Nokia and Intel have become allies in a new clash of the operating systems with the joint creation of MeeGo. MeeGo is an operating system that blurs the line between a robust mobile phone OS and a lightweight netbook OS.
MeeGo is a hybrid of two operating systems. One is Nokia’s Maemo, which recently appeared in the N900 smartphone (which I love to death). The second is Intel’s Moblin, an OS primarily intended for netbooks. Both platforms are open-source and Linux-based, as MeeGo will be – which is probably the only way to compete with Apple and Google.
MeeGo’s Web site says the source code, and hopefully more information, will become available in the coming weeks, but I’m most curious about who will use the OS. If other manufacturers besides Nokia are willing to put MeeGo on their mobile devices, it could be a worthy competitor to offerings from Apple, Google, and Microsoft. We should expect to see a launch around mid 2010.
Already some users are voicing their concerns on their post:
Why RPM, .Deb is so much more used in the community.
Kristoffel
.RPM is being used because of the Linux Standard Base (LSB), which is a project started by the Linux Foundation in order to reduce the differences between individual Linux distributions to make it easier and cheaper for developers to port their apps to different distributions.
Which is not surprising at all, as it is the Linux Foundation that is hosting this project as well.
Ookami
Stability and safety require strict policy of what packages may contain and touch. Isn’t that the Debian way?
That challenge becomes pretty hard if it’s made possible for mainstream users to install packages from other sources than rigorously controlled central repositories. Ad-hoc installation scripts would be out of question. Only new files or ones installed by earlier version of same package maintainer should be accepted. Configuration management should go through a proxy that would require the user to accept access to targeted services.
Even then, malware would flourish. Unless each binary is restricted from seeing any parts of the system foreign to it. Capability-based encapsulation, then?
I’ll now shut up in a late attempt to hide my amateurishness.
Kalle Hallivuori
Looks like they already have a way to go in quieting the concern of developers, but when you see Maemo in full action on a Nokia device, you can really see where this combined strategy can make sense. For Nokia, I really hope this works because they have built some of the best phones in the world.
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