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Given the idea (which is old) 'wouldn't it be nice to be able to find people who steal phones' - the idea of 'let's use all the sensors in the phone to do so' is what occurs to anyone with the tiniest modicum of a clue in under a second.
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/...
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Mar...
'What's working

        Geolocation info
        Network info
        Take screenshot
        List of running programs '
Are just a couple of the several year old things Ihappened to know of.

It has a resistive touchscreen. What's more they're saying they're going for resistive because it's "more accurate" than capacitive and capacitive would be a "step back."

Seems like you never used the N900 touchscreen - it not like the cheap resistive screens on low end phones, but a high quality one. It is just as usable as a capacitive screen for touch and can be used for *very precise* pointing. That's one of the reasons people have been using their N900s for drawing pictures and maps. Try to do that with a normal capacitive screen - it's like trying to draw in boxing gloves.

It has a resistive touchscreen. What's more they're saying they're going for resistive because it's "more accurate" than capacitive and capacitive would be a "step back."

Seems like you never used the N900 touchscreen - it not like the cheap resistive screens on low end phones, but a high quality one. It is just as usable as a capacitive screen for touch and can be used for *very precise* pointing. That's one of the reasons people have been using their N900s for drawing pictures and maps. Try to do that with a normal capacitive screen - it's like trying to draw in boxing gloves.

Seems the site was slashdotted, the price is around $1000 EU though from what I've read on http://talk.maemo.org/

By the way, this is not the first DIY mobile phone: here's a phone made out of Nokia N810 Internet Tablet: http://talk.maemo.org/showthre...

Yes, get a TAZ! :)

https://www.lulzbot.com/produc...

I've done a lot of things to make sure that the company stays free & open. Firstly, by making myself the final word (for now). Per our bylaws, I can only be removed from the company by court order. :)

The board of directors is me, Steven (long time employee, very much for free/open), and Bdale Garbee (very hardcore netgod of free software development). We will only have people on the board that are already 100% on board with free software. So we have another layer of protection there.

The non-libre folks that are very technically savvy that we have on board have influence in how things are done, but they don't have the final say. Though they are still on board with us running a libre company. Even if they earned their chops during the 80s (or earlier), they can see the huge growth in open systems. They just don't have direct experience in free software.

Then ultimately who gets to say what a company does is the owners. Most high tech high growth companies are angling to get bought out, get a lot of venture capital, and/or go public. This is usually the founders' "exit", where they get the pile of cash. When that happens, the company is likely to absorb the traditional non-libre practices of the parent company.

We are taking a different approach. If we can pull this all together, the idea is to convert Aleph Objects, Inc. into an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan). This means we don't have to be beholden to outsiders. It also allows the current owners an exit, in that they sell their stock to the ESOP. There are a lot of other advantages to ESOPs. The earliest we can decide whether to go for it or not would be December 2015, which we could make retroactive to January 2015. ESOPs are complicated.

I used to hack on the N900 too...
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jeb...

Ah, reminds me of my Nokia n900 with SMSCON . It's kind of strange that it took Android 5 years to catch up.

Nokia was still making well-designed phones with full keyboards up until fairly recently, with the last holdouts in their Asha line. The X2 was very low-end but a good design (rugged as heck but tragically low onboard memory, slow processor, low-resolution camera, & no WIFI/3G), despite lackluster stats. Usability, ruggedness, & things other than "can it play [latest ad-revenue/money-harvesting game]?" or "does it [make money for] google?" is what's key.

As nice as keyboard slider phones can be, I personally think the best design is the Blackberry-style full-QWERTY bar phone with a d-pad (& a screen which can have the touch-functionality switched on & off (capacitive touchscreens can be *too* sensitive)). NEC *tried* to make an Android phone meeting some of these specs, but I understand it fell far short of expectations. I had high hopes.

The new Blackberries, & the NEC Terrain, both have full QWERTY, but lacked any other meaningful inputs than the touchscreen, like the ever-useful d-pad, which is also lacking in the HTC ChaCha/Status. Nokia made the last good phone design with their E6 (or N950/E7), but that was underpowered & had numerous flaws. So I've (personally) settled on what I consider to be the least worst phone around still, a Nokia E73. I still see people with them out & about in the world, & it works quite well for me, as my primary mobile. I can do most anything on it that I need to: I can use various social media/internet functionalities (whatsapp (which is amazing how a major company designs their software to be accessible on most device platforms, not just iDevices & Android!), facebook, synctxt, okc, goodsearch - an enlightened alternative to google, twitter, etc.) & have access to an excellent email client, Citrix support, FM radio built-in (lucky me, I live near Good radio stations), & an amazing GPS. The camera's decent, too. Sure, it's carrier-locked (T-Mobile) but it has better stats than the E72, has built-in WIFI calling & has better data/radio frequencies. It has an older processor & low ram, but I have a 64gb microSD card & if I offload messages semi-regularly it's great for intense everyday use. I have destroyed many mobiles with what I consider "normal" everyday use, so real durability is important, & lacking as a design consideration in most mobiles.

I also have an N900, & bought a spare for when I can buy the Neo900 upgrade. I think that is still too slow (1ghz processor, 1gb ram (but a good sight better than the old specs (which still work decently well)), & the 3-row QWERTY is a setback, but I can do a lot with it, & it's an amazing device in essentially every other regard (admittedly, it's not my primary mobile). The N900/Maemo was/is too touch-driven, interface-wise, &, at least in theory, a Moto Droid or some other 4+ row QWERTY slider phone (Android seems to be the only option, as I don't think anyone's making non-Bluetooth (seriously, why waste even more battery with that when you can make a battery hutch/slide-out keyboard that plugs into the microUSB port (or Lightning port on i

... since ~2009. The community, who seem to be in love with Qt, have ported Qt5: http://talk.maemo.org/showthre...

important that I run Vim.

Looking at the N900 keyboard I don't think Vim would be very usable...

Not sure what you mean. I actually and currently *do* use vim on my N900. With the keyboard.
It's what I use to take notes.
And also make phone calls (a keystroke mapping makes vim read the current line, identify the phone number on it, and call that number).
And also send text messages (a keystroke mapping makes vim identify the phone number at the start of the line, and send the rest of the line to that number as a SMS).
And also read incoming text messages -- handy when I'm driving and can't squint at the screen (a keystroke mapping makes vim call a bash script that pulls the latest text message via SQLite3, and then read it aloud using espeak).
And a similar keystroke automatically sends a reply to whoever sent the SMS, telling him/her that I got the message, but I'm driving and can't respond right now.
And so on, for "silence the N900 for (specified time, default 1 hour) then re-enable sound" because I'm in a meeting, etc. etc.
In fact, I mostly control my N900 from the vim screen, and sometimes from the bash screen; much more fine-grained control than the GUI interface. The hardware keyboard is what makes it usable when driving; with an onscreen keyboard, you couldn't keep your eyes on the road. (Cue the snarky comments about "You should never use your phone when driving, because I don't, and everyone else should be like me.")

Oh, part of the reason Vim works well on my N900 keyboard is because I've redefined it. By defaut each key has a meaning when pressed by itself, or with the Shift key, or with the Fn key. But there's a fourth combination of Shift+Fn key, which by default is the same as the Fn key -- which is completely wasted potential. So, by using the Shift+Fn key combo, I've got 30 extra characters to use, including []{}`|^~% which by default you'd have to call up the virtual keyboard to type. Maybe that's why you think the keyboard is not usable with Vim.

*I* want to be the one in control of the phone

There are lots of automation/scripting apps for Android, or with root you can get a real shell and install the scripting language of your choice.

I'd be interested in a "real" shell/scripting language. Right now I have a bash script for synchronizing various text files (such as my ToDo list) between various laptops/desktops, and I just use the same script for my N900. The script also synchronizes itself, so when I improve the script on my work laptop, for example, the versions on the other laptop and the desktop and, yes, my N900 will update themselves.

I see some really simple tools on Android -- a brief web search produces results like Tasker and AutomateIt, which are great when you want simple things like, say, changing the ringtones every Wednesday afternoon unless your phone is face-down.

I'm looking for things more like, if a SMS comes in, then make a different "SMS arrived" sound depending on who it's from; and if it's from the wife or my parents, then read the SMS out loud unless I'm at my workplace; otherwise forward the SMS contents to my email account. Here's a N900 script for "while I'm at the office, adjust my Google Voice virtual phone settings to not forward phone calls to home". Right now I'm working on something that sends a SMS to my wife telling what freeway exit I'm closest too, and my driving speed, so I don't have to manually text her while driving to let her know when I'll be home.

