Overview
MeeGo is intended to run on a variety of hardware platforms including handhelds, in-car devices, netbooks and televisions.[8] All platforms share the MeeGo core, with different “User Experience” (“UX”) layers for each type of device.
[edit]System requirements
MeeGo provides support for both ARM and Intel x86 processors with SSSE3 enabled [9] and uses btrfs as the default file system.[10]
[edit]User interfaces
Screenshot of MeeGo’s Netbook UX
Within the MeeGo project there are several graphical user interfaces – internally called User Experiences (“UX”).
[edit]Netbook
The Netbook UX is a continuation of the Moblin interface. It is written using the Clutter-based Mx toolkit.
MeeGo’s netbook version uses several Linux applications in the background, such as Evolution (Email, calendar), Empathy(instant messaging), Gwibber (microblogging), Chromium (web browser), and Banshee (multimedia player), all integrated into the graphical user interface.
[edit]Handset
Handset UX from MeeGo 1.1 “Day 1”
The Handset UX is based on Qt, but GTK+ and Clutter will be included to provide compatibility for Moblin applications.[9] To support the hundreds of Hildon based Maemo applications, users have to install the Hildon library ported by the maemo.org community. Depending on the device, applications will be provided from either the Intel AppUp or the Nokia Ovi digital software distribution systems.[11]
The MeeGo Handset UX’s “Day 1” prerelease was on June 30, 2010. The preview was initially available for the Aava Mobile Intel Moorestown platform, and a ‘kickstart’ file provided for developers to build an image for the Nokia N900.[12][13]
MeeGo’s Tablet UX as a pre-alpha version
Intel demonstrated the Tablet UX on a Moorestown-based tablet PC at COMPUTEX Taipei in early June 2010.
Since then some information appeared on MeeGo website indicating there will be a Tablet UX part of the MeeGo project, but it is not known if this UX will be the one demonstrated by Intel. This Tablet UX will be fully open source like the rest of the MeeGo project and will be coded with Qt and the MeeGo Touch Framework.[14] Intel has revealed interest in combining Qt with Wayland display server instead of the often seen Qt/X11 combination in MeeGo Touch in order to utilize the latest graphics technologies supported by Linux kernel, which should improve user experiences and reduce system complexity.[15][16]
Minimum hardware requirements are currently unknown.
The WeTab runs MeeGo and is available since September 2010[17]
[edit]In-Vehicle Infotainment
MeeGo’s IVI UX as shipped with MeeGo 1.1
The GENIVI Alliance, a consortium of several car makers and their industry partners, uses Moblin with Qt as base for its 'GENIVI 1.0 Reference Platform' for In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) and automotive navigation system as a uniformed mobile computing platform. Graham Smethurst of GENIVI Alliance and BMW Group announced in April 2010 the switch from Moblin to MeeGo.[18][19]
[edit]License
MeeGo is a complex project that involves many vendors and organizations. Its license policy is mainly documented at the “MeeGo License Policy”[20] page. Considering the nature of MeeGo’s targeting markets – the mobile and handset sectors – which, unlike the desktop software market that tends to adopt one or two major software vendor’s operating systems, is highly diversified and hence differentiation is taken as of vital importance by both device makers and software vendors. Therefore MeeGo’s license policy is, at one hand, trying to encourage the fostering of derivative work while at the same time, keep the project as open as possible.
From the distribution point of view, MeeGo is a collection of open source software, which are distributed conforming to their respective licenses.
From the development point of view, which mainly address the way of adopting software from the free software community on account of license, MeeGo software can be classified into two categories: the Operating System (OS) software and User Experience (UX) software. The OS software should mainly be using a copyleft license to ensure the openness of the underlying system, while the UX software should be dominantly of BSD-style licenses, which do not preclude proprietary development and thus encourage device makers and OS vendors to make derivative work and differentiate their respective products.[20]
The licenses of MeeGo developed technologies, such as fast-boot, power and speed optimizations are of interest to derivative products and projects. Those technologies spread among the system and can’t be easily isolated out. For example, the fast-boot technology consists mainly of the fast and small Syslinux bootloader,[21] a new system service and software launcher called "uxlaunch", the optimized read-ahead component, little tweaking and tuning among many software services. The license policy is that these changes should follow the base work’s license upon which they are made, that is to say, the corresponding upstream project’s license policy. For example, MeeGo’s work on the Linux kernel is available under the license of the Linux kernel.
[edit]Technical foundations
[edit]Core OS
The MeeGo Core operating system is a Linux distribution, drawing on Nokia’s Debian-based Maemo and Intel’s Fedora-based Moblin.[22] MeeGo is one of the first Linux distributions to use the Btrfs file system as default, and uses RPM repositories.
