MeeGo Drops Netbooks
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop may have questioned the future of MeeGo in his burning platform memo and covered the OS at least with uncertainty.
What app
ears to be certain however, is that the Netbook version of MeeGo is canceled. Developer Andrew Wafaa, who had been working on Smeegol, a repackaged UI for Moblin and MeeGo based on OpenSUSE, said that the MeeGo Netbook interface is essentially dead.
"Basically by all accounts MeeGo is stopping all work on the Netbook UX," he wrote. "Yup, all our hard work is now almost for nothing :-(" Wafaa pointed to the MeeGo Release Engineering Plans 1.2, which do not mention netbooks anymore as far as features are concerned as well as developer events.
"I spoke to several people directly and indirectly involved with MeeGo, especially the Netbook UX, about the lack of info on the Netbook UX. Each one of them said the same thing - MeeGo is putting the Netbook UX into Maintanence Mode, stopping any further development on it, and only providing bug fixes for major issues. I asked if there was going to be any announcement, basically the answer was nothing official. They're just going to let it drift away - just like netbooks themselves have."
Wafaa suspects that among the reasons may be that netbooks are simply not selling that well anymore.
We will learn more about the MeeGo future when Stephen Elop will be announcing a plan to save Nokia tomorrow. We already know that he will be jumping off the Nokia platform. We assume that Steve Ballmer is already waiting to catch Nokia.
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Douglas Perry was a freelance writer for Tom's Hardware covering semiconductors, storage technology, quantum computing, and processor power delivery. He has authored several books and is currently an editor for The Oregonian/OregonLive.
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megamanx00 I don't really care about MeeGo, but it sux for the developers who put in their time. Perhaps some of that work can be used in other projects. Oh well.Reply -
Yeah - MeeGo drops netbooks and Nokia drops MeeGo. What's left? A bidding war between Intel and Google for Ubuntu? :-(Reply
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pup OC Steve is there but heir both there to catch the IP patent sharing ,thats obvious, shame about the lost R&D and related work force in Finland though.Reply -
liveonc I'm guessing that MeeGo for netbooks & maybe also tablets would be DOA by the time Windows 8 comes out. But do you even want to play Crysis for 5 minutes on battery, even "if" Nvidia & MS makes it possible?Reply -
arlandi is meego opensource? if it is, then it can still be saved by people who are willing to put time and efforts into it.Reply
if it isn't...