Ari Jaaksi, the vice president of Nokia's MeeGo unit, is moving on to other things. His resignation is an unfortunate loss for Nokia, but it's especially troubling at this time when the Finnish phone giant is working to deliver its first MeeGo-based product.

The MeeGo project was launched earlier this year when Intel and Nokia brought together their respective mobile Linux platforms in a combined effort to reduce fragmentation and offer device vendors a standardized platform. The MeeGo platform is endorsed by the Linux Foundation, which has taken on a stewardship role with the aim of facilitating collaboration around the software.

Intel and Nokia are merging their open source Linux operating systems to create a MeeGo OS, designed for mobile devices ranging from handhelds to netbooks. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, MeeGo builds upon the core from the Intel-backed Moblin technology and adds Nokia's Maemo middleware elements, as well as Nokia's Qt application framework.

By now you have probably heard of MeeGo the new OS being created by the synergy between Nokia and Intel. MeeGo is going to be a completely new Free Software Linux based OS. The most striking difference between MeeGo and Maemo, Nokia’s current Linux based OS, is that Maemo was for the most part a Debian derivative, while MeeGo will not be directly based on any existing distribution.

MeeGo 1.1 will be available soon for the Nokia N900 smartphone, which will be able to boot into either the MeeGo or Maemo flavors of Linux. Meanwhile, Aava Mobile, which is porting MeeGo to its Intel Atom N6xx based Aava Mobile smartphone reference design, joined MeeGo's overseer, the Linux Foundation.

Users who have bought Nokia's flagship smartphone, the Maemo-based N900, won't be able to upgrade the device to MeeGo, Nokia said in a blog post. The MeeGo OS, merges Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo Linux-based operating systems.

Intel and Nokia have released version 1.0 of the MeeGo Core Software Platform and the MeeGo Netbook User Experience. The MeeGo Handset User Experience is to follow in June

The Linux Foundation has announced MeeGo, a merger of Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo projects as a single project under the leadership of the Foundation. The news came in a posting by Linux Foundation's CEO Jim Zemlin who called MeeGo "a next generation mobile operating system designed for the next generation of mobile devices".

It's may be a twee name but MeeGo could be the next big thing. It sounds like something a child would say, or the name of a baby's toy, but MeeGo has much bigger aspirations in mind.