The developers of the MeeGo Linux project have launched MeeGo 1.1. While MeeGo is available as a standalone download, the group offers up the architecture for use in other Linux distributions as well, so it probably won’t be long before we start seeing versions of Linpus, Ubuntu, Fedora, and other operating systems using MeeGo’s custom user interface and performance optimizations for Intel Atom and ARM v7 processors.

MeeGo is based on the Moblin and Maemo Linux projects, and while Moblin was aimed at netbooks and Maemo at smartphones, MeeGo is available for both of those platforms — as well as in-vehicle entertainment systems.

The core operating system is the same for all three versions, but the netbook version comes with a set of applications and a user interface designed for laptop-style devices with 1024 x 600 pixel displays (give or take a few pixels).

The In-vehicle user environment looks completely different, as it’s meant to be navigated with your fingertips while you’re in a car. The focus here is letting you fin what you’re looking for quickly so you can get your eyes back on the road… there’s also support for speech recognition.

The smartphone/handset user experience supports making phone calls, sending SMS messages, surfing the web, and playing media on a handheld device. While Nokia isn’t officially supporting MeeGo, the software is designed to run on the Nokia N900 smartphone.

The handset version of MeeGo is still in an early development phase, but the team plans to launch MeeGo 1.2 in April with a more fleshed out Handset user experience with “a complete set of applications.”

There’s also a new MeeGo SDK 1.1 Beta which should be available soon for developers looking to write apps for MeeGo.

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7 replies on “MeeGo Linux 1.1 for netbooks, smartphones, in-car PCs now available”

  1. On testing in the past, I’ve been put off by the lack of customisation of the over-large menu bar thing – particularly its vertical size, which eats too much into 16:9 displays.

    Also Nokia’s muscle being flexed too much in not supporting 3G hardware from third parties that the Linux kernel copes with fine on other distributions.

    If these have been fixed, I might just give it another go, otherwise will save my broadband allowance!

  2. “MeeGo Linux 1.1 for netbooks, smartphones, in-car PCs now available”

    I’d love to see this on a 10″ tablet with a dual-core Arm A9 SoC.

  3. I tried the earlier version on my laptop and is lasted about a day. It was a very childish feeling white bouncy interface BUT was very quick and responsive. The interface looks like it might have grown so doesn’t look and feel childish but cant really install anything like a regular os so I wont be installing it on my netbook but if i get a tablet pc would love to try the new version

  4. Any netbook email client videos of this? Does it do IMAP (and sync calandar or contacts with Gmail via IMAP etc)?

    Will netbook version run LibreOffice – as that is really needed. Also, GIMP, Gwenview with KIPI plugins (that are wonderful), etc? Hmm, Will it run other Linux standard applications (such as stuff you would find in a typical Ubuntu or Debian repositories), or will it have it’s own FREE repositories?

    Dual boot with XP where you can hide the XP partion from view from Meego side for security of the XP NTFS partition?

    The Maemo stuff really hooked up quickly with WiFi – much better than any Ubuntu version… so- will the Maemo WiFi software be part of MeeGo too? Loved the N series devices running Maemo… if everything moved over to Meego only it all got better, then this will be fun to make into my own custom version.

    1. PS – also would love to use Thunderbird maybe with the Sync Kolab type feature that allows sync of contacts and calendar via any IMAP service.
      See:
      https://www.gargan.org/en/Mozilla_Extensions/SyncKolab

      “SyncKolab was written to add kolab functionality to thunderbird. It reads a selected Imap folder and synchronizes it with the local address book and calendar”.

      This type of feature needs to be available for all email clients.

        1. MeeGo is based on RPM’s. So while there is no guarantee that apps made for other distro’s will work from my experience all RPM’s worked with little to no trouble. I had skype installed on my MeeGo without any problems and installed a Bible software with only minimum problems. Pretty much I think you’ll be fine installing any program you want. It doesn’t work out quite as neat as a distro like Ubuntu with the software center and you have to install from the terminal but its not too bad.
          However I’m pretty sure in the end MeeGo wants to hog the developers and get apps made/compiled right for their version of Linux. So they’ll have their own repos eventually. There is already a pretty good community repo that you can use.
          MeeGo has Evolution integrated into the OS so idk what happens if you want to use another email client, I’m assuming that you could use another email client it just wouldn’t be integrated like Evolution is.
          Overall I found MeeGo to be a nice quick OS, but it integrated stuff that I don’t care about like, social networking and Empathy, the Chrome browser crashed a lot, and the network manager doesn’t connect to networks with security like PEAP but will connect to some simpler protected networks. And while initially it may look very childish you can change the backgrounds in the settings. It comes with some nice pictures from Hubble that I switched on and they looked really sharp.

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