[sf-lug] Now is the Time to hate Apple?

[Rick Moen]

Just so I don't mislead anyone:

> The closest thing to a free-software smartphone running real Linux,
> today, is the Nokia N900 running Maemo 5 (closely derived from Debian),
> which is _not_ a vendor-captive OS platform (or hardware), and is almost
> 100% open source.  There will soon be third-party alternative builds for
> the N900, N800, and N810 such as Mer (based on Ubuntu 9.04 with plans to
> merge in useful parts of Maeomo 5) that work around the remaining small
> bits of proprietary code and go all open source.

Clarification:  The Nokia N810, Nokia N800, and Nokia 770 are/were not
smartphones, but rather wireless Internet tablets / PDAs.  That is, they
lacked circuitry for interacting with public cellular telephone networks
directly.  The only way you can make/receive telephone calls on them is
using either Internet telephony or via Bluetooth tethering to a separate
cellular.

The N900 is Nokia's first smartphone / Internet tablet.