All the pros and cons of MeeGo
The MeegGo operating system owes its appearance to the rise in popularity of smartphones in recent years. Well, tell me, who, before the appearance of the iPhone, thought that applications needed to be downloaded from a special store, and not to be installed from a disc purchased in a tent? Who thought that all the necessary programs should be built into the PC? Who was interested in PC integration with social networks and mail? Now the OS, which does not know how to do all this, looks strange, but MeeGo does not belong to this.
MeeGo - the main hope of Intel and Nokia to create their own platform to produce smartphones, netbooks, tablets, build it into cars, refrigerators and irons. MeeGo was born from the joint development of companies on the Linux kernel - Maemo and Moblin, and roughly equally uses the achievements of both Nokia and Intel. But they are not united - AMD, the main competitor of Intel, unexpectedly jumped on the last car of developers, recognizing that MeeGo is likely to become the standard for such systems, and promising to invest its resources and knowledge in OS development. This means that netbooks and tablets with MeeGo will not only be on the Intel Atom, but also on AMD Fusion - long live the competition. The operation has two branches - Netbook UX and Handheld UX, which, as the names imply, are “sharpened” under different device types. I tested the "netbook" edition, but from the review you can understand the key features of the system as a whole. Netbook UX is made in the interface adapted for netbooks, the current version at the time of this writing is MeeGo 1.1, it is now available for download from Meego.com.
Start Screen MeeGo
The design is much more from Android, iOS and Windows Phone smartphones than from desktop Windows. After the download, which takes 25-30 seconds, the netbook meets the toolbar with the MyZone tab open - it allows you to quickly see what happened on social networks, look at calendar events and call up selected programs. The entire system is controlled through tabs, you can switch to them with a mouse click.
')
Application window
Running applications are displayed as thumbnails, this is just an extra
way to switch between active programs. But besides this, you can use the familiar Alt - Tab.
Running applications
Widgets or gadgets - no matter how you call them, the main thing is that on this tab you can fill the entire screen with many small programs that inform you about news, letters and other events graphically. The size and proportions change freely, the number of gadgets on the screen is not limited - if only you had enough space. Even now, when MeeGo has not yet captured one percent of the market, almost 1,200 widgets are available. It’s a pity I didn’t have any Russian widgets in the list, but they are nagging.
List of recently launched applications
The page shows a list of installed applications, without division into system and third-party. There are no folders here either, but you can put your favorite applications in a separate column - you will see them later in MyZone. File manager, general settings, application for downloading new programs, look here.
File manager
System settings are unusually simple - neither to you of the Administration Panel, nor to Archiving, nor to the Device Manager or registry settings. Everything is extremely simple and does not require intervention - by launching the device, you do not need to dig into the settings to bring it to the imputed state. True, how to add some drivers, or to see what the system picked up and what does not, also does nothing. But everything you need is there - you can set a system password so that enemies do not get to your data, adjust the language and keyboard layouts, adjust the brightness and sound, change the number of tabs and their order. For the average user such settings will be enough with the head.
Settings window
Twitter, Vkontakte, Facebook, Mamba, LiveJournal, Last.FM - they are all built in here by default, or rather, here you can add activity tapes that show “what people breathe” and what rumors are about. Here you can write what you care about and make your friends worry. But it wasn’t enough without a fly in the ointment - there are no Twitter settings at all, no retweet, search and profile browsing, too, I’m generally silent about blocking spammers. Everything is limited to just a tape of messages. With other services, the same thing - specific options and chips are missing as a class.
Twitter to MeeGo
The territory of Internet messengers - all your instant messaging contacts are concentrated here. Here you can add a myriad of services, including ICQ, Vkontakte, Google Talk, MySpace, Yahoo and Msn - only 22 pieces, and their number will clearly grow. You can set your status and wait for someone to write to you, and you can also strike a few lines for your friends by clicking on a friend’s miniature avatar. The right column shows the list of ongoing conversations. However, when you start a correspondence with a contact, you are transferred to a separate application - Pidgin, but you want the conversation to go straight from the tab.
Instant messaging window
This tab is titled “Your Pages”. Here are grouped thumbnails of the pages you visit so that you can launch them in a browser with one click. I expected that these pages could somehow be manipulated - moved, renamed, added. But so far there is no such functional - just pages in a row. When you click on them, Chromium is launched, which is a system browser. This is an open source project from Google, a slightly modified version of Chrome. It is unlikely that in the final release of the OS will be limited only to this browser, I hope for the releases of Opera and Firefox.
