I've installed mer on my nit, and thus far have no idea exactly what it is supposed to be doing (yes, i have searched the forums and read everything on the wiki) and aside from not having a side panel, I cant get much else going on with it. while lots of people like pointing out they have it installed/screenshots what exactly is as a result of mer? is it a base layer on which I can add/run another wm/os? i dont see any progs for it specifically, so what exactly is it supposed to do?

Mer is a platform under heavy development. In time, it will become the upgrade path from OS2008 on existing tablets. It's still a bit early for that though.

Mer can already run some of the same programs that you may use in Diablo. Again, in time, this number will grow. Mer can also run many Ubuntu programs, though the screen size of the tablets may not let those applications be terribly usable. Additionally, as Mer will be bringing as many Fremantle technologies as possible to existing tablets, Mer will eventually be able run some Maemo 5 apps.

In short, Mer isn't really ready for end-users yet, but will likely be the next everyday-use OS for your tablet--eventually.

Can we have a rule on this forum that if somebody asks what they can do with Mer, and someone answers that it can run many of the apps that run under Diablo, that that person also state how they go about installing Diablo apps and what the issues are likely to be?

Mer would get a far greater run if everyone who tried it didn't give up after going to application manager after seeing so few apps to install in the only way that general maemo users are used to.

Yes, this should be in the wiki, I know. But it isn't. And I have installed a bunch of mer installs and even tried some ubuntu apps and I still don't know the answer to this.

The real power of Mer is having the whole Ubuntu repository available to you. If you enable Red-Pill mode and Show All Applications, you will see what that means. But it slows down the Application Manager immensely.

That may be the real power for some, but I think the vast majority of people will want to first do what they can currently do under maemo.

Or at least understand what maemo things are available and what aren't. I think encouraging people to install non-hildon gtk apps that aren't in any way optimised for the mer window manager is just going to leave people with a bad experience and not understand what the benefits of mer are - or will be.

Unless of course that non-hildon apps are the only things available, then set the expectation so that people work within the limitations, understanding that the platform is in development.

My cycle is this: install mer, boot into it, look in application manager, try a couple of ubuntu apps, get frustrated, read the boards and see positive messages and people using mer as their primary platform, not understanding how this can be, booting back into maemo and waiting for the next sprint to complete. Repeat.

Some things to notice:
* Mer isn't Diablo, it uses Fremantle APIs, hence, many applications will break
* Many Maemo packages suffer from Scratchboxisms (Reliance on being built in Scratchbox - such as symlinks to Scratchbox conf tools) and Maemo-isms (/home/user assumption instead of just using $HOME).

We're hoping to work with maemian to weed those problems out, so you can practically recompile a Fremantle extras application for Mer.

It will be so until Mer is ready for day-to-day use on n8x0 .

And N800 I hope

And please, please, please, the 770...

Mark

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