A glimpse on MeeGo

Amanda Lam BEng Computer Systems Engineering, University of Warwick, UK

Technical Writer of a multinational online services companyFounder of Hong Kong Maemo / Moblin / MeeGo User Group

HKPUG Executive Committee Member & PodcasterUMPCFever / Digital XY Voluntary IT News Editor

Blog: http://dadablog.net/

What is MeeGo?

MeeGo is… An open-source project Initially announced by Intel and Nokia at Mobile World Congress, Barc

elona in February 2010 A cross platform / architecture Linux distribution Merged from Intel’s Moblin & Nokia’s Maemo projects For Netbooks, Handsets, In-Vehicle Infotainment, Connected TVs, Me

dia Phones and Tablets Maintained by the Linux Foundation Open to everyone who wants to use or contribute Supported by…

What MeeGo is not?

MeeGo is NOT… solely owned by Nokia solely owned by Intel just a smartphone OS replacing Maemo by totally ditching it totally replacing Symbian in Nokia’s smartphones having the same UI design for all products ready yet!

MeeGo Architecture

Why MeeGo?

MeeGo is maintained by the Linux Foundation and is a full-feature, community-supported Linux distribution.

Flexible UI customization Flexible architectural customization of the Core OS layer

(e.g. Fedora 14, SuSE MeeGo, DeviceVM Splashtop etc.)

Support multiple platforms and CPU architectures Easy application development and deployment using Qt To end-users:

More advanced features can be made available More freedom to take over the control of the device More fun!

MeeGo Netbook UX

UI design highly inherited from Moblin

MeeGo Handset UX

UI concept seems to be borrowed from Maemo, WebOS and Android

MeeGo In-Vehicle Infotainment UX

UI design looks like a mixture of Handset UX and Netbook UX!

MeeGo Tablet UX

Finger-friendly UI design. Multi-touch supported.

MeeGo UX images: Some facts

MeeGo Netbook, Handset and IVI UX images are available in MeeGo.com for public download.

They are just demonstrating the reference UIs that device manufacturers and developers should refer to.

Commercialized end-user products may NOT look the same.

By following the UI Customization Guidelines, end user products can have: Different icons, themes, visual effects, motion graph

ics, sounds and haptics for their branding Additional tailor-made plug-ins and applications Better device drivers Different app stores, e.g.

UI Customization Guidelines: Example

UI Customization: Examples

Reference UI: Customized UI:

Commercialized Products vs Reference Platforms of Maemo / MeeGo handsets and Internet tablets

Maemo 1.1OS2005

Maemo 2.xOS2006 / Mistral /Scirocco / Gregale

Maemo 3.xOS2007 / Bora

Maemo 4.xOS2008 /

Chinook / Diablo

Nokia 770 (ARM) Nokia N800, N810, N810 WiMax (ARM)

Maemo 5OS2009/Fremantle

Nokia N900 (ARM)

4.5 support 4.7 support

Maemo 6MeeGo-Harmattan

Nokia N9…? (ARM)

MeeGo Handset UX

Nokia N900 (ARM) / Aava Virta, Virta 2 (x86)

Reference Platform / Community Version

Tencent MeeGo(2010/2011)

Tencent QQ Phone ? (x86)

Commercialized Products

Mer(abandoned)

Nokia N800, N810, N900…etc (ARM) / PC (x86)

Gtk+ support

MeeGo HarmattanCommunity Version?

Gtk+ support

LG MeeGo

LG GW990 (x86)(abandoned)

Nokia MeeGo(2011/2012?)

Common Myths

Myth #1: Since Nokia is pushing both Symbian^3 and MeeGo, it will be troublesome for developers to spend double-effort for app development. Huh, are you a developer? If you are, then you are cute. Because we have Qt!

Qt Cross-Platform App DevelopmentWhat is Qt and Why Qt? Qt supports app development on many platforms, including (but not

limited to) Symbian S60, Symbian^3, Maemo & MeeGo. WebKit integration. Support hardware graphic acceleration operations with DirectFB an

d OpenGL ES. Support industry-standard audio and video formats, IP streaming, D

RM, etc. Wrap hardware-specific operations into generic APIs. Native C++ support, but also provide bindings for other programmin

g languages, e.g. Python, Java, Ruby, Perl etc.

Qt Cross-Platform App DevelopmentOne IDE, multiple platforms: Qt Creator

Provide simulators of different devices. Debug, test and deploy your app for different devices and

platform in one single IDE.

Qt Cross-Platform App DevelopmentQt Web Runtime Write apps in simple W3C standard HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Qt Web Runtime apps are simply compressed archives of the HTML,

JavaScript and CSS files. Concept similar to Adobe AIR and HP Palm WebOS apps. Supported in Maemo 5, MeeGo, and Symbian^3. Example app:

Qt Cross-Platform App DevelopmentReal-Life Example: “That Rabbit Game”

Developed in Qt. Runs on both Symbian^3 and Ma

emo 5. How did the developer tackle wit

h different resolution of the devices (e.g. N900 vs N8)?

Common Myths

Myth #2: MeeGo is still very immature, slow, buggy and feature incomplete. Why does it take Nokia so long to develop it?

The MeeGo project was announced in February 2010, and at that point of time, development work was starting from ZERO!

Android took around 2 years to develop before its 1.0 product was seen in the G1 phone; whereas Apple’s iOS took around 3-4 years to complete, before Steve Jobs announced iPhone.

High transparency of the community development and audit processes might have misled the “average-Joe” consumers.

Nokia is NOT the only one who is working on MeeGo. Intel, SuSE, Fedora, DeviceVM, Tencent, and many FOSS developers from the community are also involved.

MeeGo Handset UX 1.2 will be released in April 2011 with all major features completed.

That’s why we will see MeeGo-Harmattan (the original Maemo 6, or the “Half-MeeGo”) products in early 2011 first, before the development work of MeeGo Handset UX is complete.

Common Myths

Myth #3: I just bought my N900 and now Nokia ditches Maemo and goes for MeeGo, and then announces that there is no MeeGo product for N900. WTF? Nokia did NOT ditch Maemo; instead, MeeGo is in fact the natur

al evolvement of Maemo. Nokia will not release commercialized MeeGo products on N900,

but no one would stop users to install community versions of MeeGo if they wish. In such case, no support from Nokia is expected, of course.

In fact, N900 is a reference hardware of MeeGo Handset UX development.

There will still be bug fixes for Maemo 5, either from the official firmware upgrades or from the community maintained firmware.

Multi-boot between Maemo and MeeGo is already supported.

MeeGo 1.1 Handset UX Demo

References http://www.meego.com/ http://qt.nokia.com/ http://maemo.org/ http://thpmaemo.blogspot.com/2010/10/qt-write-once-ifdef-everywhere.html

Check out my blog at http://dadablog.net/

Join the “Hong Kong Maemo / Moblin / MeeGo User Group” (facebook) at http://groups.to/hkmaemo

Resources

Thank you!•Questions?