In theory, this move to a completely open source system is great news. But I swear I've only heard one shoe drop. So I'll keep listening...

I think the primary strength of Maemo is maemo.org, the community. There really seems to be no (amateur) community over at moblin.org, and I will be quite upset if we lose that in the merge.

But I'll talk about that more in the other thread.

The biggest technical problem for me is the move from Debian to Fedora...

It seems to me that Easy Debian will be even more useful in the MeeGo future, because Moblin and Fedora have historically had a tiny application list available for ARM processors. Up until very very recently, Fedora's ARM repositories could be charitably considered "experimental". Debian, on the other hand, pretty much compiled the entire Lenny distribution for ARM. Ubuntu got there with Karmic, too.

So, having access to the ARM-friendly Debian and Ubuntu repositories is going to become even more important as the primary system aligns with Intel-centric Fedora instead.

I will have to learn, like all the other hackers and developers who have been chasing the Maemo car around as it makes its sudden, wild turns, how to make packages for the new system, and how to deal with the numerous "eccentricities" that MeeGo (and the Maemo "instances" of MeeGo) will introduce. You just have to think of it as a steeplechase, and then it is fun again.

I hope that Mer switches to rpm too, so I could at least understand the package format and help a little more.

That's the same experience as mine, as a long time mandriva user (as you know PCLinuxOs is derived from mandriva).
In fact I never understood the excitement about ubuntu (I tried it and I thought: wtf?)

As is mandriva, which, btw, is planning an arm repository.

I also believe that that decision was correct. But having a mobile (base) distribution seems to be well in Redhat's interests. It's a case where they can sell support to world's biggest companies by just doing what they are currently doing. There is no end-user interaction in mobile OS market, nor such a diversity and good-support is heavily needed. Redhat can support both base system and kernel/hardware and is sure the best (and perhaps the only) company that can do that.

I truly hope not.

Right now (as far as i understand it) Mer is Debian/ARM combined with as much Maemo things as can be build OpenSource on top of it.

Which is a GOOD thing.

What I hope for is Canonical picking up Mer and supporting it to create a Debian based alternative to this madness.

Agreed - I love the community here, I have faith however that we wont all take off after this, if anything things like this tend to spur people to become more Maemoee? (Yes its a word). I was lucky and went straight for Qt for my very tentative dev intro on this platform so I am hoping to get in on the ground floor for the new.

As far as the name. MeeGo, remember folks - you never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator. And I can only imagine that Nokia and Intel are hoping to capture the attention of as many LCD people as they can

http://meego.com/

Is that an N900.. on the front page??

This gives me some hope.

I hope...meego will apply at N900..if not, i kill myself N900 is new phone and if nokia and intel doesn´t able to aplly meego on n900, it kills this phone

Intel designs and fabricates their hardware; they write the drivers and choose to open source them. Nokia does not manufacture hardware at the transistor level. They license IP and drivers from other manufacturers and are limited in what they can release to the community. I don't see MeeGo being as open as Moblin is, at least in terms of Nokia handsets. A community backport doesn't hold much promise.

On the debate over rpm/deb, the advantage that .deb holds over .rpm isn't the format, it's the tools that are used to build and manipulate .deb packages. Nothing handles dependencies (especially orphaned dependencies upon removal) as well as aptitude. Given Debian's ARMEL arch and Ubuntu's recent port, it just makes sense not to gut Maemo. It's not a personal vendetta against Red Hat's success.

I don't want to jump to conclusions so soon, but right now MeeGo looks more like a frankenstein creation than a deliberate collaboration.

Playing devil's advocate... what will people do if MeeGo doesn't make it to the N900? I mean, it is step 4 out of 5.

Just curious.