Huh?

The marketing folks dreaming up names for tech products are nuts.

MeeGo is the name of the initiative by Nokia and Intel to combine their respective mobile operating systems, maemo and moblin. This is pretty good news. There is too much fragmentation in small form factor operating systems anyway. Moblin started it, but I prefer the KDE Plasma Netbook version. Maemo is a fantastic system in itself and it deserves a much wider space for expansion – on the desktop / netbook for sure.

The funny thing is Nokia’s own Booklet (powered by Intel’s processors and graphics) does not support Linux properly. So how are they going to demonstrate that they can make this work?

Next, the mobile computing environment is largely on ARM processors (iPhone, the various Android phones and the Nokia N900). Intel sees this as a clear competitor. What is their interest in seeing Moblin on ARM?

But overall this is a really welcome step. Intel and Nokia separately have been key drivers of Linux and open source software in the recent past. Especially with Nokia’s acquisition of Trolltech and the release of Qt under LGPL and open sourcing of Symbian are pointers to this. Intel’s efforts are equally commendable. Here’s wishing that the new venture is a success.

And Nokia, make sure you port MeeGo back to the N900, okay?