MeeGo still defiantly developing

Meego is still kicking. It was dumped by Nokia and Microsoft, but a dedicated team is keeping the faith, and coding away furiously. The dev team has just released MeeGo 1.2 and things are looking very promising for this Linux-based smartphone/tablet/netbook/thingum operating system.

Early reports are very positive – while it’s still a bit rough, MeeGo is coming together as a contender in the netbook and media device environment, perhaps even for mobiles if a manufacturer or two picks it up. LG has been very supportive, and both Panasonic and Huawei have made noises. Intel is also still in the background as MeeGo’s fairy godmother.

Highlights of this release include:

• MeeGo Reference Kernels supporting a variety of Intel Atom and ARMv7 platforms
• QML Application Framework and extended Qt-Mobility APIs, including additional location, system, connectivity, and sensor/haptic capabilities for rapid, rich, application development
• Enhanced Telephony and Connectivity capabilities, including:
• GSM, GPRS, and HSPA+ network support
• SIM Application Toolkit
• Expanded Bluetooth profiles
• Expanded VPN and wireless authentication methods
• USB, WiFi, and BT-PAN data tethering capability
• Enhance multimedia support, including RTSP streaming with progressive download

This release also includes the following:

• Netbook UX 1.2 complete set of core applications for netbooks
• In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) UX 1.2 includes a sample IVI Homescreen and speech recognition enabled Application Launcher built with QML, as well as a collection of commonly used applications
• Tablet Developer Preview
• MeeGo SDK 1.2 for MeeGo Core OS and supported UXs

For those few folk that have a Nokia N900, there’s either vanilla MeeGo 1.2 images there’s a N900 Developer Edition release that has additional applications and bits and pieces.