on what apps can be muktitasked by default because WM7 is BETA. Until they can be assured that multitasking goes smooth, it's locked down. It's a temporary issue, not a design choice.

Plus, even if a pertnership is signed, by the time the true devices roll it will be way out of beta. Might even be not 7.0

a) W7 no longer has all that baggage, some has been moved, some has been improved. Others have been completely emulated, thus removing it from the current build.

b) Complicated, yes. Nobody understands, no. Windows backwards compatibility layer, in a large percentage, consists of mechanisms very similar to chroot. Far, far from incomprehensible. Another par of it, the solution to app dll hell is flat storage based on version numbers, much like dependencies on Linux have the build bumber in them. It's really quite clean. Except you don't manually chroot every time, it's partly automated.

But, familiar will always beat the unfamiliar and simply renaming a tried and true mechanism will generate resistance. Add an MS logo and it's downright evil.

Windows is really very similar to Linux, if you take the time to learn the ropes. Newer server version can be administered entirely over CLI and SSH. What more do you want, a penguin?

No, but seriously, few of the issues I see here actually exist. There's still GIMP, OOO, FFx, CLI, SSH, C, mplayer and what not. You can even boot it in CLI mode for old times sake. All well known tools have been long since been ported. wc, awk, grep, ls, I use them for years. Come to the dark side. We have cookies.