Internet tab
Here lives a multimedia harvester and commands music, video, podcasts, and online radio. You can create various playlists, give files evaluation. All media files that the system supports are opened by default here, including movies in avi and mkv containers. The player is not some kind of revelation - it is straightforward and has almost no settings or visual features, but this is apparently in order not to overload weak systems. He would not be in the least disturbed by the function of searching for covers and going to youtube, but for now it remains in dreams. If the capabilities of the standard library player are not enough, the system has a VLC Player that will open almost any video, allow you to switch tracks, change aspect ratios, change filters, etc. Everything that I fed to this player opened, however, our test netbook didn’t have enough power for heavy HD rips at 720p, but there's nothing to do with the player.
VLC player in MeeGo
Everything connected to the netbook will be displayed on this tab: flash drives, external hard drives, phones and other devices in the form of icons. I clicked on a specific icon - I got access to it and see what files are inside. On the left is a brief information about your laptop - the battery level, the amount of free memory on your hard disk. An external hard drive and two phones, on Symbian and on Android, were recognized as drives, no jambs were detected here. The backlight and volume are adjusted by two sliders. In the center are six of the most important folders for the user - documents, downloads, music, pictures, video and shopping cart. Click on the icon and you are in the file manager showing the contents of one of these folders.
Devices tab
MeeGo developers have not forgotten that a modern user has a lot of copy-paste
and took care of that. In the buffer all copied pieces of text are grouped - but there are no settings here either. It is not clear why the copied images are not displayed here, or why it is impossible to edit a piece of text for insertion. Of the available options, there is only the deletion of the copied text and the cleaning of the buffer, and of course the repeated copying of the necessary fragment for pasting.
Immediately behind the tabs are icons calling up the wireless network settings - Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Everything is simple and clear with the “blue tooth” - it is possible to turn it on, turn it off and look for new devices for pairing. With Wi-Fi it is more interesting - each connection can be configured in two accounts - set the ip, address, subnet mask and carry out other similar manipulations. And you can just click the "connect" button and after a couple of moments you are online. If there were no problems with Wi-Fi, then devices with Bluetooth worked somehow unstable - when trying to transfer files they fell off. Maybe this is the trouble of the transmitter itself, maybe the pairing devices are difficult to install.
Advanced Wi-Fi settings
Contrary to the name, here you can view not only the calendar date and time, but also appointments and tasks. If necessary, it is easy to go from here to the program - the organizer (called Evolution) and to the task manager (Pimlico).
Time, date and calendar
As in the smartphone axes, MeeGo has its own app store, called MeeGo Garage. While he is in its infancy and contains a very tiny number of programs. But since this OS is based on Debian Linux, you can install Linux applications here, though not all, and this requires certain skills. In addition to MeeGo Garage, manufacturers will have their own app stores, such as the Nokia Ovi Store.
Meego garage
On this, it seemed, the review could be completed. If not for the netbook on which MeeGo was installed. An interesting inscription was found on the bottom of the device: the manufacturer: LLC Vostok Center, Vladivostok. The netbook is actually assembled in Vladivostok, but from Chinese components. About this also tells the sticker on the bottom of the netbook.
Not everyone will like the DNS color scheme: the case is red, the keys are black, the touchpad is golden, and the dual touchpad button is silver. The assembly is not bad, but when lightly pressed, the netbook case crunches. All the necessary ports are available (three USB, VGA, card reader, network connector). There is even a place for HDMI. But in view of the fact that the netbook doesn’t pull even 720p, this port (or rather, its absence) is covered with a rubber stopper. The keys are fashionable, island type. But they don't seem to like it when they are pressed, and they strive to push your fingers back.
DNS 123878
Overall, the Vladivostok PC left a positive impression. It is possible that the new models of netbook DNS, we want to take already on a full review.
MeeGo is a new milestone in operating systems for computers, it initially has almost everything that the average user needs, whether it is support for social networks or watching downloaded movies. It took me half an hour to master its interface. It's also nice that the Windows keyboard shortcuts, such as Alt-Tab, Ctrl-A or Ctrl-V, work, although if you experiment, you can also call the legendary command line (Alt-F1). The system is far from perfect - here and there you come across a lack of the usual and quite simple functionality, but it is quite efficient and fairly stable - it can already be used for its intended purpose: to browse Internet pages, play movies and music, open office files and read mail, in passing Corresponding with friends in ICQ and Google Talk. As an operating system for a netbook, it can replace or stand next to Windows 7 or XP. MeeGo, of course, is poorer in the settings, and fewer programs for it are available, but it loads faster, it has easier access to popular functions, and 90% of the necessary applications are already installed and do not require money or registration. When MeeGo gains strength and acquires a good base of applications, I will definitely put it on my netbook.
