My doubts vanished with the blog post on Meego.com and finally with this sentence.

IMHO, the keyword here is 'official'. So what I understand is (with 99.9% confidence):

1. MeeGo project will release official firmware images that are specific for N900 (so we will not need to hack a image by ourselves).
2. The images will support the N900 hardware fully, thanks to Nokia contributing hardware adaptation code components.
3. Users will be able to choose to stay with Maemo 5 or to flash MeeGo on their N900s.

This is very much like installing a Linux distribution on a PC with Windows preinstalled. The big difference is that, in this case, the hardware maker (Nokia) is directly involved, so full hardware compatibility should be granted from day one.

It remains to be seen whether this will happen already with Harmattan or with a later MeeGo release.

I think you are right.

Personally I think the desktop in general has become bloated and a little unfocused.

I think a lot of "heavy-weight" desktop systems can benefit from something like MeeGo.

Bill Gates has been saying this since the early nineties!

The desktop computer will be around for a good few years yet!
They are cheap, easy to upgrade and you get best "bang for buck" power-wise.
They may become less popular but I don't think desktop PCs are going anywhere soon.

I can see how this could be confusing so I'll try to clarify it a bit in hopefully understandable terms. (Disclaimer: Contains generalisation, simplification and cutting corners. If there are glaring mistakes, feel free to correct.)

1. There is Nokia Maemo 5 / Fremantle now. The next release would have been Nokia Maemo 6 / Harmattan. Now, it is called Meego / Harmattan instead, but it's still the same Harmattan that it was going to be. This would be way clearer if they didn't rebrand it as MeeGo yet, but they wanted to get the marketing behind that brand already. You can think of Harmattan as half MeeGo. The next release after Harmattan will be Nokia's first full MeeGo.

2. You need to understand the layers, which together form an operating system. It may be difficult if you come from Windows/OS X world because they both only have one user interface. UI and applications, however are only the top of the OS pyramid. Underneath them there are a lot of stuff that actually make it all tick. That's what Meego is about, providing a common base for user interfaces and applications to be built on. When you think of Meego in general, think of everything you as an end user don't see.

3. What you actually see, the UI, applications, services etc. can and will vary depending on who made the Meego device. LG's UI may look totally different from Nokia UI. You'll only see Ovi applications and services on Nokia devices. These manufacturer specific applications on top of Meego won't necessarily be open source either. But the base on which they are built on is the same.

If you keep all this in mind, the discussion hopefully makes a bit more sense.

If I was Nokia, I would definitely want the Meego fully working on the currently released Nokia hardware to showcase what Meego can do. That current hardware would be the N900 of course. =)

6 months into the future prediction, a ton of threads along the lines of: -

"OMG!! I've installed Meego on my N900 and there are no usable apps on it!!!!!!! WTF is Nokia doing!!!!!"

<sigh>

MeeGo is an Operating System that might well run on the N900 hardware.

But what you bought with the N900 is a somewhat different Operating System PLUS about two dozen quite critical applications for it's usability (Browser, Media Player, Calendar, Contacts, Photos, Contacts, Phone, Maps, Camera, E-Mail, Conversations to name the most important ones).

So even if MeeGo will run on the N900, you won't yet get these apps included, because they need to be ported from Maemo 5 (GTK) to MeeGo (QT) the new OS. So just MeeGo on the N900 will look like the Maemo 5 SDK alpha/beta did: You boot up and get one or two apps...

Therefore, the critical 2nd step would be to know if Nokia's Applications for MeeGo will also support not only their next device, but also the N900 insofar the hardware or API is different. Or if there is enough information around that the community could build some of these apps. Or if they would even be open-sourced.

That's funny, I recently deleted a post that said something similar, but I went one step further and said I foresee the death of the CL.

The really scarey bit about this is that it is SO believeable! Hey ho! LOL

No need for that, GTK+ will be officially supported in MeeGo (as opposed to the original Maemo 6 plan). Note that porting Hildon apps may be slightly more complex but not a huge task.

As an example, there is work underway for Moblin support in modest and tinymail, so it will almost certainly run on MeeGo.

Check this out

http://meego.com/community/blogs/val...owards-day-one