MeeGo Is Starting To Be Usable On The Nokia N900

The Nokia N900 mobile-phone was released nearly one year ago with the Linux-based Maemo 5 operating system, but earlier this year is when Nokia and Intel decided to combine their Linux-based Maemo and Moblin operating systems, respectively, to form MeeGo. The MeeGo Linux distribution is now running well on Intel Atom netbooks and other devices and there is is even MeeGo IVI for your car and a MeeGo handset preview. However, support for the N900 within MeeGo hasn't been up to speed compared to the level of Maemo support or that of other devices playing well with MeeGo. The support though is slowly but surely catching up for the Nokia N900.

In a blog post at MeeGo.com there is a status update concerning this Intel-Nokia operating system running on the N900. While MeeGo isn't officially supported on this year-old device, running this Linux operating system on the phone now finally supports 3G audio call functionality with a PulseAudio stack using a new open-source modem adaptation. In recent weeks over the summer there's also been kernel, SGX driver, X.Org Server, and other package updates.

Resulting in additional work for this N900 MeeGo support is that the device is running a TI OMAP 3430 SoC processor, which is ARM-based. There's been some problems with the ARM port of the Fennec web-browser used by MeeGo, but those issues seem to be now sorted out.

This blog post additionally mentions that they are in the last phase of MeeGo 1.1 Handset UX and that MeeGo 1.2 development is already well underway. Coming from Nokia for MeeGo 1.2 with the N900 will be updates for the SGX drivers, camera stack, and accelerated video decoders.