Maemo on Debian
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Maemo on Debian
Motivation
The purpose of this project is to port the closed Nokia components of Maemo 5 to a Debian base system running on the Nokia N900 and future devices. It should be possible run both Maemo5 and standard Debian software on this platform natively and in the same environment. In the future, the project will package and integrate the MeeGo components and know-how to enable installation of MeeGo applications.
Why not MeeGo?
MeeGo is supposed to be a merger of Maemo 5 and Moblin and therefore the future of Maemo. While Maemo 5 is similar to Debian and reuses most of its tools and policies, it still significantly different from Debian so that porting Debian packages is not always trivial. Installation of native Debian packages is in most cases impossible.
For many users, the similarity to Debian and the relative openness of Maemo 5 has been precisely the reason why they have bought the Nokia N900. So far Nokia has not committed to porting Harmattan, the successor of Maemo 5, which is supposed to be MeeGo compatible, or the official MeeGo to the N900. Now, a few months after the public release, owners of the sophisticated, but expensive N900 are basically left with an abandoned OS and have little hope to be able to upgrade to its successors. This projects aims to give N900 users immediate access to the Debian software pool and the prospect to be able to install MeeGo applications in the future.
The commercial initiative of Intel and Nokia, called MeeGo, is supposed to be open-source and open for the community. However, important decisions have been made behind closed doors and are unlikely to change. One of those decisions is to switch from base system that is similar to Debian, to an independent base that uses the RPM package manager and that is not required to be compatible with any of the major Linux distribution. MeeGo users and developers could therefore only use and rely on designated MeeGo applications and libraries, if they do not port third-party software to it. MeeGo only targets mainstream, while this project aims to satisfy the needs of both mainstream and experts.
Advantages for users and developers
The integration of Debian, Maemo 5 and MeeGo in this project has the following advantages:
Users will have the freedom to install
- all Maemo 5 applications (incl. the non-free Nokia binaries),
- future mobile-optimized MeeGo applications (RPM packages), and
- all packages from the huge Debian software pool, which is constantly maintained and updated (incl. security fixes) by the Debian community.
- novel mobile applications written for this project and compatible with Debian
Only few packages will require modification to run on this platform (excluding complete GUI adapations). The main contribution of this project is to perform and maintain such modifications, and if possible, to send them upstream.
Developers of third-party apps could simply integrate all software packages (for example, libraries) that are available in the huge Debian pool, without the need to port and to maintain them themselves. If they are familiar with the mature Debian development tools and policies, there is no need to learn something new. They could also build and test the apps natively on their Debian desktop.