Release Mer, an alternative to maemo

[pocketpc2004]

Mer uses the Maemo hildon window manager and is based on Jaunty 9.04

0.15 preview

they plan merging Ubuntu MID with Mer
http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer/Releases

wouldn't take much effort to port it on the pandora (its already ported to beagleboard !)

http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer

 

[anexanhume]

Really like the look of the UI, although I'll be the first to admit I wouldn't know that much about feasibility (other than the beagleboard being a good sign).

 

[sixstringmonk]

That's very clean looking. I like it!

 

[dflemstr]

It looks very...disintegrated. It doesn't have an uniform design, and everything looks very "flat" and weird-dimensioned. I don't like it at all. It seems to be easier to navigate than standard matchbox however

 

[pocketpc2004]

if you want to give it a try, theres a vmdk hdd image (works with virtualbox and vmware)

i configurated it with 128mb of ram and the performance is pretty good

 

[second exodous]

When I looked at Maemo I thought it was really polished and thought I'd give it a try. This doesn't look as well polished but more open. Man, I wish my Pandora or my Touch Book would get to me so I could try all these cool things out. Trying things out on an x86 Linux machine isn't at all the same. I'll probably have multiple SD cards with different GUIs, Distros, and OSs for a while just to try all this stuff out.

EDIT:

I like this quote:

We should stop seeing the tablets as strictly under-powered embedded systems, and see them for what they really are: powerful, power-efficient, economical handheld computers.

Like what Ti is trying to stress with current ARM processors.

 

[dflemstr]

Oh, I should really try this as well, but I'll have to read the man pages for VirtualBox to convert the VMX to the open virtualization format.

I really like the idea of an Ubuntu-backed distribution, because since LaunchPad autobuilds packages (à la SUSE Build Service) to check for CPU compatibility, most Ubuntu packages are ARM-compatible, and if Ubuntu makes a distribution optimized for an ARM-platform, we'll get a very integrated experience while still having access to loads of packages. If we get an interface that is optimized for touch screens and MIDs as well (anything related to GNOME is doomed to fail; I'm sorry, but to me GNOME is an environment that maybe suits slow computers from the 80's, nothing more; especially not for MID-devices) would be fabulous.
If this interface is anything like Maemo; well, why not? I would have preferred something purely Qt-based (because Qt is by far the best UI framework for mobile platforms; the other frameworks just aren't integrated enough) but as long as you can be productive in the UI, then I'm content.

 

[second exodous]

I foresee most of my time and effort the first month I have my Pandora being spent on just trying all the cool stuff everyone keeps mentioning on these forums. It seems a lot of stuff runs on the Beagle Board.

EDIT: This has as much proprietary stuff as Maemo, doesn't it? Mer's wiki doesn't state that they are replacing any of the code that is closed source.

 

[dflemstr]

None of the pluses to using it are it uses more GPL code than Maemo.

Sorry, exactly what do you mean by that?? :huh:

 

[second exodous]

None of the pluses to using it are it uses more GPL code than Maemo.

Sorry, exactly what do you mean by that?? :huh:

Oh, I just meant that some of the licences that Maemo uses aren't GPL compliant, but I'm not entirely sure, I hadn't even read anything on Maemo until a week or so ago.

Am I wrong? I got this from wikipedia:

Although Maemo is based on Linux and open source software, some parts of Maemo remain closed source. Some user-space software, like certain status bar and task bar applets (including the display brightness applet) and applications, and some system daemons related to connectivity and power management.

Does Mer aim to replace these closed source components? I didn't see that stated anywhere.

I remember one of the Pandora team members saying they didn't go with Maemo because if wasn't open enough. Sorry in advance if I'm a little confused.

I'm still going to give this a try, I'm not a prude when it comes to source code.

 

[dflemstr]

Oh, I just meant that some of the licences that Maemo uses aren't GPL compliant, but I'm not entirely sure, I hadn't even read anything on Maemo until a week or so ago.

Am I wrong?

Well, I don't know if Mer is GPL or not, I just asked because your sentence didn't make any sense (syntactically)

 

[second exodous]

Oh, I just meant that some of the licences that Maemo uses aren't GPL compliant, but I'm not entirely sure, I hadn't even read anything on Maemo until a week or so ago.

Am I wrong?

Well, I don't know if Mer is GPL or not, I just asked because your sentence didn't make any sense (syntactically)

Ah, ok, I'll fix it. It didn't make sense to me either, I was kinda tired when I wrote it.

 

[dajavax]

Does Mer aim to replace these closed source components? I didn't see that stated anywhere.

I remember one of the Pandora team members saying they didn't go with Maemo because if wasn't open enough. Sorry in advance if I'm a little confused.

I'm still going to give this a try, I'm not a prude when it comes to source code.

that's supposed to be the point of Mer, trying to make it all open. Kind of an, Open Maemo replacement...

 

[second exodous]

Does Mer aim to replace these closed source components?

that's supposed to be the point of Mer, trying to make it all open. Kind of an, Open Maemo replacement...

Cool, too bad it's not quite ready right now. I'm definitely going to try it.