I'm off to FOSDEM next weekend, so I've got my aged EeePC 901 out of the cupboard. It's the only laptop I have that can stand up to really long days without a power socket. I'm trying out a selection of the 'state of the art' in netbook distributions, starting with MeeGo.
I downloaded the MeeGo image for netbooks from the MeeGo releases page. Note it lists the most recent image as 28 Oct 2010, whilst the release updates page refers to a MeeGo v1.1.2 netbook update. Good luck finding a download link for that. Perhaps they mean updates available over the internet?
Installing is simple, following the Installing MeeGo on your Netbook instructions. I byte-copied the downloaded image onto a USB key (a rather beautiful wooden one I got at GUADEC 2010), shoved it in the EeePC and hit escape at boot time to select the USB drive. Select "Installation Only" from the boot options (that should be "Installation only", I should file a bug).
A nice splash screen with a ">" button. Select a language "English(British)" (they missed a space in "English (British)" and also on "English (US)"). Give it the whole 4GB boot drive to play with. Let it trash the previous install and create default layouts. Watch it install. Marvel at the graphical design of MeeGo.
Let it reboot. Into the "Welcome to MeeGo" post-installation configuration. A bit baffled - during installation, a ">" button was used, but now the button is "Forward". Is this because it was too difficult to internationalise the buttons during install, or just sloppy inconsistency? Anyway, I click "Forward" and now I'm being asked what keyboard I want. Is this in case someone swapped the keyboard after installing but before rebooting? Couldn't it be worked out by the choice of installation language?
Select time zone. Stare at the date and time settings. Wouldn't it be nicer to assume the machine has the correct time, then try and set the time from the network after booting, and only if unsuccessful prompt people to set the time? Seems like a Debian-style chicken install.
Enter my user details. Note the extra space before "Notice:" in the preamble at the top. Ponder what the "Encrypt data" checkbox means. My home directory? The whole machine? Why should a user care? A bit more explanation would be good.
And that's it - the system should be all set up. But I don't seem to have network. It doesn't seem to have found the wifi in the netbook. Reading through Supported Hardware Platforms suggests EeePC 901 is supported, so this is a disappointing surprise. Time to plug in a wire.
Clicking through the UI is truly a delight (in the Aral Balkan sense of delight). The bouncy animations are awesome. See the video of the UI.
I head into Software Update, and there's a Package Manager update. Not sure why it requires a logout and log back in to install it. I install it, and there's a nice chime to tell me to log out. I click "Log out" and I'm back at the home screen, which is weird. Did I log out? Or did it just mean "restart the Software Update app"? I suspect the latter.
Now when I go into Software Update I see "MeeGo 1.1 Core Update" and "MeeGo 1.1 Netbook Update". The former requires a restart. This is positively Microsoftian -- clean installs requiring multiple updates and restarts. Talk about abusing the user. Why can't platforms provide up-to-date installation images, at least for point release updates?
It's quite a hefty update, so it's a shame there's no progress bar to tell me how far through the download it's got. There was also an unpleasant warning about unsigned packages - it's a shame even the basics aren't being taken care of here.
After rebooting, it turns out my WiFi is now recognised. Seems like that's the sort of crucial fix that would warrant publishing a new installation image. I connect, and fire up a browser, and all is good. Booting, by the way, seems to take around 30 seconds - not exactly "instant on". See the booting video.
Trying out a few of the apps, the mail application (Evolution under the hood) didn't want to talk to any mail servers and the sync app kept reporting a problem with the local database and that a resync or reboot "may help". It didn't. Cheese (the webcam app) worked just fine, as usual. It's a bit of a shame the default image viewing app (Eye of GNOME) doesn't have an option to share with sites like flickr or to post to Twitter.
Ironically, MeeGo 1.1 feels much less social than the first release did. There's now no obvious twitter integration, for example, and the Facebook IM connection kept failing authentication.
"MeeGo Garage" took a noticeable time to launch, and looked absolutely horrible in comparison to the rest of the slick and polished UI. Poor font rendering (no anti-aliasing), dodgy artwork, and a very limited selection of apps. As an app developer, I'd be pretty horrified that this is the front-end to my wares, compared to the slickness of the Apple App Store, Ubuntu Software Center or Android Market.
MeeGo looks great, with a few rough edges. I'll see how the other platforms stack up before deciding whether to come back to it and reinstall it on the 64gb drive.
See also this quick tour of MeeGo 1.0 for netbooks from May 2010, and ponder how things have advanced since then - or taken steps backwards.
Update: I did some digging and it looks like the issues I raised above have already been reported:
- The ">" button vs. text on the button bug appears to be Bug 1562 and Bug 1158, and from the last comment on 1158 it looks like it's deliberate. Urgh.
- The English(British) spacing error isn't explicitly identified in Bug 1285 but it does provide a pointer to the English installer po file that needs fixing.
Previously: eee pc volume; EeeMac; installing Moblin on SD on EeePC 901; Flash the future.