Committed to Maemo 5

I gone and done it, I’ve committed to a pre-order for a Nokia N900 from Amazon so sometime in the next X Days I’ll be on the Maemo 5 bandwagon. After pondering Android, Vodafone 360, Palm WebOS and Maemo, I had to choose a platform based upon HOW I USE a phone rather than as a Carrier would have me use one. It’s the one phone that most mimics my current use, a Palm T/X with a tethered Nokia 6300. Since Vodafone has killed my tethering of the Nokia, I’m reduced to using the T/X WiFi only, and there is a dearth of free WiFi sites in Ireland. Given that the Blazer browser in the T/X is functionally obsolete pointed me at a ‘Full’ OS device like Maemo. And while I can, and have booted Angstrom on the Palm, it’s inability to connect WiFi and Bluethooth make that configuration interesting, but useless. Android, and particularly the Hero was especially appealing, and was my second choice. But Android appears more like a ‘Widget marketing’ platform where only the underlying core was open source. Maemo is a full fledged Linux, although not mainstream, I can hack Linux. And while the current lack of Java is curious and worrying I do know, and it has, other programming language support, even MySQL (older version).

So what is the N900, it’s a portable Linux system, with a phone app in it. more or less what I have already. I understand that! Now all I have to do is be patient until my new toy ships. Here’s hoping is ships early. 🙂

I will miss the Palm T/X, but it’s already been repurposed as a Internet radio on it’s desk stand in my office. The Nokia 6300 will also be missed, I wonder if the wife will let me keep it around as a standby?

UPDATE: More reasons for my choice Software freedom and someone else who agrees with me Maemo offers more freedom