Nokia kicks FOSS to the Curb

If you have been by my blog here before then you might know I really like my Nokia N900. It is one of the most flexible, powerful, open source friendly devices on the market. I bought mine and carry it with pride everyday (because I am an FOSS advocate). When Nokia announced they where merging Maemo into the MeeGo project I openly voiced my support. With a corporate backer like Nokia, Meego was sure to quickly become a forerunner in mobile technology.

Today Nokia revoked that backing.

In one swift move Nokia brought Meego from a potential revolutionary piece of technology to being simply the red headed step child of mobile operating systems. To quote Nokia:

"MeeGo will place increased emphasis on longer-term market exploration of next-generation devices."

I believe this is a kindly worded death sentence for the platform - not many developers are interested in writing software for a "longer-term market exploration" operating system. Long term means less profits, less profits means less applications, less applications means less users... It is a vicious path they have started down. One that eventually leads to the discontinuation of a short lived operating system.

What is the cause of this back seating of Meego? Nokia announced today that they struck a deal with Microsoft that will make Windows Mobile 7 the operating system on a majority of their handsets in the future. It seems some of the doubts I had when Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft employee, took over Nokia where correct. Windows Mobile 7 on Nokia devices means they will be just as restrictive as other propitiatory devices such as Apple's iPhone and RIM's Blackberry. Restricted technologies are not the way of the future and Android's explosive growth is proof of this.

I am not just blowing smoke here, lots of people are upset by this. Including many Nokia employees. In fact Geek.com estimates that close to 1,000 Nokia employees staged a walkout today, opting to use their flex-pay days to take the day off work. Consumers also appear to be taking note of this exchange as well and are responding in a similar manner. Nokia's stock dumped nearly twelve percentage points today:


Speak with your wallet folks, the N900 will be my last Nokia product unless the company does (another) serious 180 some time soon.

The biggest joke at the end of all this? We don't even have a set release date for Nokia Win7 devices (and if Nokia's stock continues to dump at this rate we may never see one). Odds are we will not see them till next year, if not later. Remember Meego handsets where first predicted to release Q4 of 2010, which turned into Q1 of 2011, which has now turned into "some time this year".

What is your take on all of this, is Nokia shooting themselves in the foot with this union or could is possibly yield something good?

~Jeff Hoogland

Why this Linux Fan roots for MeeGo - not Android

Some people will tell you fragmentation is one of the main things that is holding back Linux from desktop adoption. Not having a unified name, packaging system, or heck even desktop environment often confuses new users and puts them into overload - Too much choice can be a bad thing.

Android is currently the only real player in the Linux mobile market. Now don't get me wrong, I am glad Android jumped in record time to right near the top of the smart phone market. I'm also glad that through this success it has put the power of Linux into the hands of millions of people (many of whom are none the wiser about their penguin powered device).

If Android is doing so well, one might ask - why does there need to be another Linux variation present in the mobile market? For starters, just as too much fragmentation is a bad thing having only one choice I feel is equally as bad. MeeGo will provide an alternate mobile platform that is Linux based for those of us who prefer something different to Android. There are a few reasons I personally prefer what MeeGo is to become instead of what Android is today.

First, MeeGo is backed by the Linux Foundation - a non-profit organization. Google has a lot of fantastic free services (heck this blog is even hosted on one of them), but the goal of these services as many of us all know is data mining (plus Google is about as far from a non-profit as you can get). I'd much prefer an operating system running on my device that is by people, for people. Not by people, for data mining.

MeeGo is going to have a real package management system. It is RPM based, but still it is better than simply having a "market place". The applications that are to be installed via this package management system are also to be written and compiled the same other native Linux applications are - using any language that is supported by the operating system. Instead of using a java layer like Android does.

Lastly, because MeeGo is backed by the Linux Foundation I'd bet most anything that they won't be forking the kernel like Google has done with Android. Having a mainstream kernel running in MeeGo will help ensure that other distros with a mainstream kernel will also be able to run on the same hardware with the least amount of issues possible.