PS As part of the “Meego Week” on NOMOBILE.RU, Maxim Makarenkov wrote a crushing column on this axis: “On the one hand, it’s really easy and well suited for netbooks. On the other hand, this is a complete perversion of the very idea of ​​free software, since it drives the user into the rigid framework of pre-installed programs and restrictions imposed by the interface. ” →
What is what
MeeGo - the main hope of Intel and Nokia to create their own platform to produce smartphones, netbooks, tablets, build it into cars, refrigerators and irons. MeeGo was born from the joint development of companies on the Linux kernel - Maemo and Moblin, and roughly equally uses the achievements of both Nokia and Intel. But they are not united - AMD, the main competitor of Intel, unexpectedly jumped on the last car of developers, recognizing that MeeGo is likely to become the standard for such systems, and promising to invest its resources and knowledge in OS development. This means that netbooks and tablets with MeeGo will not only be on the Intel Atom, but also on AMD Fusion - long live the competition. The operation has two branches - Netbook UX and Handheld UX, which, as the names imply, are “sharpened” under different device types. I tested the "netbook" edition, but from the review you can understand the key features of the system as a whole. Netbook UX is made in the interface adapted for netbooks, the current version at the time of this writing is MeeGo 1.1, it is now available for download from Meego.com.
Start Screen MeeGo
Desktop
The design is much more from Android, iOS and Windows Phone smartphones than from desktop Windows. After the download, which takes 25-30 seconds, the netbook meets the toolbar with the MyZone tab open - it allows you to quickly see what happened on social networks, look at calendar events and call up selected programs. The entire system is controlled through tabs, you can switch to them with a mouse click.
')
Application window
Zones
Running applications are displayed as thumbnails, this is just an extra
way to switch between active programs. But besides this, you can use the familiar Alt - Tab.
Running applications
Gadgets
Widgets or gadgets - no matter how you call them, the main thing is that on this tab you can fill the entire screen with many small programs that inform you about news, letters and other events graphically. The size and proportions change freely, the number of gadgets on the screen is not limited - if only you had enough space. Even now, when MeeGo has not yet captured one percent of the market, almost 1,200 widgets are available. It’s a pity I didn’t have any Russian widgets in the list, but they are nagging.
List of recently launched applications
Applications
The page shows a list of installed applications, without division into system and third-party. There are no folders here either, but you can put your favorite applications in a separate column - you will see them later in MyZone. File manager, general settings, application for downloading new programs, look here.
File manager
System settings are unusually simple - neither to you of the Administration Panel, nor to Archiving, nor to the Device Manager or registry settings. Everything is extremely simple and does not require intervention - by launching the device, you do not need to dig into the settings to bring it to the imputed state. True, how to add some drivers, or to see what the system picked up and what does not, also does nothing. But everything you need is there - you can set a system password so that enemies do not get to your data, adjust the language and keyboard layouts, adjust the brightness and sound, change the number of tabs and their order. For the average user such settings will be enough with the head.
Settings window
Status
Twitter, Vkontakte, Facebook, Mamba, LiveJournal, Last.FM - they are all built in here by default, or rather, here you can add activity tapes that show “what people breathe” and what rumors are about. Here you can write what you care about and make your friends worry. But it wasn’t enough without a fly in the ointment - there are no Twitter settings at all, no retweet, search and profile browsing, too, I’m generally silent about blocking spammers. Everything is limited to just a tape of messages. With other services, the same thing - specific options and chips are missing as a class.
Twitter to MeeGo
People
The territory of Internet messengers - all your instant messaging contacts are concentrated here. Here you can add a myriad of services, including ICQ, Vkontakte, Google Talk, MySpace, Yahoo and Msn - only 22 pieces, and their number will clearly grow. You can set your status and wait for someone to write to you, and you can also strike a few lines for your friends by clicking on a friend’s miniature avatar. The right column shows the list of ongoing conversations. However, when you start a correspondence with a contact, you are transferred to a separate application - Pidgin, but you want the conversation to go straight from the tab.
Instant messaging window
the Internet
This tab is titled “Your Pages”. Here are grouped thumbnails of the pages you visit so that you can launch them in a browser with one click. I expected that these pages could somehow be manipulated - moved, renamed, added. But so far there is no such functional - just pages in a row. When you click on them, Chromium is launched, which is a system browser. This is an open source project from Google, a slightly modified version of Chrome. It is unlikely that in the final release of the OS will be limited only to this browser, I hope for the releases of Opera and Firefox.
Internet tab
Media
Here lives a multimedia harvester and commands music, video, podcasts, and online radio. You can create various playlists, give files evaluation. All media files that the system supports are opened by default here, including movies in avi and mkv containers. The player is not some kind of revelation - it is straightforward and has almost no settings or visual features, but this is apparently in order not to overload weak systems. He would not be in the least disturbed by the function of searching for covers and going to youtube, but for now it remains in dreams. If the capabilities of the standard library player are not enough, the system has a VLC Player that will open almost any video, allow you to switch tracks, change aspect ratios, change filters, etc. Everything that I fed to this player opened, however, our test netbook didn’t have enough power for heavy HD rips at 720p, but there's nothing to do with the player.
