MeeGo Coming To Desktops, Laptops Too

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MeeGo is the joint-effort of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin mobile Linux-based operating systems. It’s being optimized for Intel’s Atom processors as well as ARM processors – and it’s intended for mobile phones, netbooks, and other lightweight devices, but Intel says it’s also headed to notebooks and laptops, too.

Doug Fisher, Intel VP of Software & Services, says to IDG that not only MeeGo be running on netbooks, but Atom-powered nettops, too. They’re also working on a version of MeeGo that will run on Intel’s full Core processors. Definitely an interesting move.

But, Intel isn’t interested in becoming a Linux distributor or competing with the likes of Ubuntu. According to Ars Technica, they’re looking to “supply a heavily optimized reference implementation that other Linux vendors can use.” Ars goes on to say that this is similar to the approach they took with Moblin, before they started MeeGo.

Remember, the public got its first look at MeeGo’s UI, and it was heavily optimized for sort of a casual netbook experience (as well as a second UI for mobile phones). I don’t think that tablet/netbook UI would be very good on a destkop – so they might have to ditch that for a conventional Windows-style UI.

Those of you eagerly waiting for MeeGo, the Intel-Nokia team has released some early builds of the new OS, with us being told that we can expect the first MeeGo devices to come by the end of the year.