Now I am sure the MeeGo hand held project is going to change and mature a lot over the next few months before we see it officially released into the market, but I'd be willing to bet that most all of these changes are going to be for the better and will only add to my above list. Do you think MeeGo is going to be able to compete with Android getting into the market this late?

Also, in case you noticed it - yes the horrible pun in the title is intentional.

~Jeff Hoogland

Netbook MeeGo a NoGo - Review

Now I am all for trying new distros and netbooks are a place where I feel Linux truly outshines all other operating systems, so when a new netbook focused distro comes to maturity I always like to take it for a test drive. MeeGo, the joint operating system between Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin, has been getting alot of hype recently in the Linux community and the world at large. I can understand why, personally I was very excited when MeeGo was first announced. Nokia and Intel are both very large names that bring substantial financial backing to the table, beyond this they are also allowing the Linux Foundation to manage the MeeGo project.

After having used the 1.0 release of MeeGo that is targeted for netbook devices I really must say: I'm really not impressed.

Late last year I did a review of Intel's Moblin Linux 2.0 and this MeeGo 1.0 release is so similar to Moblin that is really doesn't even feel like a different distro. Don't believe me? Well lets start with the interface, this first screen shot is Moblin 2.0:

This second screen shot is MeeGo 1.0:


See what I mean? Now don't get me wrong, I don't think MeeGo is a poor distro - in fact all the positive things I said about Moblin also still apply here. The only issue is most of the negative things also still apply.

Software:
MeeGo fails to ship with an Office Suite still and the software selection from their package manager is still decently limited. Two things that are improvements in MeeGo are the default webrowser and media player. For all your media needs Banshee is at your service. Banshee is a full featured, matured, media player with plenty of features that should keep most all users happy. In terms of webrowsing, MeeGo ships two different .img files - the first uses the open source Chromium as the stock browser, the second requires you to agree to an EULA as it uses Google's Chrome browser.

Customization:
Another nice addition is the ability to customize the top bar where you switch between your different applications and zones. A piece of customization that is still lacking however is the ability to change which messaging client is integrated with the operating system (empathy is alright, but I am a die hard pidgin user and prefer to use it whenever possible).

Socialization:
MeeGo still integrates well with twitter (just as Moblin did), but unlike the latest Ubuntu release (which has Gwibber), MeeGo still lacks Facebook integration. As I mentioned above empathy is still the default messaging client and it does support facebook chat by default.

Issues:
The only real issue I had with MeeGo was the fact that it's network manager was unable to connect to my WPA encrypted network. It did connect to un-encrypted and WEP encrypted networks without a hitch though.

Usage:
The MeeGo desktop, just like the Moblin desktop, is snappy and responsive (just as much as lightweight desktop environments such as LXDE or E17). The operating system boots slightly faster than Ubuntu 10.04 does on my hardware (7 seconds versus 9 seconds). Over all MeeGo makes for a great "webrowsing" operating system, but for anything beyond this I would recommend something else.

Final Thoughts:
One of the reasons I was so excited about MeeGo was because it was the merging of Moblin with Maemo. I have been using Maemo on my N900 for over six months and I must say, I can't find a trace of Maemo anywhere in the MeeGo 1.0 release. Now, perhaps there is some of the Maemo core hiding behind the scenes in the MeeGo code, but personally I am just hoping Moblin did not simply swallow up Maemo.

Honestly while I am hopping the MeeGo project takes off (especially as a competitor to Android), at the same time I have to wonder what this could do to the public opinion of what Linux is. I say this because the way MeeGo is designed it does not feel like a full blown operating system as distros like Ubuntu or Fedora do (or Windows does). I would hate to see the general opinion of Linux become the idea that the operating system is limited to netbooks and hand held devices and not for "real" work/computers.

~Jeff Hoogland