[maemo-community] [GSoC 09] - Integrating Maemo in Open Embedded

[From: David Greaves]

Kees Jongenburger wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 3:13 PM, David Greaves <david at dgreaves.com> wrote:
>> Also worth noting that we have some Zaurus people around and I/we did look at OE
>> for Mer but felt that we wanted more compatibility with maemo etc to allow
>> access to things like "Extras".
>>
>> There would be a *lot* of work in just repackaging software before you even
>> start to hack at any code.
> 
> The benefits of having the code really ready to be hacked and ported are huge.
> and I therefore really hope I can help on this project. Mer is an
> other excellent and
> but really different project with more focus on end-user usabilty v.s
> core reusability :p

I'm not sure it is as different as you think :)

Mer is about providing a distribution for small form factor and touch devices.
It is being designed to run on multiple hardware configurations.

I think the OE target is the tighter space of true embedded environments - think
Qtopia and memory/storage measured in 10s/100s MB.

Mer, maemo (and hildon) are more aimed at devices (like the internet tablets)
which have no problems running 'real' OSes but which benefit hugely from close
power management and UI enhancements. Here we use Xorg (and even OpenGL) and
measure RAM/storage in 100sMB/GBs.

Most of the previous/current and next-gen devices really fit in this category.

This means the compromises inherent in using .ipkg vs .deb hurt more than they
help... hence Mer's Ubunutu/OBS decision.

Now we are working on factoring out the hardware and platform specifics to allow
 true multi-device support.

David

-- 
"Don't worry, you'll be fine; I saw it work in a cartoon once..."