Hi. Not sure if this is the best list to post to, but it seems the most suitable I've seen. Please advise if you can think of any more suitable and I'll repost there. I'm not subscribed to this list, so please CC me to any replies :)
First, some background: I've become very fond of Nokia's Debian-based platform known as "Maemo" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maemo). It's had 6 major releases to date since 2005 and My N900 running Maemo 5 is so inspirational to me as a developer that I love it to bits (aside from the minority of closed source components)...but that's mostly beside the point. For those not aware, Nokia decided to collaborate with Intel in 2010 to try and spread the load (heaven forbid they perhaps open sourced their mostly-close UI layer and let the community contribute *sigh*), and this was planned by merging the Debian-based Maemo with Intel's Fedora-based Moblin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moblin), the result of which was MeeGo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeeGo). MeeGo is much more Moblin-based than Maemo based...and this made me a little bit sad. Nokia got a new (ex-Microsoft) CEO, who almost certainly promptly killed the MeeGo collaboration and decided on Windows Phone instead as their platform going forward. Due to this, Intel has recently dumped MeeGo itself and partnered with Samsung et al. to create the Tizen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen) project instead, which by the sounds of it is going to be very much a clone of HP's WebOS (HTML/JS-based apps, etc). Now, the point: There are a number of potential projects being set up to create a community-managed replacement project without the corporate ownership issues that have plagued these former projects and resulted in their constant rebranding and loss of direction. Now, I'm a big Debian fan anyway, but Debian's extended project stability and architecture for handling multiple platforms seems a perfect fit for me as a base platform to base any distribution on, let alone a mobile-orientated distribution on. However, when making this case I seem to be constantly met with a barrage of statements that Debian is unsuitable. I've had dismissive statements thrown at me that .RPMs are better than .DEBs, that yum is better than apt, and how the repository structure is unsuitable for "mobile platforms" where there will apparently be "thousands of new apps each day". I even read one individual stating "Linux Foundation should be stronger and bring different players together, and shouldn't accept excuses like for example what Debian&Ubuntu gives against them starting to use rpm and retire deb". The "eloquence" of that individual aside, it's very difficult to have an reasoned discussion it seems. The end result being that most seem keen on continuing to base themselves on OpenSuse/Redhat. I suspect this all stems down from hostility to Nokia's treatment of the Meego platform and thus a desire to sever all ties to Maemo...but I really do see it as a crying shame at wasting the resources and experience that the Debian project has to offer. So basically, what I'm looking for is more evidence that I can use in these discussions to help make my case, as apparently Debian's resources and experience aren't apparently enough due to unspecified technical limitations of the support infrastructure that make it unsuitable for mobile devices. All I can discuss personally is that I've never had a broken system using Debian - I switched from Redhat 8 to the pre-release version of Debian Sarge in 2004 for precisely that reason. I'm also extremely fond of the Debian packaging process, but really don't have enough experience with packaging for Redhat to make a convincing argument one way or another. Personally I believe them to be near as as good as one another (has any attempts been made to reconcile them by the way? - Merging the best of both would seem to be a good way forward?), but it's the project backing I think will be far more valuable. -Jamie -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
