In what can surely be called a surprise move, Nokia has announced that it will enter the netbook market with an Atom-based netbook which will ship with Windows 7. While many of the components appear relatively normal compared to other netbooks, it does come with a few features that will set the device apart from the rest. Instant update: Ars believes this is the first Intel Pine Trail netbook.
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Member since:2005-07-06
1.) The upcoming Nokia internet tablet / MID is a niche product, unlike a netbook. Check the sales numbers of MIDs vs. netbooks.
2.) The upcoming MID likely is in development since before the Qt-Maemo announcement.
3.) MIDs are not the same as netbooks. You can't just slap a MID-targeted GUI (Maemo 5) onto a netbook. There is no official netbook GUI by the GNOME project. The closest thing is Canonical's UNR launcher.
4.) If Nokia even has plans to support Linux on netbooks sometime in the future, likely Nokia wants the same apps (Ovi Maps etc.) on Windows and Linux.
As I quoted earlier, Qt in the mandated development toolkit inside Nokia. So it's logical that Nokia prefers the one desktop environment that's already Qt-based and on top of that Nokia already employs a significant number of developers. Are Aaron Seigo and co. (paid by Nokia) just developing "plasma-netbook" just for fun or are they serving concrete plans from Nokia?
In the past Trolltech paid KDE devs, because KDE served as technology demo for Qt and hence drove Qt's commercial licensing. Maybe Nokia is just a sponsor for better publicity, but maybe Nokia actually wants to use plasma-desktop itself.
Member since:2008-12-26
IIUC, KDE devs like aseigo do not report to Nokia, they are merely sponsored by them. KDE is still an independent project.
Edited 2009-08-25 21:00 UTC
Member since:2005-07-07
But you have to understand something very important, GNOME Mobile (a real project) and GNOME project as all has real values for companies... you may call GTK+ a weak point but all other underline technologies is so unique and no other desktops present such as rich and free technologies for companies to use...
Member since:
2005-07-07
oh damn! someone wrong on the internet, I must fix it....
as I understood, directly from Nokia staff, also as reported here on OSNews, next nokia tablet is GNOME Mobile, full stack, plus Qt as primary UI toolkit... GTK+ is not going anywhere AND it will not have a single line from KDE... nor KDE's upcoming netbook GUI, if there's any