VLC player in MeeGo
Devices
Everything connected to the netbook will be displayed on this tab: flash drives, external hard drives, phones and other devices in the form of icons. I clicked on a specific icon - I got access to it and see what files are inside. On the left is a brief information about your laptop - the battery level, the amount of free memory on your hard disk. An external hard drive and two phones, on Symbian and on Android, were recognized as drives, no jambs were detected here. The backlight and volume are adjusted by two sliders. In the center are six of the most important folders for the user - documents, downloads, music, pictures, video and shopping cart. Click on the icon and you are in the file manager showing the contents of one of these folders.
Devices tab
Clipboard
MeeGo developers have not forgotten that a modern user has a lot of copy-paste
and took care of that. In the buffer all copied pieces of text are grouped - but there are no settings here either. It is not clear why the copied images are not displayed here, or why it is impossible to edit a piece of text for insertion. Of the available options, there is only the deletion of the copied text and the cleaning of the buffer, and of course the repeated copying of the necessary fragment for pasting.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
Immediately behind the tabs are icons calling up the wireless network settings - Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Everything is simple and clear with the “blue tooth” - it is possible to turn it on, turn it off and look for new devices for pairing. With Wi-Fi it is more interesting - each connection can be configured in two accounts - set the ip, address, subnet mask and carry out other similar manipulations. And you can just click the "connect" button and after a couple of moments you are online. If there were no problems with Wi-Fi, then devices with Bluetooth worked somehow unstable - when trying to transfer files they fell off. Maybe this is the trouble of the transmitter itself, maybe the pairing devices are difficult to install.
Advanced Wi-Fi settings
date and time
Contrary to the name, here you can view not only the calendar date and time, but also appointments and tasks. If necessary, it is easy to go from here to the program - the organizer (called Evolution) and to the task manager (Pimlico).
Time, date and calendar
Third Party Applications
As in the smartphone axes, MeeGo has its own app store, called MeeGo Garage. While he is in its infancy and contains a very tiny number of programs. But since this OS is based on Debian Linux, you can install Linux applications here, though not all, and this requires certain skills. In addition to MeeGo Garage, manufacturers will have their own app stores, such as the Nokia Ovi Store.
Meego garage
DNS 123878
On this, it seemed, the review could be completed. If not for the netbook on which MeeGo was installed. An interesting inscription was found on the bottom of the device: the manufacturer: LLC Vostok Center, Vladivostok. The netbook is actually assembled in Vladivostok, but from Chinese components. About this also tells the sticker on the bottom of the netbook.
Not everyone will like the DNS color scheme: the case is red, the keys are black, the touchpad is golden, and the dual touchpad button is silver. The assembly is not bad, but when lightly pressed, the netbook case crunches. All the necessary ports are available (three USB, VGA, card reader, network connector). There is even a place for HDMI. But in view of the fact that the netbook doesn’t pull even 720p, this port (or rather, its absence) is covered with a rubber stopper. The keys are fashionable, island type. But they don't seem to like it when they are pressed, and they strive to push your fingers back.
DNS 123878
Overall, the Vladivostok PC left a positive impression. It is possible that the new models of netbook DNS, we want to take already on a full review.
Summary
MeeGo is a new milestone in operating systems for computers, it initially has almost everything that the average user needs, whether it is support for social networks or watching downloaded movies. It took me half an hour to master its interface. It's also nice that the Windows keyboard shortcuts, such as Alt-Tab, Ctrl-A or Ctrl-V, work, although if you experiment, you can also call the legendary command line (Alt-F1). The system is far from perfect - here and there you come across a lack of the usual and quite simple functionality, but it is quite efficient and fairly stable - it can already be used for its intended purpose: to browse Internet pages, play movies and music, open office files and read mail, in passing Corresponding with friends in ICQ and Google Talk. As an operating system for a netbook, it can replace or stand next to Windows 7 or XP. MeeGo, of course, is poorer in the settings, and fewer programs for it are available, but it loads faster, it has easier access to popular functions, and 90% of the necessary applications are already installed and do not require money or registration. When MeeGo gains strength and acquires a good base of applications, I will definitely put it on my netbook.
PS As part of the “Meego Week” on NOMOBILE.RU, Maxim Makarenkov wrote a crushing column on this axis: “On the one hand, it’s really easy and well suited for netbooks. On the other hand, this is a complete perversion of the very idea of ​​free software, since it drives the user into the rigid framework of pre-installed programs and restrictions imposed by the interface. ” →
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/110569/
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