The first public beta of the MeeGo Linux operating system was launched recently by developers working at MeeGo project. They have total support from Intel and Nokia which intend to use it with Intel based netbooks and Nokia based smartphones.

MeeGo is the result of merging Moblin and Maemo projects. The user interface is based on Moblin with lots of widgets, updates from people you know or various program shortcuts. At the top there are two zone tabs, the people (contacts from your list) and media (for music and videos). The default web browser will be Chrome and not Firefox as until now. Also the developers decided to add support for multitouch gestures which could make MeeGo a platform for tablet PCs as well.

MeeGo is intended to be used on Nokia machines, because there’s a version specially optimized for smartphones. There’s no major difference between them when it comes to functionality, the differences come from the redesigned user interface to fit smaller displays, still having the two zones on the home page for easy switching between.

This version of MeeGo will come with Fennec web browser (the mobile version of Firefox) instead of Chrome which could be used on a smartphone because the Android-based smartphones come with a modified version of Chrome. There’s more about MeeGo than meets the eye, it can be used as user interface for other Linux-based OSs like Ubuntu, Xandros, Linpus, or Mandriva while taking advantage of MeeGo’s acceleration for Intel Atom chips.This is why Asus, Acer, Cisco and other hardware companies which support this Linux versions and respectively Linux developers, MeeGo project being one of them.

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