[edit]Software development
The officially endorsed way to develop MeeGo applications is to use the Qt framework and Qt Creator as development environment, but writing GTK applications is also supported.[23]
openSUSE’s Build Service is used to compile the applications.[24]
[edit]Derivatives
As with Moblin before, MeeGo also serves as a technology pool that software vendors can access to build their products from. So far only ports of the graphical user interfaces to other Linux distributions have been announced.
[edit]MeeGo/Harmattan
Even though MeeGo was initiated as collaboration between Nokia and Intel, the collaboration was formed when Nokia was already developing the next incarnation of its Maemo Linux distribution. As a result, the Maemo 6 base operating system will be kept intact while the Handset UX will be shared, with the name changed to “MeeGo/Harmattan”.[7]
[edit]SUSE and Smeegol Linux
Novell has recently announced that they will soon ship a SUSE Linux incarnation with MeeGo’s Netbook UX (MeeGo User Experience) graphical user interface.[25]
An MeeGo-based Linux distribution with this user interface is already available from openSUSE's Goblin Team under the name Smeegol Linux, this project combines MeeGo with openSUSE to get a new netbook-designed Linux distribution. What makes Smeegol Linux unique when compared to the upstream MeeGo or openSUSE is that this distribution is at its core based on openSUSE but has the MeeGo User Experience as well as a few other changes such as adding the Mono-based Banshee media player,NetworkManager-powered network configuration, a newer version of Evolution Express, and more. Any end-users can also build their own customized Smeegol Linux OS using SUSE Studio.[26][5]
Version 14 of Fedora, scheduled to be released on 2 November 2010, will also use the MeeGo Netbook UX for a “spin”.[27]
Linpus Technologies is working on bringing their services on top of MeeGo Netbook and MeeGo Tablet.[28][29]
[edit]Splashtop
The latest version of the instant-on OS Splashtop-platform (by Splashtop Inc. which was previously named DeviceVM Inc.) is compliant with MeeGo, and future version of Splashtop will be based on MeeGo and will be available for commercial use in the first half of 2011.[30][31]
[edit]Release Schedule
It was announced at the Intel Developer Forum 2010 that MeeGo would follow a six month release schedule. Version 1.0 for Atom netbooks and a code drop for the Nokia N900 became available for download as of Wednesday, 26 May 2010.
| Version | Kernelversion | Release date | Notes | Devices Supported (Netbooks) | Devices Supported (Handsets) |
| MeeGo | 1.0 |
2.6.33[32] |
26 May 2010[33] |
Primarily a Netbook release; only a code drop was released for mobile devices (the Nokia N900). |
Asus EeePC 901, 1000H, 1001P, 1005HA, 1005PE, 1008HA, Eeetop ET1602, Dell mini10v, Inspiron Mini 1012, Acer Aspire One D250, AO532-21S, Revo GN40, Aspire 5740-6025, Lenovo S10, MSI U100, U130, AE1900, HP mini 210-1044, Toshiba NB302. |
Nokia N900 (No handset UX). |
| 1.01 |
2.6.33.5[34] |
July 2010[34] |
Update to MeeGo 1.0; Kernel updated to 2.6.33.5, USB device loading time improved, improved 3D performance, browser enhancements, resolved multiple e-mail client issue, enhanced netbook window manager, improved visuals, full support for GNOME proxy configuration in the media player, more control over DNS settings.[34] |
All Netbooks supported by MeeGo 1.0; see above. |
None |
| 1.02 |
2.6.33.5[35] |
9 August 2010[35] |
Update to MeeGo 1.0; X-Server Update, Connection Manager Update, Package Manager UI Update, Perl Update and several more.[35] |
All Netbooks supported by MeeGo 1.0; see above. |
None |
| 1.03 |
2.6.33.5[36] |
10 September 2010[36] |
Update to MeeGo 1.0; several Updates, e.g. Chromium browser, Connection Manager[36] |
All Netbooks supported by MeeGo 1.0; see above. |
None |
| 1.04 |
2.6.33.5[37] |
12 October 2010[37] |
Update to MeeGo 1.0; several security updates, better support for Lenovo S10-3 , ...[37] |
All Netbooks supported by MeeGo 1.0; see above. |
None |
| 1.1 |
2.6.35[38] |
28 October 2010[39] |
Touch-based devices support proposed with the Handset UX[40] |
Unknown |
Aava and Nokia N900 |
| 1.1.1 |
2.6.35[41] |
28 November2010[41] |
Several Fixes and Updates[41] |
Unknown |
Aava and Nokia N900 |
| 1.2 |
TBA |
H1 2011[33] |
|
Unknown |
|
MeeGo phones will not be available until the 1st half of 2011.[42]