Tasker falls short in these abilities, to put it mildly; never mind that you can't reuse the scripts for the desktop/laptop. I don't mean to belittle your helpful info; it's just that smartphones like Android devices just aren't in the same league as computers-that-happen-to-have-

That's strange because you can change your keyboard mappings (and even cycle through them on the fly through Control-Space). I acknowledge it is not a simple procedure to set up, but once you do it you don't need to think too much about it.

I think it's important to establish what makes the N900 great. Can't speak for the OP, but this is what I'm hoping for in a phone once my N900 finally gives up the ghost. "Hoping," notice I said, but I'm not holding my breath.

1. Scriptability. First and foremost. *I* want to be the one in control of the phone, not some app developer vetted by The Place That Decides What You Can Do With Our --I Mean Your-- Phone (or "AppStore" for short). I want to write a bash script, or a python script, and tell me when my beloved has sent me a SMS containing the word "URGENT".

2. Freedom. Yes, I mean openness as in open source. Yes, I do know not everything in the N900 was open-sourced, but a heck of a lot of it was. That let a lot of people hack it, for the benefit of the community. And it didn't void the warranty. There's something to be said for a phone that does not need you to join the Apple club with a credit card, or sign up with Big Brother Google before using the phone -- you really are independent.

3. Portability of software. It's awesome that I can run Gnumeric on this thing, but even more important that I run Vim.

4. Three things you can change: the cell phone provider, the battery, and the memory storage card. Mainly a criticism compared to the early iPhones; not sure if they still apply. I understand that there are unlocked iPhones now (which still cost more than the N900 did) but you can't change the battery. Android phones will take microSD now, I think?

In fact, to lower my chances of being forced to make do without a good alternative, I bought a second N900, and regularly synchronize the spare so I can have it up and running in case it's needed quickly. I wasn't seeing anything on the horizon, and figured I'd probably have to hang on to my pair of N900's for at least another 3 years. This Slashdot discussion is very useful.

There are, of course, lots to hate about the N900. Most of it deals with the slow swapping caused by the relatively small RAM, versus the large RAM that would be needed by a truly multitasking computer/smartphone. (Compare this with the iPhone that was out at the time, which did not multitask. Do iPhones multitask yet?) The user interface is also unintuitive and poorly thought out. Wish it had been given a chance, but once Elop came on board, there was zero chance of that.

As I've said before, the N900 is a piece of crap --but it's the BEST piece of crap in the world!

Unfortunately, there is no smartphone version of Zim, but I have little need for a smartpone app of this sort. I do email myself info as needed to integrate into Zim later.

Actually, Zim exists for the N900 -- in fact, I first heard about it that way. Or is it not considered a smartphone if it doesn't run Android or iOS? :P

I just recently got a Nexus 5 to replace my aging Nokia N9 and was amazed by the near complete lack of simple tools that don't want access to your data in return. For the N9, there were a ton of useful free open source tools provided by the community over at maemo.org. That community was great. Every time I thought that there was something that was missing or new capability I wanted, I'd look there and find an app that already exists or a group of people in the process of building it.

The contrast between that experience and the excessive commercialism of Android was startling. After looking around for a while I did find this Simple LED Widget that is just what it says and doesn't require any unnecessary permissions, but I had to sift through dozens of apps like the one in the TFA.

Is there anything even close to maemo.org for Android? I've heard some good things about F-Droid, but I haven't looked into it enough yet to know if it's the best option.

This is not exactly a new idea. http://maemo.org/packages/view/n900fly/

As someone that uses KDE programs in Gnome, my view is that what in the end could matter are compatibility layers, the ability to run the apps you like in the environment you like. Maybe android is not the most comfortable environment for desktop, but i would not complain if i can run its apps in i.e. gnome 3, if that the environment you prefer. That is one of the strenghts of linux, one base OS, apps that runs on different environments and devices, and the ability to run in one environment apps from another. That way i had the possibility to run WebOS apps/games in Maemo, or X apps on Mir.

So, maybe i would or not run android on desktop linux, but probably will want to run its apps.

Which one? Android, Meego, Maemo, Tizen, WebOS, Firefox OS, Sailfish, etc? We have a lot, each one with their own strenghts and focus. Ubuntu Touch points toward integration between desktop and phones (as in you connect to a monitor and you have a desktop running from your phone) and having the same environment in phones, tablets and desktops (maybe in a bit smarter way than in Windows 8). And being Linux based, and in good part using common libraries (i.e. for a lot of them you can develop in qt/qml), or html5 apps, or being able to have compatibility layers (i.e. Preenv to run WebOS apps in Maemo) there is the possibility that a lot of apps could be shared or ported between them.

Even in Linux for desktops or servers if well there are several distributions there is no big effect of fragmentation, most programs run unchanged in all of them. You can run KDE apps in gnome desktops (provided that you have installed the libraries, and that the app is not specific for the desktop environment, like being a plasma extension), the difference between distributions (package formats? location of files? names of daemons?) is usually easy to fix or consider in your code, and as most is open source programs can be recompiled if is for another architecture.

If everything will be native linux, based on open libraries, probably won't be so hard to put a translation layer that makes easy to run the apps for one mobile OS into another (i.e. like Preenv for maemo). And apps probably will be HTML5 (that most should run in all platforms, no matter if is linux or not, have Firefox OS apps running in my N9 with Hydra WRT), or in QT/QML (that maybe could be able to run with minimal changes, or not too hard to port, in other QT/QML platforms, be BB10, Sailfish, Meego, desktop or even android, besides Ubuntu Touch).

3g/HSPA+/4G sucks more out of your phone than Wifi.

True.

It goes something like:
1. C/GPU
2. Screen + backlight
3. Calls or sending/receiving data
4. Camera
5. Vibrate
6. Screen no backlight
7. GPS continuously receiving ... with GPS using 10x lower power than C/GPU.

When idling, your smartphone is using maybe 2 orders of magnitude less power than eg browsing. Since smartphones are idling a lot of the time, these numbers become significant.

8. Automatic checking whether anyone's messaged you on FB/Twitter is a significant battery killer. I don't have figures for this but it at least halves battery life.

Apart from that, from highest to lowest:
9. 3G
10. BT
11. Wifi
12. 2G

So 3G + BT + Wifi consumes roughly 3x just 2G.

So your battery may last 3x longer with just 2G active when idling.

http://wiki.maemo.org/N900_Hardware_Power_Consumption#Some_preliminary_numbers_using_the_battery_monitor_chip.

This is for my N900 and increases battery life to 3+ days at low usage.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=45053

Presumably, Droid and Apple with their 100,000 fart apps have something similar.

I've got an n9 and it's hands down the best phone I've ever owned. The swipe interface is awesome, and the hardware is beautiful - it won the Red Dot award after all. My only gripe is that it doesn't automatically disconnect an idle 3g connection, but the clever people at http://talk.maemo.org/ have got a decent enough workaround with profilematic. I only wish I'd be able to buy a new version in 9 months' time. I'll probably buy a Jolla / Ubuntu phone if the hardware is good enough. Given how much of a failure WP8 has been, I still think it's not too late for Nokia to change course. Bring on Meltemi.

I agree with most of above except your claim about lack of app development. While it's true for commercial apps, - not much incentive to develop there and never was due to Elop's decision to kill the platform before N9 was even released - influx of ported and new open source apps seems quite strong.

I'm just playing with a new Stellarium port http://thelarge.org/stellarium-n9/ (which is awesome) and few days ago I installed a new version of Rawcam http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=85512 . Many apps that I use frequently - Meecast, Meegopas, Mapsi and CuteTube to name some - have been updated regularly.

The thing I really like about N9 is that I can use same CLI tools that I use on my desktop. If some CLI tool is missing it's not hard to fire up scratchbox, wget the sources and compile it for Harmattan. Not to mention ability to ssh into it and use like any other linux device on my network.

Real multitasking with background sockets is nice too. I can fire up terminal on N9, ssh to my server, attach to screen session of irssi and have it there for basically forever and switch to the terminal app whenever I feel like reading discussions. WP8 would just close the connection when I switch ssh client to the background. I don't know how Android handles multitasking, probably better.

Physical Keyboard. The screen is superb, the swipe interface is the foundation of so many new mobile user interfaces, and have good memory/cpu/base OS. But the keyboard... thats what i miss from the N900, the one it have is not bad for being a touchscreen one, and you have a pretty translucent one for console in Fingerterm, but still not there. Too bad the N950 was just for (few) devels.

Anyway, could have a future, Nitdroid enables to dual boot with Android (or run natively a few android games with Apkenv), and probably will be available for it Firefox OS, Sailfish and Ubuntu mobile.

... because it's largely open source. Developers have re-written closed components, are still fixing bugs, still adding functionality to the base OS:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=84292

By installing Hydra, the Nokia N9 already supports Cordova, including W3C, Opera and indeed Tizen apps. But it also shows the weak spots: usability, functionality and speed is very much sub par compared to the native Qt environment. And HTML5/JS being a mediocre platform at best for programming applications, I can't find a reason why anyone would want a Tizen device.

I'm much more interested in SailfishOS, which builds on Qt/QML, but will have support for Python and Android as well. Undoubtedly, since Sailfish is based on Mer, a full Linux distro and because Jolla is much more open source minded (so they claim), support for Cordova and other platforms will come very quickly. Most of the stuff already available for the N9 could be ported very easily.

Actually, Nokia is dropping support for everything: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=88222

There is.
(or was).
http://maemo.org/community/maemo-users/ovi_map_download_on_n900_how_to/
I've done this - I can't say if it still works properly.
Well, I could, but I won't, as I can't be bothered to check.

Nokia's N-series mini tablets (& N900 phone) offered a hidden-but-documented "red pill/blue pill" option, so that knowledgeable users could effectively choose to switch off the consumer failsafes & tinker, secure in the knowledge that if they broke stuff while experimenting, they were on their own:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Red_Pill_mode

This gave the benefits of both a safe, supported "appliance" experience for Muggles, & a hackable (in the old-school sense) environment for the techie types. I think it's a shame that this didn't become standard practice for tablets & smartphones.

These days, to do the "red pill" kind of thing, one usually has to resort to Jailbreaking/rooting gear via exploits, & I think the world as a whole is generally poorer for it. Sadly, even the Nokia of today is not the Nokia of old. I still yearn for a manufacturer/customer relationship that's collaborative, rather than confrontational.

Caveat: like many others, I did eventually succumb & buy a couple of Apple mobile devices (phone, iPad) a few years ago in order to benefit from the much more stable ecosystem (I was already using their truly excellent laptops at that point, & Android was still very rough), so it could certainly be argued that I eventually voted with the herd (rather than the Hurd, har har). However, I only bought them after I definitely knew I could Jailbreak them, and I won't run any version of iOS that I can't (added bonus: no Apple Maps fiasco experience for me).

The N900 was big, clumsy and if you enabled WiFi, Skype and IM integration (which it did brilliantly, better than any other device) you would be lucky to get 12 hours of battery life out of it.

I get about 72 hours out of mine for that. Then again, it's gone through several OS updates including the community one.

The OS lacked portrait / landscape switching and responsibility was not good because of lack of memory.

The former's been fixed, the latter is only a problem with 2-3 big apps and has been somewhat improved by circumventing a couple of hardware bugs and switching to an alternate, more efficient instruction set: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=84829
And that is why the N900 is so cool.

Until then, install CSSU Thumb2. It will give you a very significant free RAM boost. If swapping is still your issue, you could try installing a fast microSD: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1277722&postcount=40.

Also, Opera 12 just got ported, although it's a bit buggy.

This should tide you over a couple of months to see if Jolla will fit your bill.

Years ago I got myself the N810, managed to charge it just now. Seems that I can actually access the maps. Navigation, not so much, but well, I didn't expect to. http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=10744

The Nokia N900 had a single-touch screen and I actually preferred its gestures over more modern Apple/Android multi-touch methods. Zooming in and out was done with clockwise or counterclockwise circular motions. It makes using a phone with a stylus much more effective since it's no longer necessary to ever put the stylus down to do a pinch zoom. Double tap was an autozoom based on the size of the object on the screen and its "hover mode" made using mouse-over interfaces work really well.

You are absolutely correct about the micro-usb connector itself, and my experience with many devices confirms your anecdotal evidence. But the connector is attached to a PCB which is housed in a device. If THAT implementation sucks, then you end up with a micro-usb cable with a micro-usb connector attached to it yet completely detached from the PCB which is housed in the device.

