MeeGo Headed To Nokia N900, Atom-Powered Netbooks This Month [Intel, Nokia's Open-Source Mobile OS Is Being Rolled Out Soon]

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Nokia and Intel got some attention earlier this year when their two Android-killer open-source mobile operating systems were to be merged into one joint offering named MeeGo. Both of their earlier operating systems, Maemo and Moblin were seen as anti-Android attempts. Maemo was featured on Nokia’s N900 while Intel’s Moblin was going to be optimized for netbooks.

Intel’s Moblin will be the core of the new operating system, but it will use the application development platform of Qt, which is used in Maemo. The new MeeGoo will have support for both Nokia’s Ovi Store and Intel’s AppUp store. Apps written in Qt can also be used on Nokia’s Symbian OS, which just got an injection of life when Nokia made that open-source.

According to a posting by Valtteri Halla, a member of the MeeGo technical group, they’ve been making good progress on the new open-source mobile OS and they plan to have a rough draft of the OS finished by the end of this month.

Halla said that in addition to Qt apps, it will have support for the openSUSE development platform as well as for the RPM package manager. Other open-source technologies are being discussed.

Although the Nokia N900 shipped with Maemo, it’s unlikely that we’ll see anything as drastic as MeeGo being applied to the Nokia N900 via a OTA update. Those with Atom-powered netbooks will be free to install the new MeeGo although judging by the comments from Halla, the edition that will be released this month may not be the most stable.

Originally, when Nokia and Intel announced MeeGo, they said we can except new smartphones and netbooks to ship with MeeGo by the end of the year.