It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there is no software produced by Nokia and aimed at helping S60’s interaction with any Linux OS. And by “no software”, we mean NONE, ZERO, NADA. Heh, Mac owners can smile now, at least they got something! As for Linux users, well, maybe Nokia was trying no to invest its resources there, but rely on the community to come up with solutions.
I am not a Linux user, and as a matter of fact, the only time I touched a Linux computer, I was totally lost. But there are a few Linux gurus out there, and some of them are ready to make it their job to easily explain to others how to create an efficient interaction between an S60 handset and a Linux computer. One of these gurus is Filip Bulovic, whom I have known for a while thanks to his past employment at RedFiveLabs.
Filip’s site, entitled 2010Solutions, is aimed at making easy tutorials for first-time S60 or Linux users. He focuses on Ubuntu as the Linux OS (apparently, there are different ones). His first tutorials explained the basic question of browsing and transfering files from an S60 device to Ubuntu using USB and Bluetooth. Then he tackled more difficult issues, like sending SMS from the computer, using the phone’s connection to surf on the computer, downloading YouTube videos and converting them to play on S60, and so on. In other words, if I decide to try Ubuntu one day, this is the site I will be exploring the most. Even though Filip only tackles easy issues by choice, I personally hope he does some more hacker-grade tutorials, in order to provide an all-in-one reference site for all S60 owners and Ubuntu users.
And to conclude the Walk On The Other Side series,
There’s no reason for Nokia not to hire a few developers for Mac and others for Linux to port all their existing software, and make life easier for everyone. But Nokia probably still considers PC owners as their main audience, and Mac and Linux owners as a small userbase: an error for 2 reasons. The first one is what Ricky likes to say: Nseries and Macs target the same market, the creative, hip and features-conscious (obviously, this is not exclusive). The same thought applies to Linux and S60 which both target the user that likes tinkering and personalizing, and this common audience will be a lot more palpable when S60 becomes an Open-Source platform. The second reason is that if you want to dominate on the software and service front, you need to cater to everyone, and not just the majority.
[Image for this post and the series banner courtesy of Gilad's DeviantArt]