Read this thread, or at least look at the number of replies from people who had an issue:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=37107

Basically the Nokia N900 had a micro-usb connector surface mounted to the PCB without any additional support. Thousands of people had their connector break off just through regular use, let alone abuse like dropping the phone, inserting the cable at an angle, etc. And once the connector broke off, it would render the phone almost useless, short of resorting to external chargers, etc. While the N900 is not worth much today, a couple of years ago it was a $700 phone that Nokia refused to fix at first, claiming the port broke off due to abuse.

So there you go. You've heard of at least one case where micro-usb had an annoying tendency to break.

1 word...OpenMoko. FOSS "advocates" talk a good game but when it comes to opening their wallets? Not so good.

Another three worts: N900 Community SSU.

And other words:
GP32, GP2X. handheld consoles with nice support for opensource and homebrew projects.
In the global handheld consoles, it wasn't more that a tiny "blip" next to behemoths like Nintendo's consoles.
But the home brew communities went completely bat-shit crazy over them. On their own scale, said console managed to be quite successful in their niche market. Yup, a small niche market but the hardware was nonetheless a wonder success there.
To the point that the same community went on and tried to produce the Pandora following the same ideas. This project in turn *was* plagged with supply/production problems, but the company behind didn't tank, is trying to release a successor with newer and better available chips, and there is some community activity around them.
Then there's also the Dingoo, also encountering a significant success in the homebrew and opensource scene.

These aren't consoles which were retro-fitted with opensource-/homebrew- friendly dev tools against the wish of the parent company by reverse engineering. (Like running Linux or homebrew on Nintendo hardware), these are console where the opensource/homebrew communities were always part of the plan (like the N900) or even in charge.

Again:
for every Always Innovating's TouchBook project (very nice and at the time innovative idea of modularity, etc. which didn't ship much actual hardware but did inspire stuff like the Transformer), there's the success of OPLC project which *has* produced hardware, and has sold enough of them in the developed world too.

and then there are thing like the BeagleBoard in which the homebrew/maker/hacker/tinkerer community are deeply in love.

The raspberry pi, now that the supply problems have been solved, might become the next opensource-friendly success story.

So yeah, if one picks examples, there are example of failure or lack of success in the opensource world, but there are also nice success. In niche markets, but still.

Establishing a new MOBILE PHONE MANUFACTURING COMPANY can be only done with Apple-size financial backing. Not even your beloved Microsoft dared to do so (what is, of course, the reason why Sendo is destroyed and Nokia is turning into an empty shell of former self).

Indeed.

The problems are :
- Building a hardware company from the ground up is hard. It requires a lot of money and experience. not easy for the avarage community members as you say yourself.
- Designing a brand new hardware is hard too. It requires a lot of specific know-how, but at least one can incrementally build on past experience (GoldenDelicious' GTAv4 didn't go through that many problems as OpenMoko's GTAv2 / NeoFreeRunner) but the first release are going to run into a lot of real world problems requiring several iteration before final.
- Getting supplies at a good price is hard specially when you work with thousands of units and not millions like the big players.
- Even more if you decide completely Free-Software hardcore, that restricts some choices (chips with specs under NDA, or blob-only drivers, ...)
- Being a small community project make it much more sensitive to the whims of the market: the slightest problem with supply, jump of price, incident at a manufacturer's plant, etc. may cause massive delays or put the whole project in jeopardy.
- Being an outsider means its hard to get the hardware subsidized. (The iPhone DOES NOT cost a few hundreds $$$ it costs more, but the carriers are paying the different)

Now going back to the Valve example :
- they have an ample warchest and can absorb a lot of cost.
- they already have a big crowd of fans and followers, they won't need to gain that much market acceptance.
- th

