Mer/Events/UKUUG 09

See http://summer2009.ukuug.org/Talks

David Greaves/lbt to present:

=Abstract : Mer - Touching Linux=

Mer is a new operating system for small, mobile touch-screen devices.

The premise is that we should stop seeing the tablets as strictly under-powered embedded systems, and see them for what they really are: powerful, power-efficient, economical handheld computers.

Mer is, of course, Linux based and layers the best open-source elements of Nokia's Maemo platform over a modern Ubuntu distribution; furthermore Ubuntu-MID have selected Mer as the foundation for their next release.

Currently Mer runs on the Nokia N8x0 & 770 range, the Freerunner, SmartQ tablets and beagleboards. We expect to support the imminent Nokia N9xx device as well.

The talk will introduce issues around the the commercial/open interface in several areas, highlight successes and failures in this area and outline the Vendor Social Contract as a mechanism to codify the relationship.

I will also discuss the goals of the project and how we intend to address them by considering the design issues we face and some solutions.

Finally I will also cover our role as a midstream distribution and dip into how we handle distributed development, communication, processes, packaging and build management.

Mer is a Maemo.org project, supported by Nokia and benefits hugely from Novell's Open Build Service and the Gitorious project. http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer