MeeGo is a Linux-based open source mobile operating system project.Primarily targeted at mobile devices and information appliances in the consumer electronics market, MeeGo is designed to act as an operating system for hardware platforms such as netbooks, entry-level desktops, nettops, tablet computers, mobile computing and communications devices, in-vehicle infotainment devices, SmartTV / ConnectedTV, IPTV-boxes, smart phones, and other embedded systems. MeeGo is today hosted by the Linux Foundation.It was first announced at Mobile World Congress in February 2010 by Intel and Nokia in a joint press conference. The stated aim is to merge the efforts of Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo former projects into one new common project. According to Intel, MeeGo was developed because Microsoft did not offer comprehensive Windows 7 support for the Atom processor. Novell also plays a large part in the MeeGo effort, working with the Linux Foundation on their build infrastructure and official MeeGo products, and MeeGo is increasingly using more of Novell's technology that was originally developed for openSUSE, (including openSUSE Build Service, ZYpp for package management, and other system management tools). In November 2010, AMD also joined the alliance of companies that are actively developing MeeGo.
Harmattan, originally slated to become Maemo 6, is now considered to be a MeeGo instance (though not a MeeGo product), and Nokia is giving up the Maemo branding for Harmattan and beyond (Maemo 5, aka Fremantle, and previous versions will still be referred to as Maemo).In February 2011 Nokia announced a partnership with Microsoft for mobile handsets and the departure of Nokia's MeeGo team manager Alberto Torres, leading to speculation as to Nokia's future participation in MeeGo development.
MeeGo provides support for both ARM and Intel x86 processors with SSSE3 enabledand uses btrfs as the default file system.The Netbook UX is a continuation of the Moblin interface. It is written using the Clutter based Mx toolkit, and uses the Mutter window manager.
MeeGo's netbook version uses several Linux applications in the background, such as Evolution (Email, calendar), Empathy (instant messaging), Gwibber (microblogging), Chromium (web browser), and Banshee (multimedia player), all integrated into the graphical user interface.
The MeeGo Core operating system is a Linux distribution, drawing on Nokia's Debian-based Maemo and Intel's Fedora-based Moblin. MeeGo is one of the first Linux distributions to use the Btrfs file system as default, and uses RPM repositories.Intel said in a statement on Friday that it will continue development of the MeeGo operating system. MeeGo is a joint venture between Nokia and Intel that merges the Maemo operating system, used by Nokia on its N-series tablets, and Intel's Mobilin project. The mobile operating system was designed to power smartphones, tablets and embedded systems such as those found in networked television sets and car entertainment systems.
Following Nokia's announcement that it was adopting Windows Phone as its primary operating system for its smartphones, the Finnish manufacturer hinted that MeeGo will become a research platform used to explore the "next-generation devices, platforms and user experiences." One MeeGo device will be launched in 2011, but additional devices are not on Nokia's roadmap. During a Q&A session following Nokia's and Microsoft's big announcement, Stephen Elop called MeeGo "an opportunity for learning" , which implies Intel is on its own if it wants to make MeeGo a commercially-viable platform.
