I was never a fan of the Linux operating system, until my MIS professor finally made all of us install it on our laptops. I was amazed at the speed of the OS on my laptop.

Anyways, there are several modifications of Linux. Ubuntu, Fedora, and some other companies have their own version of the Linux OS, since it is open source.

I was wondering if, Nokia could make the Maemo 5 operating system Open Source too, so that we can start developing our own modified versions of the Maemo 5 operating system for the Nokia N900. (Maybe one with portrait mode too)

Parts of Maemo are open source, and can be found at maemo.gitorious.org (off the top of my head). However, for whatever legal reasons, not all of Maemo is open source. Parts from Nokia are still closed, and drivers for things like video can't be opened by Nokia.

If you are interested in something more open than Maemo, you may want to look at MeeGo (http://www.meego.com) which has no closed source bits in its stack, unlike Maemo.

Thanks, ill take a look!

if meego is completely open source and meego runs on n900 then the mentioned video drivers etc are open source too aren't they? Then why can't the maemo video drivers be open source?

MeeGo is open, however, for it to run on the N900, some blobs HAVE to exist, such as the video driver and bme, but iirc, those are the only 2 closed blobs.

some firmwares, like for the GSM modem, are also closed ('cause of some lame law that punishes toolmakers for what use random people give to the tools)

I think it's worth noting that Maemo is pretty much entirely open source, with the exception of the aforementioned blobs, and is itself an offshoot of Debian Linux, and remains pretty awesome. I could remix it myself, if I had any clue how.

The great thing about Maemo 5 is that, while it -is- open source and you -can- modify and recompile stuff, you usually don't have to. Thanks to the fully functional Xterm - and full Linux stack - you can usually write simple apps or scripts that will change settings, modify behavior, and implement extra functionality -without- having to mess with C++.

So, while those who are experianced can go in and modify things, the rest of us can usually take those modifications, string them together with shell-scripts and Python, and have something that works... WITHOUT all the low-level knowledge and time spent.

You had a better time than me, Linux refused to boot my laptop with the power supply plugged in initially on.

I really don't get the speed comparison thing though, I see it a lot "omg, I installed linux and it is so fast" ... unless you had an infested, startup trash happy Windows install I never see a difference.

Linux is lovely but it is a time consuming system to get running and polished. I work supporting linux servers and they can be just as much of a pain as Windows machines... with the exception that restarting them generally fixes nothing, its always more serious.

Rebooting on a Windows machine doesn't "fix" anything it just resets the random time to the next reboot. At least with Linux you have a chance of finding the cause of the problem instead rebooting with your fingers crossed, touching wood, praying to the patron saint of computing.