I finally managed to load Meego on to a microsd card.
Observations so far:
1. Using the n900 in mass storage mode to dd to mmc doesn't work. uboot doesn't recognize the mmc as having a valid boot partition - and therefore always boots into Maemo. I finally used the mmc in a card reader and dd to it, at least it booted.
2. The image I used *may* have fs errors. The boot process stalled for a loooong time and eventually told me that it was being remounted ro. I thought that the inbuilt fsck would do the job, but it didn't (at least for the 3 hours I kept waiting). So I had remove mmc, stick into my card reader and fsck -f it on my laptop. After fixing fs errors, it booted Meego.

The UI was up and running VERY quickly.
Apps on the other hand are taking forever to load.
Auto-rotation was _sweeet_ !!
It recognized my telco. I didn't have a chance to try out the phone functionality.
It was not very clear how to shut down the OS cleanly.
Just to be safe, I shutdown from xterm.

Of course by now my battery is dead, so I've booted into Maemo to recharge.

Edit: Also note that I tried at least 3 daily builds - all failed to boot. That's why I'm using the one recommended on the DE start page.

I've made a video of the alpha DE on my n900 running on a class 10 sd card. Check it here if interested. Ignore the audio unless you want to hear how I breath after eating chili con carne =D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeNCjErbx30

EDIT: Ignore the music......you-tube made an audio swap with some crappy song on it. I have tried to change it to something equally annnoying...

Thanks but... Where is the breathing? I only hear music

Originally Posted by m4r0v3r

tswindell is there anyway you can post instructions on how to convert the image to btrfs

INGREDIENTS:
-> At least 2GB blank microSD card.
-> mg-handset-armv7nhl-n900-de-acceptance-1.1.99.2.20110412.6.DE.2011-04-15.1-mmcblk0p.raw
-> A Linux system with btrfs-tools, e2fsprogs and parted/GParted

Ready?

[sdX1] Create the first partition (at least 1GB, unformatted)
[sdX2] Create a small linux-swap partition (2 MB is fine)
[sdX3] Create a 32 MB FAT32 partition.

Then run
Then run
Type in to switch the units to bytes.
Type in "print" to list down the partitions and offsets.
The first partition (MeeGo Root) should have an offset of 512B. Let's use that.

You should have the MeeGo DE on /srcmeegotmp.
then
Once that's done, you'll need to edit /etc/fstab.
and replace the first ext3 reference with btrfs, and add compress to mount options.

Unmount /meegotmp and /srcmeegotmp, then mount the vfat partition from the .raw (mount /dev/sdX3 /meegotmp, go back to parted, print, mount -t vfat -o ro,offset=??? /srcmeegotmp)

Unmount all partitions, sync disks, remove the microSD, and load the kernel with flasher.

awww man I just reflashed to a clean system lol. I don't want to really mess with it anymore, I'll just wait till the full thing is out and buy a new card.

Is it normal for the SD card not be readable in Maemo after you write the Meego image to it?
If so, is it possible to partiton the SD card and write the meego image to one partition of the SD card?

IE: I run a 16GB sd card so i could dedicate 5GB to Meego and the rest to Maemo.

BTW: Maemo acts really strange if i format my SD card to anything else but vfat, meaning the SD card does not work.

Thanks.

I managed to install the DE on my second 8Gb memory card and I must say I'm impressed.

I'm just a (high?)end-user so there isn't much for me to do in the DE, but I liked how the building blocks seem to have been almost entirely laid down. Now all we need is UIs and apps.

Bit unenthusiastic about Fennec, there's a reason I don't use it on Maemo. Tablet MeeGo has a great browser, so I was looking forward to that but... let's see how it goes. No use reviewing WIP software!

Yeah, it seems to me fennec is going to be the next Symbian OEM browser?

Will gtk be available on the DE? Any chance for ported gtk apps to work?

Finally, can Meego surfing web site by 3G????