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Mer/About

Revision as of 20:37, 10 July 2009

Background

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

It is Linux based and layers the best open-source elements of Nokia's Maemo platform over a modern Ubuntu base.

The goals of Mer include:

• Integrate the best solutions for a wide variety of small form-factor devices
• Encourage wider access to device capabilities through the Vendor Social Contract
• Demonstrably provide an easy route to market for vendors
• Dramatically reduce costs to vendors of supporting EOL hardware
• Focus, harness and support community contributions to the platform
• Encourage and ease migration of existing applications
• Support experimentation, innovation and development

Mission

Mer platform development will be done in the open, with public SCM repository, bugtrackers, and Wiki-based blueprint discussion.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is Mer?

You did read the bit above? Oh, OK... from a user's point of view Mer aims to be a replacement for Maemo/Diablo.... but better! Note that we don't think it's there yet :)

• What can I do with it?

Ideally you could install and run any app that runs on Ubuntu or Maemo extras. Of course some apps just need too much resource, or need a mouse or are closed; but most apps will run.

You can't do that in Maemo/Diablo.

• Does it run inside Diablo?

No. Mer runs instead of Diablo - but don't panic, you can dual boot from one to the other; so if Mer isn't good enough just yet you can switch back to Diablo. Eventually we hope you won't need Diablo at all :)

• Can I install it on an internal/external SD card? (how big?)

Yes! It needs about 1Gb of space. The simplest thing is to use an empty 2Gb card.

• How do I install it?

Go to the installation page

Status

Mer is new and constantly developing so the status of support for hardware and applications is steadily improving.

History

Mer has evolved from discussion around reconstructing Maemo and a desire to make a proof of concept system of these thoughts. The M-R PoC developed into Mer after it was realised that it was - indeed - a viable environment for both developers and end-users.

Screenshots

You can see the current release screenshots here