“Bring back the tomcat”, or a reliable way to get to the MeeGo 2010 conference in Dublin

As an epigraph I will give a couple of quotes:

“Dima, * CENSORED *, tell me when the GUI of MeeGo is normal, and not of these scary little men with chopped heads, open mouths, black bandages, blue penguins and so on?” (From personal correspondence).

“... In addition to everything, the product is promoted by terrible angular people with a mouthpiece, who descended from the cartoons of the tabloids of the early 90s. Where is your favorite cat-flank? Why are there few birds? Round the people ... " (from public correspondence).
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It’s easier to answer the questions about “scary angular people”, which means we’ll start with them ... The weird characters of MeeGo are called “migons” ( meegons ), and they were drawn by the English agency Airside . Cat "barrel" and other birds Moblina, by the way, also their work. A large collection of vector migons lies on the page of the MeeGo Style Guide , it was from there that I took a green cat for a picture that attracts attention. It is completely legal *. However, the use of Migons - a matter of taste. These characters are intended for marketing rather than GUI. For example, in the MeeGo v1.0 build, they are being used with might and main, but the manufacturers of the acclaimed tablet with the non-original name WeTab have changed the interface to a complete unrecognizability. In any case, application developers for MeeGo have access to fairly detailed GUI design guidelines, right down to the color palette and the radius of the corners of the buttons.

Under the cat a bit of philosophy and answers to slightly more complex questions about MeeGo. As for very complex questions, they can be asked to special people at the MeeGo Conference 2010 in Dublin ... How to get there?


Having rummaged on an irreplaceable resource ark.intel.com, I counted there already 31 ( thirty one ) Intel® Atom ™ processor models. Starting from 1.8GHz dual-core 64-bit D525 and ending with a simple 600MGz E620 , but for $ 19 each.

Why do you need all this great diversity of species? To cover as many different devices as possible, ranging from nettops, to cars and phones (oops!;). The Atom processor family includes five lines of application. At the risk of sounding like a bore, I will list them once again: N - netbooks, D - nettops, Z - portable devices (including tablets), CE - consumer electronics, E - “Embedded” products. Thus, in the relatively near future, we will see Atom everywhere - from refrigerators to mobile phones.

It sounds pretty convincing, but ... It would be good if the success of the products was determined only by the correctly chosen processor. Alas, the harsh reality is much more complicated. As we have seen, the consumer market is ruled by software. After all, the requirements for functionality and user interface of the refrigerator of the TV are noticeably different from the requirements for the interface of the navigation system. What can I say - even the various add-ons over the same operating system have their supporters and opponents. But programmers need to somehow live with it all!

MeeGo was conceived to solve at least some of the existing problems. As stated in the official press release, this is a “ true open source project hosted at the Linux Foundation ”, therefore, any manufacturer can make an OS for the final product to your own taste and color. Fortunately, the system is designed to separate the interface level (User Experience) from Middleware and the core itself.


MeeGo basic architecture

So, the plan is: the great and terrible organization of the Linux Foundation is engaged in the release of basic releases with the active support of Intel and Nokia. OSV companies that supply Linux distributions to manufacturers make base releases for specific OEM and ODM needs. By the way, one of these OSV has become our Russian Linux Center . Then everything is as usual: software developers distribute their client applications either directly or through application stores like Intel AppUp (SM) or OVI *. If you wish, you can build an AppUp-based store with your own brand, as Asus is going to do, for example.


Business idea: from Linux Foundation to OSV and OEM

I would very much like to insert the word “Profit” here, but there is a small “but”. The bottleneck of this grand scheme is client software. Therefore, all its participants are extremely interested in making life easier for developers. First of all, of course, to developers using Qt * - the MeeGo API is based on this library. At the middleware level, there is a quite comprehensive set of services , including communication services, the Internet, graphics, media, and so on — apologists of the native code should not be left offended. The scheme looks very promising, but, as stated in the classic film “Well, again, everything must be checked” (C).


MeeGo Application Ecosystem: Qt, Runtime, and Native Applications

So we decided to check. Of course, with your help. While waiting for version 1.1, I would very much like to hear the opinion of the habrasoobshchestvo about MeeGo and how easy (or vice versa is not easy) to write (or transfer) applications for this system. Those who have already tried their hand at programming under MeeGo, as well as those who are still going to do it, we invite you to share experiences and talk about their achievements. Any development stage will be interesting: designing a user interface, power management, monitoring wireless networks, integrating into social networks, optimizing performance, libraries, tools, and so on.

All you have to do is write an article about your programming experience with MeeGo and publish it on the Intel® Software Network . If you already have ready, published copyright material - all the better! We do not require rights to an exclusive publication.

The winner of the competition will go to Ireland, the country of Jameson and Guinness. And in Ireland there will be a developer conference "MeeGo Conference 2010", which will be held in Dublin from 15 to 17 November. This is where you can ask true experts for your intricate questions. And hopefully get decent answers.



Those who do not like Guinness, waiting for our encouraging prizes - two brand new netbooks. Of course, with pre-installed MeeGo.

Good luck to all!
* PS When preparing the article, the characters of the MeeGo project were used. In the process of preparation, no migon was hurt. All trademarks belong to the person to whom they belong.