Thus the power of open source support.

Just because the device gets 'dropped', it doesn't magically stop working, nor does your warranty evaporate. True, they may cease support for the device, but that's what the OSS community is for.

Heck, Dell dropped one of my older PC models years ago, but I have no trouble keeping it humming along with the latest releases of Fedora etc.

I understand your apprehension, but this modern collaboration between hardware mfers and the OSS world is an entirely different beast - you have vastly more support than you realize

I don't think it's very meaningful to determine computer/not computer based on individual technologies. You can't even get everyone to agree on the best window manager or text editor. I'd propose we call devices that can run existing desktop apps mobile computers and devices that can't smartphones. That's a nice and clean line, and shouldn't cause too much controversy.

In practice that means it needs to use X11, a normal filesystem layout, and satisfy the usual dependencies. The N900 qualifies, the others do not. A Linux kernel alone does not make Android or WebOS a "Linux" operating system distribution, and the iPhone's approach is a complete joke. Nokia is the only one that gets it.

Despite the fact I never owned a Nxx tablet and never used Linux, I do know phones, computers, consoles and all kinds of electronics. And, to me, as an user of Windows (never had the need to use a different OS), Linux seemed as something just for programmers and geeks, something even more "boring" than Mac OS/X. Now, the first time i heard about the N900 and read that it runs Linux, i thought at first: "Hm, the thing looks great, has great hardware, but Linux? And what the hell is this Maemo? Where is my Symbian?". That's probably what the majority of people, who never heard about a Nxx device, thought and will think, at first. After watching videos though, how the N900 works, I started to like it, alot, putting aside the fact its OS is based off Linux. Today, I don't care about this factor. My point is, when people play with the device and get to know afterwords it's Linux, they'll go like: "This is Linux? It's very cool! How is it like on PC? Is it this cool too? Great device.", thus braking the barrier between an average PC user and a geek, looking at Linux as an OS differently, becoming less remote for a non-geek to grasp and enjoy. In this sense i think the N900 does a great job, much better than the previous tablets. And this is just the OS. After this step of observing, people will get even more curious, because the UI is done in a very user-friendly way, thus making the device easier to use, something like the iPhone. Sure, some folks will still find the thing complicated, i did to, but reading the manual for more complicated tasks, which are fairly easy but can be harder to find, can't be that complicated, right? Everyone can still use the phone out of the box to do ordinary stuff, just like with a normal phone. If you look how much the tablet has changed (how it looks, the OS/UI, hardware), it definately is a step closer to becoming mainstream and i am convinced it will, as long as people see commercials for it over the place (because what studying marketing has taught me: you can have a brilliant product, but if you won't put up any commercials and some propaganda to it, eventhough your neighbours product is zillion times worse, thanks to all the marketing campaigns his device will sell better. - because commercials are mind control and the more you focus on them, the more minds you can control eventhough your product is complete crap).

I'm a user. I consider Linux a distribution. I know there is a Linux kernel and below that there is a CPU instruction set. When I programmed, I could read the machine language in a core dump. Now I don't program and I don't care what is under the UI.

Maemo is normally described as a modified version of the Debian Linux distribution The modifications are a result of paring it down to mobile device size. To go back to the OP's terms, a real freaking computer doesn't need it pared down.

I also understand that there are those who have installed the full Debian on NITs which would allow you to install apps such as Firefox and OpenOffice. However I would question the usability of the device it you tried it.

There's nothing wrong with not being a full-fledged computer. The N900 is, by all accounts, a very impressive piece of hardware. But it is not anywhere near as powerful as my OQO 02 which fits in my shirt pocket and runs Windows Vista along with Firefox, OpenOffice, and anything else I want to throw at it. OTOH, my OQO weighs twice as much, has a fraction of the battery life, and didn't sell enough to keep the company in business.

