I would like a Mer forum aswell

I'd like to see fewer forums, not more. KDE and Palm OS should definitely go (KDE most certainly isn't an OS and Palm really isn't in the context of Maemo). Android, Debian and Ubuntu are also mostly pointless (Deblet is unmaintained, Ubuntu doesn't have much Maemo-specific and I don't think any of them really get enough traffic to justify another subforum). You could Make a case for Mer, though that'd probably be better off another level up.

I had an idea just now.

How about:

Alternatives:

• Distros: Debian, Ubuntu, Mer, etc
• Operating Systems: Android, etc
• Desktops: KDE, Gnome, LXDE, etc
• Emulators: Garnet, DosBox, Hatari, etc.

I like the idea, but Distros and OS's is redundant; in the end, all we run on these things is Linux so everything is a Distribution (Android is just a mobile one).

I guess my attitude is: if you have to change the kernel, it's an OS, otherwise it's a distro.

Hey, I run OS2007 on my N800 and I _like_ it that way.. it is, to me, a better OS than the alternative (we'll see when Mer comes along, but there will never be an OS2008 on my N800).

As for the forum categories.. to me it's in practice of very little importance, because I, as I suspect many do, just click 'New Posts' when I visit the forum and then I go through threads solely based on the thread subject. The only time I look at the category at all is when the subject doesn't tell me enough - then I glance at the category tag and if it's off-topic I may decide to skip it.

About "Old" OS versions, note that nobody is saying they are old (which they are, for the reasons explained). It's their forums which are old and therefore are deprecated under the "Old" category. Any new post in those forums are either relevant to OS2008 / OS2006 (and therefore should be moved) or the answer to the post should just be "You better upgrade your OS".

I do see the difference between "Buy & Sell" and "Deals & Promos". However, how bug and useful is that different not to merge both in one since ultimately the whole thing is about buying and selling.

Moving "Upgrading" to Old would work for me.

About the current alternative OS/distros, I have only stated what is currently available. If you ask me, I would merge all the platform stuff you can run in Maemo compatible hardware under Alternatives since none of them have enough track nowadays for an own discussion forum.

Mer might be the exception, yes. How tied is Mer to Maemo 5? One option would be to have it as a subforum of "Maemo 5 / Fremantle". This would work at least during the Fremantle cycle, good enough to start with. Another option is to have it as a subforum under Alternatives, but specially if they keep being API compatible with Maemo I'd prefer to stress the similarities with Maemo instead of the "alternatives". Another option is to have it at the same level as Maemo 5 and Alternatives, but this might be confusing to many users not familiar with those projects: "is Mer an official Maemo platform or not?"

I will keep the first post updated according to the current conclusions.

Sure, but your are consciously in an old release and you won't go to ask support questions under OS2007.

Also true, but you are a frequent user and the organization of the forum is mostly relevant to newcomers and occasional visitors. If you make things wrong with them you have unsatisfied users and messy posts needing a relocation to the right place.

Sure, for Nokia software.. but it was always thus, wasn't it? Bug reports for the email app always went nowhere anyway. For 3party software it's a different story, just yesterday there was a nice update of maemo mapper for OS2007 and if I've got issues I'll be able to ask about it. But there's not a problem at all really, for 3party.


Good point, and I can only agree.

We want fewer forums, not more. I'd say we only need 'Alternatives', then somewhere for Mer to go.