http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11...lost_platform/
Enjoy

Long live maemo.org!

Edit: meh, beaten by lma

I know I've been almost obsessed with it ever since but most people have no idea how it all started

Amazing maemo, long life.

Happy Birthday Maemo,May Nokia resurrect you.

Around 2005 I bought a Nokia n-gage because I was kinda obsessed with mobile gaming. I didn't know what smartphone meant, and I was completely shocked with the n-gage. I spent hours and hours downloading every. sis file I could get my hands on, and had fun joking with my friends by logging in to msn via gprs. I've had a smartphone ever since including a lame htc windows mobile (which I chose over the N91 because of it's larger screen and touch input despite not having a 3.5mm jack). Full hotswappable sd was a charm though. All my other smatphones were nokia and I would never abandon symbian for anything after the WM nightmare. A friend of mine had the marvellous 770 but anything without gsm seemed useless to me. Wifis weren't readily available outside and at home I had a laptop so I thought I had little use for an Internet Tablet. When the N900 came around though I knew that was the device for me. I didn't even look at the specs before buying, and I didn't regret it for a moment. I signed up here the same week and now I got me a N9 even though the specs disappointed me only because I wanted to remain part of this community. It's a fine phone, better than any other phone I've used but the N900 remains always in the other pocket as my internet tablet. (I used the N900 as a phone very briefly when I had two of them. All other times the N900 was doing it's duty as a 3G pocket computer)

Still now I find myself often reacting to friends' awe when their smartphone gets a new feature (like skype videocall) with a snobbish "Yeah really? The N900 could do that in 2009"

After using maemo for less that a year I switched my laptop to ubuntu and learned to love the terminal. I also changed my perception of a modern ui and the influence of maemo can be seen on my work as ui designer. Finally I dipped my toes into qt and python, debian packaging and even gtk.

Thank you maemo, the naemo community and happy birthday!

May 2005 I was not into mobile devices at all. It took a long time to get me convinced using a mobile phone at all. I think I got (or more precise, was forced to ) my first mobile phone (a 2nd hand Siemens S66) in 2004.

Back then I was developing gDesklets for GNOME (http://gnomedesktop.org/node/1265). That's why I was at GUADEC 2005 in Stuttgart, where Nokia was showing the Nokia 770 to us.
It was an amazing device and we were all drooling over it. Later that year I registered for the 770 device program and got accepted to receive my 770 for 100 EUR in October 2005.

Summer 2005 was a also a special time for me as I graduated from university, co-authored a book (http://www.amazon.de/Exploring-Pytho.../dp/3935042698), and started a company.

In may 2005 I was writing an application for our main customer to run under Linux (they're a windows shop, they sadly still are nowadays).
I used lazarus (I always liked pascal) which at the time wasn't as mature as it is now.
They're still using it 24x7.
Oh, I was also successfully running Linux on a laptop, I was been doing it for several years.

Same here, though I was lusting after the clamshell Zaurus models at the time (but I couldn't afford to pay what seemed like a first class return flight to Japan to buy an imported one). My first mobile phone purchase was a Neo1973, but that was mostly a case of http://fsmsh.com/3053. I've bought a couple more since, primarily for use as modems, but I still hate the whole phone concept.

The irony is that back in May 2005 I had somehow ended up doing (what today would be called) devops for a bunch of SymbianOS projects, so as you can imagine Nokia was The Enemy (they even had some crazy "Platform Security" ideas back in those days too).

Still, my jaw dropped when I read the Maemo/770/Linux patent grant announcements and I immediately knew I had to have a 770 (which I ordered the day it was launched).

A GNOME, large screen, Internet-connected but non-phone handheld computer was an amazing vision, for which I will always be grateful. Pity it only lasted 3 years :-(