Jolla Ltd. Press Release July 7, 2012
  Helsinki, Finland
  Jolla Ltd.
  Hiilikatu 3 | FI-00180 Helsinki, Finland
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
  MeeGo Smartphones and Operating System Find a New Life in Jolla Ltd.
  Jolla Ltd. is an independent Finland based smartphone product company which
  continues the excellent work that Nokia started with MeeGo. The Jolla team is
  formed by directors and core professionals from Nokia’s MeeGo N9 organisation,
  together with some of the best minds working on MeeGo in the communities.
  Jussi Hurmola, CEO Jolla Ltd.: “Nokia created something wonderful – the world’s
  best smartphone product. It deserves to be continued, and we will do that together
  with all the bright and gifted people contributing to the MeeGo success story.”
  Jolla Ltd. will design, develop and sell new MeeGo based smartphones. Together
  with international private investors and partners, a new smartphone using this
  MeeGo based OS will be revealed later this year.
  Jolla Ltd. has been developing a new smartphone product and the OS since the end
  of 2011. The OS has evolved from MeeGo OS using Mer Core and Qt with Jolla
  technology including its own brand new UI.
  The Jolla team consists of a substantial number of MeeGo’s core engineers and
  directors, and is aggressively hiring the top MeeGo and Linux talent to contribute to
  the next generation smartphone production. Company is headquartered in Helsinki,
  Finland and has an R&D office in Tampere, Finland.
  Sincerely,
  Jolla Ltd.
  Dr. Antti Saarnio – Chairman & Finance
  Mr. Jussi Hurmola – CEO
  Mr. Sami Pienimäki – VP, Sales & Business Development
  Mr. Stefano Mosconi – CIO
  Mr. Marc Dillon – COO
  Further inquiries:
press@jollamobile.com

--- http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1233581&postcount=105

Who are these people?

Dr. Antti Saarnio – Finland Investor / Financier
Mr. Jussi Hurmola – in past: Director of MeeGo Computers Releases and Integration at Nokia
Mr. Sami Pienimäki – working in product management/marketing, telephone communications
Mr. Stefano Mosconi – in past: MeeGo IT Manager at Nokia
  Maemo IT Team Leader at Nokia
  Infrastructure Engineer at Nokia
Mr. Marc Dillon – in past: MeeGo (was Maemo, OSSO) Principal Engineer, Configuration Management at Nokia
  S40 CoreSW Integrator at Nokia
  Symbian Build Manager / Team Leader at Nokia
  Configuration Management Administrator at Nokia

--- http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1233636&postcount=121

Jolla Ltd. Press Release July 7, 2012
  Helsinki, Finland
  Jolla Ltd.
  Hiilikatu 3 | FI-00180 Helsinki, Finland
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
  MeeGo Smartphones and Operating System Find a New Life in Jolla Ltd.
  Jolla Ltd. is an independent Finland based smartphone product company which
  continues the excellent work that Nokia started with MeeGo. The Jolla team is
  formed by directors and core professionals from Nokia’s MeeGo N9 organisation,
  together with some of the best minds working on MeeGo in the communities.
  Jussi Hurmola, CEO Jolla Ltd.: “Nokia created something wonderful – the world’s
  best smartphone product. It deserves to be continued, and we will do that together
  with all the bright and gifted people contributing to the MeeGo success story.”
  Jolla Ltd. will design, develop and sell new MeeGo based smartphones. Together
  with international private investors and partners, a new smartphone using this
  MeeGo based OS will be revealed later this year.
  Jolla Ltd. has been developing a new smartphone product and the OS since the end
  of 2011. The OS has evolved from MeeGo OS using Mer Core and Qt with Jolla
  technology including its own brand new UI.
  The Jolla team consists of a substantial number of MeeGo’s core engineers and
  directors, and is aggressively hiring the top MeeGo and Linux talent to contribute to
  the next generation smartphone production. Company is headquartered in Helsinki,
  Finland and has an R&D office in Tampere, Finland.
  Sincerely,
  Jolla Ltd.
  Dr. Antti Saarnio – Chairman & Finance
  Mr. Jussi Hurmola – CEO
  Mr. Sami Pienimäki – VP, Sales & Business Development
  Mr. Stefano Mosconi – CIO
  Mr. Marc Dillon – COO
  Further inquiries:
press@jollamobile.com

--- http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1233581&postcount=105

Who are these people?

Dr. Antti Saarnio – Finland Investor / Financier
Mr. Jussi Hurmola – in past: Director of MeeGo Computers Releases and Integration at Nokia
Mr. Sami Pienimäki – working in product management/marketing, telephone communications
Mr. Stefano Mosconi – in past: MeeGo IT Manager at Nokia
  Maemo IT Team Leader at Nokia
  Infrastructure Engineer at Nokia
Mr. Marc Dillon – in past: MeeGo (was Maemo, OSSO) Principal Engineer, Configuration Management at Nokia
  S40 CoreSW Integrator at Nokia
  Symbian Build Manager / Team Leader at Nokia
  Configuration Management Administrator at Nokia

--- http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1233636&postcount=121

1 word...OpenMoko. FOSS "advocates" talk a good game but when it comes to opening their wallets? Not so good.

