MeeGo is a Linux-based software environment designed for devices including netbooks, tablets, smartphones, and in-care entertainment computers. Each version is a little different, and this week the folks behind MeeGo launched the first public version of MeeGo IVI for in-vehicle-infotainment systems. It’s available for download right now, and thanks to the magic of YouTube searching, you can check out a demo video after the break.

The UI is quite different from what you’ll see on other versions of MeeGo. Clearly MeeGo IVI isn’t just designed to be touched… the program launcher is designed to be touched while you’re concentrating on other things like… you know, driving a car.

Unfortunately, that’s just the program launcher. When you delve a little deeper, it looks like MeeGo IVI is running pretty standard Linux apps which make the audio and video players, for instance, look a bit clunky for something you’re suppose to interact with from the passenger’s seat — let alone the driver’s seat.

The Fennec web browser, text editor, and other apps are also going to give this operating system some geek cred, but it’s not really clear if these are the sort of apps most people will be running in a car. At least Fennec was clearly designed for smartphones and thus for finger-friendly input instead of a keyboard and mouse.

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8 replies on “MeeGo Linux for in-vehicle computers now available”

  1. whats odd is that it looks to be using GTK, not Qt as they where supposedly going to make all of meego use (altho it is available in lib form).

    also, whats up with the iso, it seems to be limited to a very narrow band of recent intel cpus. I thought meego was a collaborative project, not a intel showcase. At least they could provide a generic 686 build so that people could try it out in a emulator or on more generally available hardware. As i suspect they have a compile-farm on hand, that should not take them long vs the community doing the same.

    1. It’s actually limited to CPUs with SSE3, and in other news, AMD are joining the MeeGo Consortium.

  2. The real question in my mind is that since Android has such a head start as the Open Source / Linux OS for phones and mobile devices, will MeeGo ultimately succeed… Obviously it has big backers and bringing out these new versions / derivatives is a good idea… But will it conquer Android?

    1. I think meeGo will win Android in the long run. The main reason is Linux Foundation. Android’s problem is that it is totally controlled by Google and carriers don’t like to be controlled by Google

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