The thing is ... "full internet" has nothing to do with "full OS". Assuming apps get ported to the device (which is a valid qualifier even if it's a full "non-neutered" Linux install), anything that has a full IP stack, and isn't heavily proxied/firewalled/filtered by the provider, is a "full internet" device. Even Symbian, WinCE/WinMo, and Android.

What marketing-droids typically mean by "full internet" is the device has a web browser that's not a watered down "Mobile only" WAP browser ... support for pages and web applications implemented with java, javascript / ajax, and/or flash. That's really more "full web experience" than "full internet" ... but try teaching a marketing-droid distinctions like that ;-)

That has nothing to do with mobile vs desktop. That has to do with idiot web designer vs non-idiot web designer. The ones who are designing their web pages around specific resolutions ought to be given a shovel and directed to the careers they're best suited for ("sanitation engineer" and/or "ditch digger"). Those are the category of web designer that ruined the web (them, and the ones who design web pages for a specific set of browsers, and no others; though, typically these two groups of miscreants heavily overlap).

Admittedly there are minimum and maximum scaling possibilities for a given set of screen widgets, but they have no business telling me what my browser size should be -- they should be fitting their page into my browser, no matter what size I have it set for, and asking me politely to change my browser size when I'm a less than their minimum.

(few things annoy me more quickly, in browsing the web, than a web page that resizes my browser, and a web browser that doesn't allow me to turn that off)

I think this is one of those dividing lines within the Maemo community.

To illustrate that (and the other side of the spectrum from what you're talking about)... I'm going to get on a soap box for a few paragraphs, and then after that I'll come back to trying to be more objective.

I, for one, find the current look of Moblin to be incredibly wrong for a pocketable device. While I do want a Unix _based_ device in my pocketable, and strongly prefer one that gives me access to the command line, and basically supports X based applications ... that's a very different desire than "I want a full-blown (ie. crappy) linux desktop in my pocket".

I say crappy because the vast majority linux desktops are just that, crap, when it comes to usability. Ubuntu is _barely_ usable (and I specifically mean usable, not useful; all linux environments I've been exposed to are _useful_, but almost none of them are _usable_). What I've used from KDE was absolute crap (visually ok, but trying to actually do track down this and that setting, set up different things, etc. -- crap). The ONLY linux GUI I've ever used that has usability factor that I'd consider to be really complete and well done ... is Maemo.

With a desktop, I can tolerate more in usability deficiencies than I can in a pocketable. The pocketable has less screen real estate, and therefore it must use it more effectively/efficiently/ergonomically. That means its usability must be higher than the usability of a given desktop interface. I can easily work with Ubuntu's GNOME environment on my desktop, or even on a netbook. There's no way in h*ll I want to use Ubuntu on my pocketable, and there's no other desktop linux environment I've seen that would better fill that role.

I want a user interface that has been designed to work well on a pocketable. I do not want some desktop user interface crammed down into a 4" screen. It's not just about finger vs stylus ... even if we're talking about a stylus driven interface, I still wont want to use a desktop UI on my pocketable. That would be an abomination.

(end of soap box)


So... back that dividing line I was referring to... there seems to me to be these two extremes for UI in the Maemo community (another axis of preference) ... those who want "a desktop Linux environment in my pocket", and those who want a "pocket optimized Linux environment in my pocket".

The current Moblin, and "KDE on the NIT" both seem to be well grounded into the former group. Android is definitely in the latter group. If we generalize to Unix and not just Linux, the iPhone and iPod Touch are also very definitely in the latter group.

Chinook and Diablo were somewhere in the middle... and it sounds to me like Maemo 5 will be somewhere between Chinook/Diablo and Android. It will still be X based, AFAIK (so you should still be able to port X apps to it, etc.), and I assume it will still give you a terminal into the Linux layer ... so it wont be as extremely "pocket/finger optimized, and damn everything else" as Android and the iPhone. But, it wont be as garish as running a full blown Linux desktop on a 4" or 3.5" screen, either.

To me, that's a good thing. It gives you the capabilities of a Unix environment, but in a manner that is optimized for the actual device in question... but with enough flexibility to be used in a more general manner.


So... what major dividing lines do we have so far?

3.5" screen is acceptable vs 4"+ screen is required
physical keyboard vs virtual keyboard only
convergence device vs specialized device (3G or not 3G, separate phone or not)
finger vs stylus
pocket optimized GUI vs full desktop GUI
dpad placement (on the face vs on the keyboard vs none at all) (allnameswereout reminded me of this one)

... any others? And, I expect that few are actually at the extremes of either of those spectra, and are instead closer to the middle of each one (but still on one side or the other of the center). For example... I'm not that opinionated about the screen size, or finger vs stylus ... I have an opinion, but I'm not in the extremes of opinion about those two arguments.

Those who want "a desktop Linux environment in their pocket" are served with Hildon. If that is not good enough they're free to install other firmware or install KDE or GNOME or whatever on their device. The freedom to do so they have however it will not ship with that by default. It is embedded platform (Hildon, ARM, ...) for a reason.

I want 1) pocket/embedded optimized Linux environment in my pocket, 2) a useful terminal 24/7 usable 3) and then I will think of desktop environment; in the form of remote desktop no less. I believe the latter is very difficult to accomplish on a mobile device, but I've used netbooks for this purpose with little difficulty. So logically it has less priority than #1 or #2. #2 requires certain hardware features or combinations thereof. For example, a good virtual keyboard might be good enough for some. But none I tried does it for me. As for #3, if you 24/7 connectivity, you do not need an X environment to run X software remotely. So if you had such a remote desktop client on Android you'd be set, although it'd have to translate X protocol to whatever Android is running.

Convergence device vs specialized device can have many more examples. It seems the N800 form factor is rather feature poor (but also much cheaper sold). So while it could be a multimedia player (audio, video) it wouldn't be a GPS with navigation system or digital camera or accelerometer able to be used with gaming. The number of (micro)SD slots versus internal flash is also something on which community is divided. Type of screen is also partly related to finger/stylus but you could also think of glossy vs greasy. Oh, and d-pad or even the place of the d-pad is also a hot item.

re: Remote Desktop: I had that on my N8x0, via the VNC Viewer. It was sort of a novelty on a pocketable, but sometimes convenient. One of the things I sometimes try to get working on my android phone is the android VNC viewer ... but it doesn't completely work with both ConnectBot(SSH) and VNC Passwords. But, yes, VNC has been ported to Android.

Now, for a netbook, a VNC viewer is a MUST HAVE. And, my netbook and my Samsung Tablet both have it setup and working :-)