Another three worts: N900 Community SSU. Nokia's abandoned phone is being better supported with ongoing development than any other mobile phone that currently exists.

Establishing a new MOBILE PHONE MANUFACTURING COMPANY can be only done with Apple-size financial backing. Not even your beloved Microsoft dared to do so (what is, of course, the reason why Sendo is destroyed and Nokia is turning into an empty shell of former self).

Nokia was working on another Linux based operating system. This is now stopped.

More insight into how the board of Nokia is being stacked with Microsoft cronies.

Huh?

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/arm
http://www.debian.org/ports/arm/
http://archlinuxarm.org/
http://www.armedslack.org/
http://maemo.org/

Fedora and Suse are working on an arm version.

All these guys even have a standards committee setup linaro.

The N900 and N9 are full blown Unix/Linux machines with all the bells and whistles that come with a non-neutered version of the GNU/Linux environment.

That being said, they support many Unix/Linux security mechanisms, but if you want proof, how about full disk encryption for starters?

jdb2

"It's a UNIX system! I know this!"

Look, X11 is pretty much the default UI substrate for anything branded and marketed as UNIX or Linux first. MacOS X has UNIX under the hood, but the UI and user experience is marketed as OS X. The UNIX stuff only comes up when they want to trumpet their stable underpinnings.

Go grab a Linux or Solaris or FreeBSD or OpenBSD workstation, and what do you have? An X11-based environment. Sure, your Linux-based smartphone may not run X11 (although mine does), but nobody really thinks of a smartphone as a "Linux box." If you go build or buy a UNIX or Linux box, it'll be running X11 by default.

Now, Wayland looks to unseat X11 as the default graphical substrate for the *nix UI environment, but that's a long way off. And even once they get there, they'll get there with an X11 emulation module. So, I think it's fair to say when folks say UNIX or Linux, they imply an X11-based environment.

While I haven't experienced this problem myself, I've come across this thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1147506 - it is possible that it can be of some use to you.

I see your Android, Win95, XP and Linux and raise you...

Maemo, Easy Debian chrooted and WebOS games natively. My N900 can emulate Windows 95, DOS, PSP, Neogeo and probably several others I don't remember. It can also multiboot Kubuntu, Meego and Android.

Maemo and Meego are still going strong.

http://talk.maemo.org/index.php

They have 2 os's that support multi-core chips and more than 512MB of ram - just because they skimp on the chips doesn't mean it wouldn't run.
Soon they'll have 3 once wp catches up.

more importantly, they got _zero_ need for buying webos. Nobody has! you can have all that makes webos what it is without buying it! and you wouldn't be buying any of the webos design or engineer guys anyhow.

also, http://wiki.maemo.org/Preenv/FAQ

WebOS vs Tizen, they're both doomed. If Tizen adopt WebOS, stick it on top of Meego, win/win/win.

Even if they don't, the Maemo community may adopt it wholesale, reinstate Qt and win for N900 users.

Read the other Android article published today and go for something open source instead. Maemo, Moblin, Meego, Tizen, Mer or just plain Debian.

My next phone will need to have full-disk encryption. I could do it on my N900 but it's a massive amount of work and I can't spare the processing power either.

How do you know the overhead of dm-crypt will actually have any noticeable impact on your N900's performance?

My N900 with CSSU has been performing quite well for the past month, but I'm not currently running kernel power.

One howto is here, but due to framebuffer not working in the titan kernel is not complete ... and you need a non-stock kernel for dm-crypt (apparently, I wonder if it is possible to build just dm-crypt and dependencies for the stock kernel).

Hah I've been trying to overclock, but I can't get around this bug in the kernel - and me and another guy tried custom-coding a solution with no luck. I tried the power kernel with the bleeding-edge wifi drivers but after a while it wouldn't see any APs and I'd have to reload the drivers. It was way too much of a PITA so I had to go back to the stock kernel and drivers.

Now if only they will bring back Maemo's Debian-based package management and properly maintained Qt support to their native applications, and it will be back to the direction where Maemo was supposed to be heading before Nokia fucked up.

Making it possible to merge at least some things that are now maintained in Maemo Community SSU (last updated September 7 2011 if anyone did not notice), would be nice, too, however there certainly will be incompatibility with that.