I searched and found this thread.
It's too bad Nokia won't spend a little time to support the N810!

If people can port KDE, Mer, ... to the N810 and Nokia has found it was hard or no resources to port Maemo 5 then real shame on Nokia.

My 2c !

Actually, they've spent quite a bit of both time and money to support Maemo 5 on previous tablets. Where have these efforts gone? Into supporting Mer.

Aren't worth much if you don't have all of the facts.

Of course I don't have all the facts. But my common sense would say that Nokia has tried to avoid its responsibility to support the N810 by using Mer as a community support OS and not by Nokia.
Of course hardware configurations are different between the N900 and N800; but they were also between the N810 and N800. It was made by a marketing/profitable decision rather than technical one, I think.

My other 2c!

I'm naturally curious when I read things like 'quite a bit of both time and money'.

I'm pro-Mer and am looking forward to seeing what it will mature into. But my understanding was that the monetary support for Mer was;
- creating a p/t position for one person whose responsibilities is not focused on Mer,
- ?

Since you have a lot more insight into what Nokia's support includes I'd be interested if you could outline them. It intrgues me how a corporation would accomplish this and, in a way, how much they consider it's worth to spend on such an undertaking.

And even though 'time is money' I'm less interested in how potentially helpful Nokia has been in answering questions, etc - I'd consider that to roll up under customer support - unless, of course any f/t employee's salary who is a dedicated resource to this undertaking.
Thanks.

Unfortunately, again, this common sense doesn't have much to do with reality.

The N800 and N810 are basically the same piece of hardware at their core. For all practical purposes, there are no differences between them. Supporting the N800 basically came free when you supported the N810.

The differences between the N8x0 line and the N900, however, are more extreme than even those between the N800 and the 770.

Again, still not worth much. Facts are available in abundance here, so gut feelings aren't particularly useful.

Don't forget the long-view, the distmaster's job will make Mer easier to support (as it will hopefully reduce the number of idiosyncrasies that need working around) and, potentially, eventually eliminate the need for Mer as a separate distribution altogether.

To outline a few of the endeavors Nokia has undertaken to support both Mer and existing device owners:

• Open sourcing the N8x0 WiFi drivers. Nokia worked with ST-NXP to get them to release the specs for the STLC4550 and STLC4560 found in the N800 and N810. They also have a full-time developer working on developing the open source drivers.
• Open sourcing certain Nokia-owned proprietary components. Nokia has open sourced some of their in-house proprietary software for use in Mer.
• Relicensing existing Nokia-owned proprietary components for redistribution. Those components that haven't been opened have been relicensed so they can be redistributed.
• Working with TI and ImagTech to get PowerVR drivers released for the OMAP2. At the Summit, TI announced that that would be releasing PowerVR MBX drivers for the OMAP2 which will allow us to run Hildon Desktop from Maemo 5 on N8x0 devices.
• Sponsoring Mer developers to the Mozilla Maemo Danish Weekend. Nokia sponsored several Mer developers (some from overseas) to the Danish hackfest.
• Sponsoring Mer developers to the Maemo Summit. Nokia also sponsored most of the Mer developers to the Maemo Summit.

These are just some of the specific instances I can come up with from memory, there are others and this doesn't cover more generic stuff like infrastructure and development support. Nokia has definitely gotten behind Mer and it definitely wouldn't be where it is today without their efforts.

OK, one more piece of spam.

Nokia had a number of options to get Maemo 5 on older devices:

Provide a one-off unofficial hacker edition

Much like it did for the 770, this gives existing users access to (most) of the new software at the expense of continued support past one or two releases and stability. While it would provide an easy way to get Maemo 5 on your N8x0, it's essentially money down the drain after just a few updates of the officially supported platform. It does not help get older hardware supported in new kernels, it does not provide many updated core libraries for old devices and it does not provide longterm support. It is good press, however.

Provide an officially supported Maemo 5

This is what most people are clamoring for without understanding all of the issues involved. On the surface, this sounds like an appealing solution. Current owners get the new hotness, everybody's happy, right? Unfortunately it's not that simple.

Providing an officially supported backport (unlike an unofficial hacker edition) brings with it a whole slew of QA requirements that increase costs by several orders of magnitude. This presents a problem for Maemo Devices, because the Maemo platform is only just coming into its own as a part of Nokia's core portfolio and they simply do have the personell or the money to support an official backport (especially at a crucial time like this that will make or break the platform).

An official backport is simply too expensive to be an option.

Support a community project

This is the option that really shines, even though most people wont understand why. Supporting a project like Mer has the highest return on investment. You get long-term support for your existing hardware, you get (most) of your new software on old hardware and you get a sane distribution that may provide a model to keep your platform viable in the long term (even though Nokia may not realize this one yet ). Mer ends up benefitting the whole of the open source community and not just your device owners.

So, given that there's a limited amount of both money and personell to put towards fixing this problem and given that providing official support likely excedes the limits of both, you're left picking between a on-off hacker edition and a community-supported backport that may be able to provide support for your existing users for a much longer period of time, which would you choose?

GeneralAntilles, are there plans to support the wimax version of N810? I can't seem to find any information about Mer running on the N810-WiMax. Thanks for any info you can provide.

the ending of support seems bad indeed, but isnt it a really gud thing to put things in the hands of the community? The linux kernel is developed that way.

We added support either in 0.16 or beginning of 0.17 development. Not sure about WiMAX connectivity however.