1) Will Meego for the n900 run existing maemo software (there are rumours of a compatibility layer)?
2) Will the n900 be powerful enough to run the meego ui properly?
3) In practice is the UI an efficient design (e.g. does it scale to n900 physical screen size) because maemo's UI is pretty minimal (a "good thing")?
As long as everyone stick to Intel HW and want to install the "default" MeeGo, no problem. If Intel manages to force others to open their source, this is very good, but I'm not convinced that this would be the result, it can go either way. Lets say ASUS, HP, Acer, MSI, Dell, Samsung and all the large ones decide to deliver netbooks with MeeGo preinstalled. Then the "openness" of any of the drivers is a no.issue. Surely an all Intel config will work as is, but other configs may be cheaper (and better).
I don't see the problem, it's not like they don't have a choice - open up, and have full support on a distro level just like Intel does, or go blob/OEM, when they have to do their own support (and be ranted/cursed to hell when lack of open/well maintained drivers cuts off your users from upgrades). I mean, the way you put it, it turns out Debian is not a distro but an OEM OS...
I think the Nokia Meego phone looks good. I dont think I will wait past November for it though. I already went through both the N97 and N900 preorder/release date fiascos, and I plan to have the end 2010 be less stressful.( by that I mean not spending countless hours on the phone with customer service reps ordering, cancelling, ordering again, and then ultimately just buying in in store sooner than a preorder gets out).
I don't see the problem, it's not like they don't have a choice - open up, and have full support on a distro level just like Intel does, or go blob/OEM, when they have to do their own support (and be ranted/cursed to hell when lack of open/well maintained drivers cuts off your users from upgrades). I mean, the way you put it, it turns out Debian is not a distro but an OEM OS...
Time will tell. MeeGo has to be distributed and catch on first, and compete with Microsoft and Chrome OS. I'm not sure how Chromium OS is/will be regarding drivers, but if that OS works out of the box for 90% of the netbooks (compared with 20-30% for MeeGo), the time for Meego on Netbooks surely will be short.
