Maemo

Nokia's Linux for internet tablets and the N900, folded into MeeGo

Replaced
19902026

Maemo was Nokia's Debian-based Linux platform for its internet tablets, launched with the Nokia 770 in November 2005 and followed by the N800, N810 and, in November 2009, the N900, a phone with a full Linux stack, a terminal and a slide-out keyboard that made it a developer favourite. On 15 February 2010 Nokia merged Maemo with Intel's Moblin to form MeeGo, ending it as a platform; the maemo.org community kept the N900 alive for years.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2005
  2. 25 May 2005 Feature
    The Nokia 770 is announced

    A Debian-based internet tablet with no phone.

  3. November 2005 Launch
    The 770 ships

    Slow, strange, and beloved by Linux people.

  4. 2007
  5. 8 January 2007 Version
    The N800

    Faster hardware, the same niche.

  6. 2009
  7. 18 November 2009 Peak
    The N900 goes on sale

    Maemo 5 in a phone with a keyboard and a terminal; $649 unlocked.

  8. 2010
  9. 15 February 2010 Shutdown
    Merged into MeeGo

    Maemo and Moblin become one platform under the Linux Foundation.

  10. 2011
  11. 11 February 2011 other
    Nokia abandons MeeGo too

    The merged platform lasts one phone.

The site through time

Browse maemo.org as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Nokia 2005–2010 Founded Developed by Nokia's open-source software operation; the community took over maemo.org afterwards

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: On 15 February 2010 Nokia and Intel announced they were merging Maemo with Intel's Moblin into MeeGo, and Maemo 6, then in development, became MeeGo. Nokia shipped final updates for the N900 through 2010 and 2011, and a year later abandoned MeeGo itself for Windows Phone. Maemo survived only as a community project.

Our analysis: Maemo was Nokia hedging against Symbian with a real Linux, and it produced the N900, a phone that developers adored and almost nobody else bought. Merging it into MeeGo bought Nokia a partner in Intel and cost it a year it did not have; by the time the merged system had a phone, the company had given up on both. The code, through MeeGo and Mer, is still inside Sailfish OS.

History [edit]

Internet tablets

Nokia showed the 770 Internet Tablet in May 2005 and shipped it that November: a pocket-sized touchscreen device with Wi-Fi, a web browser and no phone, running a Debian-derived Linux that Nokia called Maemo (later "Internet Tablet OS"), with a GNOME-based interface and an open development model that let anyone build software for it. It was slow and strange and it found a following among Linux people, who had never had a mainstream company ship a Debian device before. The N800 in January 2007 and the N810 with a keyboard that November were faster and better and still niche; Nokia sold them as tablets, and the world was about to decide it wanted phones.

The N900

Maemo 5 and the Nokia N900, announced in August 2009 and on sale in November for $649 unlocked, put the platform in a phone: a resistive touchscreen slider with a keyboard, a real multitasking Linux underneath, an X terminal, apt-get, Firefox with Flash, and Nokia's best camera. Reviewers loved it and warned it was for enthusiasts. Nokia said Maemo 6, due in 2010, would bring a new interface and Qt and would be its high-end future beside Symbian.

MeeGo

Instead, on 15 February 2010 at Mobile World Congress, Nokia and Intel announced that Maemo and Intel's Moblin would merge into MeeGo under the Linux Foundation, and Maemo as a name was over. The N900 got maintenance releases through 2010 and a community-built update in 2011, and Nokia's one MeeGo phone, the N9, arrived in 2011 after Nokia had already switched to Windows Phone. Maemo's technical lineage runs through MeeGo and the Mer fork into Jolla's Sailfish OS, still shipping.

The maemo.org community outlived Nokia's interest: it took over the site, kept package repositories running for the N900 and produced Maemo Leste, a modern Devuan-based Maemo for old and new devices, into the 2020s.

The domain today

maemo.org is run by the community, not Nokia, and still hosts the wiki, forums and downloads for the old tablets and the N900.

Similar projects

BlackBerry OS The keyboard that ran the world 1999–2022 Windows Phone The tiles nobody wrote apps for 2010–2019 Palm OS The organiser in your pocket that taught phones to be computers 1996–2009 Symbian Ran most of the world's smartphones, then burned with the platform 1998–2014 Windows Mobile A tiny Windows with a Start button, reset to zero by its own maker 2000–2012 Firefox OS The web as an operating system, aimed at $25 phones 2013–2016

Sources [edit]

  1. Nokia 770 Internet Tablet review Ars Technica 30 November 2005 [archived]
  2. Nokia's Maemo 5-equipped N900 on sale in America for $649 Engadget 18 November 2009 [archived]
  3. Nokia N900 review Engadget 19 January 2010 [archived]
  4. Intel and Nokia merge Moblin and Maemo to form MeeGo TechRadar 15 February 2010 [archived]

Last verified: 15 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).