Nokia, Intel Merge Maemo, Moblin Into MeeGo

AVee writes "Intel and Nokia just announced a new project called MeeGo. MeeGo is supposed to be the result of merging Maemo and Moblin, bringing together the best pieces of those (already quite similar platforms). Interestingly this means that Intel will be sponsoring a mobile Linux distro which will run on ARM."

Comments

Re:Funny names

[Rexdude]

More like a Mi-Go

Re:Name?

[Hurricane78]

Still better than the other way around:

Maggot.
The mobile OS from Yugo. ^^

Re:Package management

[diegocg]

It's really a problem? I mean, package wars are so 1999. I recently switched to a RPM based distro after 9 years using and loving APT. And while there're differences (some advantages, some disadvantages), these days they're pretty much the same thing. I'm using KDE 4.4 from Fedora rawhide in my Fedora 13 base system, just as I would have done in Ubuntu. There're things far more important in this merge than using RPM instead of DEB. Like, for example, focusing on QT instead of Clutter.

Gtk RIP?

[perrin]

Both Maemo and Moblin started off Gtk-based, using the Clutter toolkit on top of Gtk. Now both have switched over to Qt. Are there any other serious users of Clutter left?

I hear lots of projects starting with or switching to Qt these days, and none that switch to or start with Gtk. Having programmed in both Gtk and Qt, I have to say I understand why. Qt is hands down the better and more elegant toolkit, despite my preference for C over C++. Qt also makes it easier than Gtk to port between Linux, Mac and Windows. Gtk on the other hand is stuck with a horrible dependency hell that prevents using it for anything serious on non-Linux platforms.

I think the way forward for Linux on the desktop is to standardize on one GUI toolkit, and there is no doubt that this toolkit would have to be Qt. It is a bit sad, because I always like Gnome better than KDE, and I see no easy way for Gnome to convert over to Qt.

Good move

[bill_mcgonigle]

I was recently worried they'd both wither on the vine trying to compete against Android and filling almost exactly the same space. Thus I was thinking I'd have to base a project on ChromeOS, which seemed strategically foolish (at least Nokia and Intel will have divergent interests to keep development focused on solving problems well in the abstract, rather than quick-n-dirty tangents a single vendor can accept).

Especially if they stay with the mainline kernel, which Google isn't interested in doing, together Intel and Nokia are going to be much more successful than competing poorly against each other and Google.

So, here's one developer's intent to go this way rather than Android (for a non-phone project). Congrats to the adults in both camps.