[kwlug-disc] Linux is lagging behind

[Andrew Cant]

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 10:33 AM, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com> wrote:
> I was a Maemo fan too, and was longing for an N900. One of the reasons I
> liked it is that it is Debian based. The other reason is that it is more
> open than Android.
>
> The issue is that they merged with Moblin, forming MeeGo, and they decided
> on RPM as the format to use going forward. That made it less attractive for
> me. Only Nokia makes hardware for that platform. Basically, just one phone
> and a couple of non-phone tablets.

Yeah, the merge has definitely put me off their platform.I like the
debian base too. I was hoping that Mer, the community driven version
of Maemo, was going to go somewhere interesting but it seems like
support from Nokia has been moved to MeeGo instead. If would have
brought some of the new features on to my N810 which was not being
supported by new version of Maemo.

There are some indications that MeeGo will be backported to old Nokia
devices, and maybe other things. I guess the merge with Moblin is an
indication that they do want to put it on other hardware.

I think I am still going to try playing with Mer. I really do like
having a Debian system for my device.

> So, I am back to Android as the contender given that it has more choice of
> phone hardware.

On an Android related note. the Software Freedom Law Centre apparently
choose to use Android phones because they were more FLOSS than the
other options that they had. Bradly Kuhn discusses some of that here:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/nov/04/android-vs-gnu/

And he mentions a project called "Replicant" to replace the
proprietary bits and pieces of the Android/Linux system.
http://trac.osuosl.org/trac/replicant/wiki


Andrew