I'm sure you're aware that Linux is the kernel, whereas the ecosystem is the distribution (hence Gnu/Linux). I think the point you're missing is that (in contrast to other phone OSes) Maemo is pretty much the only full OS on a phone-sized, phone capable device. Adapting software for a small screen doesn't really change that, it just makes for a better UI. Maemo has all the services and capabilities a full "desktop" OS has.

Linux isn't a lump of clay that needs to be whittled down to fit in a smaller case. Firstly, when targeting any new hardware platform (ARM, x86, x64, SPARC etc) you need to write a new abstraction layer to present a unified interface to higher system services. You need to have a compiler capable of producing a native executable. A large portion of retargeting the OS will thankfully be accomplished by recompilation.

None of this is 'paring down' anything. Maemo is no less of a linux than the RedHat driving my dual quad-core xeon dev machine. One machine is vastly more powerful than the other, and has greater storage capacity, sure...but this is the only sense in which one device is inferior to the other - at the hardware level.

Right now there is a dearth of apps for the N900, but this is remedied in good time, given a demand. The physical limitations of the N900 (memory, bandwidth, screen size) will present challenges for developers, but this has little to do with linux per se.

(Emphasis mine)

Promise? Pretty promise with a cherry on? Cos that's a lot of money to spend on apps that might not be forthcoming.

I find the "its not a REAL computer" argument quite amusing.

It seems like some people are trying to say "If it doesn't run on x86 instructions, its not a computer" which is plain silly. Were the old Macs not a computer then?

Just because you cannot run Windows on it doesn't make it inferior. The point is, Linux can run on a wider variety of architectures (old and new) because its so modular. You start with the kernel then add only the bits you need. How anyone can see that as inferior to Windows which needs stupid CPU power and RAM requirements these days, is beyond me.

They have...

I think you will find that some of the most vocal opponents to your supposition have either already received a N900 or expect to receive one shortly for free or at a reduced "developer" discount.

I am of the "build it and they will come" school of thought. I was attracted by the hardware and paid full price for a new N800 and market price for a used N810. I have had no regrets with regard to the hardware I purchased.

I too was disappointed in the past developer discount programs in that they did not appear to reap much benefit for the average user. Early on I tried to convince some of these "developers" that a small change in the input method used for the DUN dial up string would give 17 million subscribers in the US and perhaps Canada, Mexico, and parts of South America the ability to connect to their network via Bluetooth for free!
In the end though I had to join maemo.org and then Bugzilla in order to report and track this bug. It took 11 months to implement and by then most of the market I envisioned moved on.

Later when I read that only 163 (or some such) votes were recorded in the first council elections I realized that almost 20% of the 200 who received discounted devices hadn't even bothered to vote. (That btw, is assuming all voters received a discounted device. If some hadn't, the % would be even greater )

So... using that information I would have to agree with you. I would have much rather the initial cost of the device be reduced to all, instead of an MSRP that reflects the cost of the developer device program...

That is until I looked at the home screen of my devices and saw OMWeather, Personal Menu, and Personal Launcher, CairoClock along with launcher icons for other programs like Maemo Mapper. I remembered that my total cost of ownership for these devices has been just my original purchase price.


If only one of these^ programs benefitted from the developer program… any added cost I may have paid for my device to provide for the developer program, would then be well worth it.

When I look back at the Internet Tablet Ownership Poll that you posted back in February of 2007 (pro’ly the first poll I voted in, on this site.) I was shocked to see that almost 43% of the respondents owned a N800 and had never owned a 770...

If history for you repeats itself, after a short while at least 40% of these forums members will own an N900 without any previous NIT experience.

If history for me repeats itself, after a long while a good many of these new members will not have had to buy another thing in order to enjoy the benefits of their N900.

If anything mission-critical is missing from the currently available software, don't buy the device. Playing the waiting game for linux apps is going to be an exercise in frustration.

What is it you need that's not around, though? I browsed through the entire "Downloads" tab here yesterday and was blown away by the selection. It's thin in certain areas (reflecting the linux and gadget nerd heredity), but not by any means limited.