Intel and Nokia joined forces earlier this year when they combined their mobile Linux operating systems to create MeeGo, an open source platform that is designed to support multiple hardware architectures and a wide range of mobile and embedded device form factors. The project officially launched last month when the source code and initial installable disk images became available.

The MeeGo project took another big step forward this week with the release of MeeGo 1.0 and the launch of the MeeGo Netbook User Experience project, which aims to deliver a MeeGo-based computing environment that is tailored for optimal performance and usability on netbook devices. The Netbook User Experience, which draws heavily from Intel's Moblin project, offers a rich user interface shell that is built with the open source Clutter framework. It is a much-improved version of the Moblin user interface that we explored last year and reviewed on the Dell Mini 10v.