MeeGo scales, because Linux scales

To me, and a lot of people, it’s obvious why MeeGo scales to a wide variety of devices, but apparently that’s not clear to other people, so I’ll try to explain why that’s the case.

First, let’s divide the operating system:

1. Kernel
2. Drivers
3. Adaptation
4. System Frameworks
5. Application Framework
6. Applications

“Linux” can mean many things, in the case of Android, Linux means mostly the Kernel (which is heavily modified), and in some cases the Drivers (although sometimes they have to be written from scratch), but all the layers above are specific to Android.

On Maemo, MeeGo, Moblin, and LiMo, “Linux” means an upstream Kernel (no drastic changes), upstream Drivers (which means they can be shared with other upstream players as they are), but also means “Linux ecosystem”; D-Bus, X.org, GStreamer, GTK+/Qt/EFL, etc. Which means they take advantage of already existing System and Application Frameworks. And all they have to do, is build the Applications, which is not an easy task, but certainly easier than having to do all the previous ones.

Now, the problem when creating MeeGo, is that for reasons I won’t (can’t?) explain here, Maemo and Moblin were forced to switch from GTK+ to Qt. This might have been the right move in the long term, but it means rewriting two very big layers of the operating system, in fact, the two layers that differentiate the various mobile platforms for the most part. And this of course means letting go of a lot of talent that helped build both Maemo and Moblin.

For better or worse, the decision was made, and all we could do is ride along with it. And maturizing MeeGo, essentially means maturizing these two new layers being written not entirely from scratch (as Qt was already there), but pretty much (as you have to add new features to it, and build on top).

Now, did MeeGo fail? Well, I don’t know when this UI can be considered mature enough, but sooner or later, it will be (I do think it will be soon). The timeframe depends also on your definition of “mature”, but regardless of that, it will happen. After that, MeeGo will be ready to ship on all kinds of devices. All the hardware platform vendors have to do, is write the drivers, and the adaptation, and they already do anyway for other sw platforms.

Needless to say, the UI is irrelevant to the hardware platform.

So, here’s the proof that the lower layers are more than ready:

Just after a few months of announcing MeeGo IVI, these guys were able to write a very impressive application thanks to QML, and ignore the official UI.

The OMAP4 guys went for the full MeeGO UI. No problems.

Even though Freescale is probably not that committed to MeeGo, it’s easier to create demo using it (Qt; Nomovok) rather than other platforms. It’s even hardware accelerated.

Renesas also chose the Nomovok demo to show their hardware capabilities.

MeeGo 1.1 running on HTC’s HD2

One guy; yes, one guy. Decides to run MeeGo on his HTC, and succeeds. Of course, he uses the work already done by Ubuntu for HD2, but since MeeGo is close to upstream, the same kernel can be used. Sure, it’s slow (no hardware acceleration), and there’s many things missing, but for a short amount of time spent by hobbyists, that’s pretty great already.

This is one is not so impressive, but also shows the work of one guy porting MeeGo to Nexus S

And running on Archos 9. Not very impressive UI, but the point is that it runs on this hw.

Conclusion

So, as you can see MeeGo is already supported in many hardware platforms; not because the relevant companies made a deal with Nokia or Intel; they don’t have to. The only thing they have to do is support Linux; Linux is what allows them to run MeeGo, and Linux is what allows MeeGo to run on any hardware platform.

This is impossible with WP7 for numerous reasons; it’s closed source, it’s proprietary, it’s Microsoft, etc. It’s not so impossible to do the same with Android, but it’s more difficult than with MeeGo because they don’t share anything with a typical linux ecosystem; they are on a far away island on their own.

Nokia; from a burning platform, to a sinking platform

I’ve been thinking a lot about this decision to use WP7 from Nokia, as I’m sure many people have, but I’ve wanted to wait for the dust to settle down before blogging, so here’s what I think; it doesn’t make any sense from any point of view.

Technically, there is nothing that can compare to the linux kernel, which works on everything; supercomputers, mobile phones, TVs, routers, web servers, desktops, refrigerators, etc. Not only does it work, but it works well, much better than everything else. As an example, the work that has been done to scale linux’s vfs to many processors (64) does benefit embedded, because some operations are more granular. Or the work on power management lead by embedded helps web servers, where decreasing power consumption is also very much wanted. This creates a environment of synergy never seen before, where even competitors work together. Linux won the kernel race, and its use would only increase; the ones that try to fight against it would only fail miserably.

Open Source and a new kind of management

I’ve been watching some videos from Dan Pink, an American writer that concentrates on the science of motivation and I think they’re actually very interesting for most people, but specially reassuring for FOSS people…

If you ask an artist why they became an artist, a lot of them will say: I can’t do anything else; I have to do this… It’s the same thing. — John Yodsnukis

Dan Pink argues that for most of the tasks of the 21st century (which are more right-brain thinking), carrot and sticks (extrinsic motivators) don’t work, instead, intrinsic motivators should be used.

