Why I lo(ve)athe the n900
Edited to include some of my gripes, if you just want to see the list, scroll to the bottom
This is going to get an instant dismissal from the Nokia faithful, but bear with me and I guarantee you will see what I see in some capacity.
Lets get one thing straight first, I love what Nokia have done for Linux, from their first offerings pre-770 to what they do today, they do a great job. I know many of the current (and past) team that care so much about how Linux will someday become the default smart-phone choice that I somewhat feel a little sorry that they pioneered a route that may be occupied by others.
The future of Linux for the mass market?
There was a little uproar in the open source community here in the UK when the BBC covered the Windows 7 launch. It was rightly pointed out that Apple didn't get any coverage for Snow Leopard and Linux in general never really gets a shout at all so what's going on?
Well in the interests of fairness one Canonical employee decided to send the reporter a netbook with a copy of Karmic (the next Ubuntu release) on it.
ELC2009 Europe
On the 15th and 16th of October 2009 around 200 people gathered together in the beautiful south-easten French city of Grenoble, situated at the foot of the French Alps, to talk about embedded Linux. Although there were many talks over the two days the underlying theme of the conference seemed to be boot-time reduction and android.
Maemo Summit 2009
I'm sat in the wonderfully picturesque Grenoble, France, sipping a beer and gazing at the huge mountains around me (but that's for another post). I'm also reminiscing about the Maemo Summit 2009 so I thought I would put a few comments down.
I'm not going to harp on about how great the summit was, or how cool Nokia are for giving away 300 loan devices to the attendees (although I know at least one person left theirs in the back of a taxi in Amsterdam 
) but instead I'll just commend Nokia for their efforts with the N900. They have worked tirelessly to get a mainstream, Linux based phone to market that is both hugely configurable and extendable. One could harp on about the seeds of Linux based phones being sown with the likes of the LiMo initiative, Open Moko and more recently, Android, but I know of no other company that has advanced many core Linux components with a huge amount of effort and funding than Nokia.
The current device may not be to everyones taste and may not even be ready for mainstream just yet but I raise my glass to you, well done Nokia!
About
Hi, my name is Jamie Bennett. I'm a technologist, programmer, researcher, tech evangelist, open source monkey, linux user and self confessed gadget freak.
I also work for Canonical as a "Ubuntu Mobile Developer".
Archives
- February 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007