MeeGo First Build Is Now Available For Download And Testing

Wow, talk about quick implementation. It was only 1.5 months ago that the world was introduced to the mash-up of Maemo and Moblin, and now the first go at MeeGo is on. "Day 1 is here," states the beaming post from a MeeGo development board, and it really says it all. Google's Android operating system has all but taken over the mobile space when it comes to MIDs and UMPCs, but with names like Intel and Nokia behind this project, we could definitely see this leading to competition.

Today, MeeGo is finally available to download by developers, but it's still not quite fully cooked and ready for use on devices by general consumers. Still, anyone with a Nokia N900 smartphone, an Atom netbook or a Moorestown MID will be able to load it, and MeeGo higher-ups are hoping to get a good bit of feedback from early users, with all of the appropriate download and reporting links at the Via below. Are you going to give this a chance? Has Android grabbed your heart?

What are we opening? The MeeGo distribution infrastructure and the operating system base from the Linux kernel to the OS infrastructure up to the middleware layer. The MeeGo architecture is based on a common core across the different usage models, such as netbooks, handheld, in-vehicle, and connected TV. The MeeGo common core includes the various key subsystems including the core operating system libraries, the comms and telephony services, internet and social networking services, visual services, media services, data management, device services, and personal services. More on this will be described on meego.com over the next few days.

The downloaded images will boot from a USB stick or directly flashed on the device from your Linux PC, but since the MeeGo User Experiences for the usage models mentioned previously are not yet included in today's MeeGo core, these images will boot into terminal.

After Day 1, the rest will follow soon – in the next few days, we will post the next steps leading to the first release of MeeGo in May.

The images available today are: Intel Atom-based netbooks, ARM-based Nokia N900, and Intel Atom-based handset (Moorestown). These images can be downloaded from http://meego.com/downloads

The corresponding package (RPM) repositories are at repo.meego.com/MeeGo and the git source repositories are available at http://meego.gitorious.org/. Bugzilla is at http://bugzilla.meego.com/

Please download, test, and provide feedback. The wiki on meego.com and the MeeGo mailing lists are excellent ways to share information and ask questions.

We'll post a proposed timeline soon which should answer your questions about opening the user experience, applications, and application framework repositories. For now, please take a look and let us know what you think.