My favorite fringe theory: we evolved from aquatic apes

We are we so different from the chimpanzees? We are naked bipeds. Why? The Savanna theory has recently been found to be quite unlikely. So what are the alternatives?

Don’t underestimate Google Chrome OS, or Google for that matter

This is somewhat a response to the post “Let’s all take a deep breath and get some perspective” which criticizes Google mostly on the basis of the “failures” of Android and Chrome. But also, everyone is talking these days about Google Chrome OS, and how it is a silly idea. Is that so?

How to explain FOSS to normal people, or: What does mountain bikes, rap music, and FOSS have in common?

Amazing talk: Charles Leadbeater: The rise of the amateur professional

These are my favorite quotes:

• How do we organize ourselves without organizations? … You don’t need an organization to be organized.
• One of the reasons [this view] is wrong, is that the ideas are flowing back up the pipeline. The ideas are coming back from the consumers, and they’re often ahead of the producers.
• Big corporations have an in-built tendency to reinforce past success. They’ve got so much sunk in it, that it’s very difficult for them to spot new markets. Emerging new markets then, are the breeding grounds for passionate users.
• What we are seeing is a complete corruption of the ideal of patents and copyrights; meant to be a way to incentivize innovation, meant to be a way orchestrate the dissemination of knowledge. They are increasingly being used by large companies to create thickets of patents to prevent innovation taking place.
• The reason why despite all the efforts to cut it down, to constrain it, to hold it back… why these open models will still start emerging with tremendous force, is that they multiply our productive resources, and one of the reasons they do that is that they turn users into producers, consumers into designers.

TED videos about open source

Here is a bunch of videos that where presented in TED that talk about open source. It’s interesting to see how many ideas are shared by all the different presenters, but each has a different point of view. In all of them it’s obvious that some very big thing is happening.

N8x0 Amazon bestsellers

I’ve read similar stories but the actual position in Amazon.com was different. Now the positions are quite good.

Here you can see that the N800 is #1 and the N810 is #5.

I guess we must be doing something good

Technology that just doesn’t work

I was looking at some Phillip De Franco post and due to some copyright he didn’t include the video. Fortunately he has a link to it on CNN, I just have to watch a couple of ads and then… nothing. I really hate to watch advertisements and not the content I want. Thanks to YouTube I could watch it, I’m not sure if it’s illegal or not, but I watched CNN’s ads anyway already.

That reminds of the constant ads I have to watch when I see some Colbert Report videos. I have almost memorized the same Doritos ad, at least the could try to put different ones to be less annoying. Oh, and I can’t find any Doritos on Finland, so it’s a waste of time for them and for me.

It also makes me think about DRM. A lot of companies put a lot of locks so you can’t download online videos, you need to watch their ads, or pay some money, or you can buy some music but you need a DRM capable player, which limits the platforms you can run that of.

Did these big companies missed the memo? Scarcity is over with digital content. Stop faking scarcity and just let me watch the content when I want it, where I want it, thank you.

For the record the day In Rainbows was released I tried to buy the thing, but I was too lazy to get my debit card, fill all those fields, get the notification e-mail and all that stuff. I got it from bittorrent, I listened to it and the next day I bought it online for 10 euros. I don’t like MP3′s but I don’t have any other option. When the album is available in CD format I’ll download the torrent in FLAC format from bittorrent.

TED: Ideas worth spreading

Sometimes I browse the Interweb in search for something that is interesting, quick and enlightening and it often seems an impossible task. It’s easy to find lolcatz and stupid kids in YouTube, but not something with more essence.

I’m still not sure how but I found my fountain of interesting videos in TED. I think I found them in Google Video.

These are the ones I like the most so far:

David Bolinsky: Fantastic voyage inside a cell.
An amazing CG work that shows the mini-world of a cell, and how complicated and beautiful it is.

Hans Rosling: No more boring data.
This is what people mean when information is power.

Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.
Food leads to happyness and Malcom shows us the way to happiness on the future.

Emily Oster: What do we know about the spread of AIDS?.
A different point of view on the problems in Africa that makes complete sense.

Cameron Sinclair: Open-source architecture to house the world.
Another step for OpenSource to world domination.

Ken Robinson: Do schools today kill creativity?
A funny talk that shows us what we already know; schools are doing a poor job.

Eva Vertes: My dream about the future of medicine.
The future is in the next generation, and this girl proves that we really need to forget what we think we know.

Richard Dawkins: An atheist’s call to arms.
Let’s all stop being so damn respectfull.

Nick Bostrom: Humanity’s biggest problems aren’t what you think they are.
We are so near the wall that we don’t see what you real problems are as humanity.

Kevin Kelly: How does technology evolve? Like we did.
Is technology a new way of life?

Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights.
We are in a new era of communications; marketing should adapt accordingly.