Mer
OS family	Linux
Working state	Discontinued (merged withSailfish OS)
Source model	Open source
Marketing target	Mobile
Package manager	RPM Package Manager
Supported platforms	ARM,x86 andMIPS
Kernel type	None (not shipped with Mer)
License	None imposed (packages use L/GPL, BSD and MIT licenses)[1]
Official website	merproject.org

Mer is a discontinuedfree and open-source software distribution, targeted at hardware vendors to serve as amiddleware forLinux kernel-based mobile-orientedoperating systems.^[2] It is afork ofMeeGo.^[3][4][5]

Some goals^[3] of the project are:

• Openly developed with transparency built into the fabric of the project
• Provide a mobile device oriented architecture
• Primary customers are mobile device vendors, not end-users.
• Have structure, processes and tools to make life easy for device manufacturers
• Support innovation in themobile OS space
• Inclusive of projects and technologies (e.g.MeeGo,Tizen,Qt,Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL),HTML5)
• Governed as ameritocracy
• Run as a non profit through donations^[6]

Mer is not anoperating system; it is aimed to be one component of an operating system based on the Linux kernel. Mer is a part of theoperating system above theLinux kernel and below thegraphical user interface (GUI).

Mer just provides the equivalent of the MeeGo core. The former MeeGo user interfaces and hardware adaptation are to be done by various other projects and by hardware manufacturers, which will be able to build their products on top of the Mer core.

There is support forsystemd,Wayland,Hybris, and other currentFOSS software.

Zephyr is an attempt at creating a stack for use by other projects to be exploring lightweight, high-performance, next-generation UIs based on Mer,Qt5,QML Compositor and Wayland.^[7]

Weston 1.3, which was released on 11 October 2013, supports libhybris,^[8] making it possible to useAndroid device drivers with Wayland.

Mer can be compiled for a number ofinstruction sets such asx86,ARM orMIPS.

There are Mer-based builds available for various devices, includingRaspberry Pi,Beagleboard,Nokia N900,Nokia N950,Nokia N9 and for variousIntel Atom-based tablets. These also include hardware adaptation packages and various UXes running on top of Mer, provided by different projects. They can be flashed on the device and might work in dual-boot mode with the original firmware.^[9]

Mer usesOpen Build Service:OBS in mer but withone repository per architecture:

Mer was used as a reference platform forKDE'sPlasma Active.^[10]

In January 2012 a Plasma Active-tablet device, initially known as 'Spark tablet' and soon renamed 'Vivaldi Tablet', was announced.^[11] Based on theAllwinner A20SoC,^[12] it would have a 7" multitouch display, run the Plasma Active user interface on top of Mer, and have a target price of about €200.^[13] The project encountered some problems when its hardware partner in China completely changed the internal components and was reluctant to release the kernel source for the new hardware. As of early July 2012, the Vivaldi had been set back, but a solution was "in the pipes", according to Plasma developer Aaron Seigo.^[14] As a kind of side project Improv-computer was targeted for developers and was to be released in January 2014, Mer preinstalled. In mid 2014 both projects were discontinued.^[15]

Parallel toSailfish OS byJolla, Nemo Mobile is a community-driven operating system based on a Linux kernel, Mer, a GUI and diverse applications.^[16][17][18]Since 2019, Nemo Mobile is no longer using Mer Project as a base but switched toManjaro Linux. The main reason for the move was obsolete components, like Qt version 5.6 due to licensing restrictions.^[19]Contrary to Sailfish OS usingHybris, Nemo Mobile usesHalium.^[20]

In July 2012Jolla, a Finnish company founded by former Nokia employees involved in MeeGo development, announced their work on a new operating system calledSailfish OS, which is based on MeeGo and Mer's core with added proprietary GUI and hardware implementation layers.^[21][22] It was presented in late November 2012. Jolla released its firstsmartphone using Sailfish in 2013, simply calledJolla. In October 2014 Jolla announced for May 2015 the Jolla Tablet with Sailfish OS 2.0 which is to be 64-bit onquadcoreIntelCPU. Also 2.0 is ready for licensing, hence it is used with products likeAqua Fish by Intex andPuzzlePhone.

In November 2014, Yuanxin Technology in China announced it is working on Yuanxin OS. The company's president Shi Wenyong called the OS "China's own smartphone OS",^[23] to be on par with Android and Apple iOS. Shi explained to a reporter that Yuanxin OS is based on the Mer distribution.^[24]

Mer's initial aim to provide a completely free alternative to theMaemo operating system, which was able to run onNokia Internet Tablets such as theN800 andN810 (collectively known as the N8x0 devices).^[25][26]

It was based onUbuntu 9.04, and with the release of Maemo 5/Fremantle, a new goal emerged: "[To bring] as much of Fremantle as we can get on the N8x0."

Mer suspended development at release 0.17, since focus had switched to building MeeGo for the N800 and N810 devices.^[27] By then, MeeGo was available and supported by a much wider community.

The development was silently resumed during the summer of 2011 by a handful of MeeGo developers (some of them previously active in the Mer project), after Nokia changed its strategy in February 2011. These developers were not satisfied with the way MeeGo had been governed behind closed doors especially after Nokia departed, and they were also concerned that MeeGo heavily depended on big companies which could stop supporting it, as was the case when Nokia abandoned MeeGo as part of its new strategy.^[28]

This was again proven to be a problem afterIntel,Samsung and theLinux Foundation announced they were going to create a new operating system calledTizen. This new OS began focusing on HTML5 and using theEnlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) instead ofQt for native applications. However, on May 14, 2014 it was announced that Tizen:Common would be bringingQt back by starting to ship with it integrated.^[29]

After the Tizen project was announced, the revival of the Mer project was announced on the MeeGo mailing list,^[3] with the promise that it would be developed and governed completely in the open as ameritocracy, unlike MeeGo and Tizen. It would also be based on the MeeGo code base and tools, aiming to provide just the equivalent of the MeeGo core with no default UI. The APIs for third party application development are included, meaning that Qt, EFL, andHTML5 would be supported on the platform, and maybe even others if widely requested.

The project quickly started to gain traction among many open source developers who had been involved in MeeGo, and it started being used by former MeeGo projects, such as the reference handset UX, now rebased on top of Mer and called Nemo Mobile, and a couple of projects targeting tablet UXes such as Cordia (a reimplementation of the Maemo 5 Hildon UX) andPlasma Active emerged on top of Mer. Equivalent Mer-based project of the former MeeGo IVI andSmart TV UXes are not yet known to exist.

The aim of the Mer community is to create, in a solid way, what had been unable to be done with MeeGo; Mer is to become what MeeGo was expected to be but has not become. Mer aims to become the MeeGo 2.0 when the Linux Foundation finds that it complies with all of the MeeGorequirements.

In early 2019 it was announced that they would unify Mer and Sailfish operations under one brand, calledSailfish OS, discontinuing use of the name Mer.

• Comparison of mobile operating systems

• ARM operating systems
• Embedded Linux distributions
• Linux distributions
• Linux distributions used in appliances
• Mobile operating systems
• RPM-based Linux distributions

• CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata