[Debian] Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

In this thread, I would like people to post the names of Debian apps that they have found that run well on the tablets, or at least they are the best / fastest alternative you've found to provide a service you find valuable.

An example of the second kind of application (best alternative) would be the Kazehakase browser. It isn't as fast as MicroB, our built-in browser, but it can run Java applets and it seems somewhat faster than Iceweasel.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3100/...7c2ffedd_o.png

If you have posted programs elsewhere in the other Debian threads, it would probably be a good idea to re-post them here.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

I installed aMule which works well. I had to change the permissions of the folder it installed in to get it working, but working well now.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

gnubg, jester an othello clone and gnomesword all have worked well for me so far. Although I just started adding apps and plan on quite a few more.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

mathematica 4

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

pdftk - to merge, split, encrypt, decrypt, watermark pdf files.
mp3info-gtgk - an mp3 taggerf with gui.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

How did you install Kazehakase? Using Synaptic I receive an error that some packages can't be downloaded.

Thanks!

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Debian>Programs>Applications>Terminal Emulators>X-Terminal as root (you need your password to get root access, the same password as you are using Hildon)>apt-get update, be patient, it takes 2-3 min.

Debian>Programs>Applications>Systems>Package Management>Synaptic Package Manager>(you need password again) choose Kazehakase and answer yes when asked about Marked all (that would choose Kazehakase and kazehakase greco), wait till successful change made.

Qole may have a different trick. That is how I did it.

bun

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

vim with gtk interface works.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Yes, I had the same problem. I had to do "apt-get update" first ("Edit" -> "Reload Package Information" packages in Synaptic), and then, 17 minutes later, when it had finished updating, I tried again and it worked.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

gnome-alsamixer

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

What do you do to get it to work? I get:
and then the mixer comes up blank. Choosing "Edit -> Sound Card Properties" crashes the program.

I suspect my ALSA config files aren't set up right. I have copied /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf from my maemo dir to my Debian dir...

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Umm... don't remember. Soon as I get Debian back on, I'll let you know. Don't think it was anything tricky.

You try with -c $WHATEVER yet? There are 2 alsa interfaces, IIRC. One is boring. The other is interesting, and lets you play out the speakers, headphone jack, and BT (HSP) all at once. The sync between HSP and speakers/phones is a little annoying, but it's kinda cool. Especially if you have the car stereo drowning out the headset (when you're in the car), but when you leave the car, you still hear it with the headset. (Obviously, the correct way to accomplish this balance is to turn the headset down, not the stereo up; hearing loss isn't fun and all that.)

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Um, can you be more specific? Call me an idiot (It's OK, many do) but I don't understand "-c $WHATEVER".

Is there a way to tell the mixer to use a different interface? Is that what -c does? Can I get a list of those somehow? And shouldn't the alsamixer be able to locate all of the interfaces and let you choose, rather than producing a cryptic error and crashing when you try to set up the sound card?

EDIT: Aha! alsa-base and alsa-utils not installed... seeing if that fixes things... (why doesn't the mixer depend on them?! :confused:)

EDIT2: Nope... still futzing...

EDIT3: Ok, this is bigger than alsamixer. I used to be able to get stuff to play with "aplay test.wav" and now even that gives an error. So alsa is borked in my "easy chroot" setup; better get this figured out!

EDIT4: needed to also "apt-get install libasound2-plugins" to get alsamixer working. I can also make "aplay" work now.

The gnome one however still gives the same error... "Sound card properties" causes a segfault...

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Umm... that actually wouldn't apply to gnome-alsamixer; that would be alsamixer itself. Man page here; -c indeed tells it which card to use, but that's handled some other way in gnome-alsamixer.

(Indeed, it should find a usable one, but thought it might be worth trying, in case the problem was specific to that one...)

Also, there are devices and cards; not sure which one it was... I'll try again when I get that back on.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

I should go through the forums and compile a list of messages from you where you say some variant of, "I've completely borked something important on my tablet, so I can't test that right now..." I think it would number in the dozens... :D

Benson, why does your tablet never seem to be working? What do you DO to that poor girl?

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

:D


Really, it's mostly attributable to a flaky (and now retired) SD card; I'd guess only about 40% have been due to direct stupid or risky actions on my part.

But, really, some of the stuff I do is asking to have trouble; I should get more devices if I'm going to do that, but I'm too cheap. Just bought my third N800, but both #2 and #3 are gifts to siblings. (Sister, who's reasonably competent with, but not very interested in, computer stuff; it'll live a long and peaceful life. Kid brother, who's just as overambitious as me. With any luck, though, we won't be down at the same time...)

And being too busy to fix the thing for the better part of a month is a major problem as well. And the worst part of it is, when I'm reinstalling, I'm not hacking. :(

Current fixing is in progress, though (Already got Chinook and Diablo (final) on...), and I hope my more rigorous backup scheme and maybe an extra SD will make things go smoother in the future.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

I would love to know some Java applets that people really wish they could run on the tablets, I'd like to see how they run in Kazehakase.

EDIT: Here's a stock news ticker, it scrolls fine, the only problem is that the whole system gets a bit sluggish when this is running...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3268/...e02ff1cf_o.png

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Windowmaker runs really well and looks great.

jpilot seems to work, though I haven't loaded it with data yet...

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

I got gedit installed, it's a little bit slow to launch, but once it's there, it's working quite well. And with a few tweaks, it can become the best development tool on the IT! Fullscreen plugin available here.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

I use gedit too, I love the syntax highlighting...

I'm quite frustrated about one thing; I'm sure there's a full regexp search-and-replace available for gedit, but I can't find it anywhere...

EDIT: Perhaps this?

EDIT2: yes, untar (tar xzvf gedit2_regex_replace_plugin.tar.gz) into /usr/lib/gedit-2/plugins/

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

gimageviewer and ROX Filer ofcourse (now with a debian toolbar button), both through the Synaptic pkg mgr in diablo. I've also managed to just cp parts from the good old WmBar in penguinbait's ROX pkg, e.g. see my avatar.:)
Changed time format to 24h in the taskbar, and a network monitor besides the CPU. Also set my personal background. Tip: the help file in the start menu is really at help here.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Installed Dillo, NetSurf and Midori (apt-get install).. all of them are working very well on the tablet.

NetSurf might be the best choice for the N8x0: it's light, fast, can be run fullscreen and support CSS (Dillo doesn't).

To install:
Note: you might need "libwebkitgtk0", which can be found right there: http://ftp.pwr.wroc.pl/debian/pool/main/w/webkit/

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Gnomesword is working great. Not full-screen, unfortunately. Mirrors found here.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Frozen-bubble works quite well. After following the earlier discussion for setting up gnome-alsamixer, the sound works on frozen-bubble now too. :) Thanks guys.

Frozen-bubble is a little bit ponderous on the N800, but then I can always use a little time to contemplate my place in the Universe. Setting the graphics to medium quality helps a lot. It plays very well though and almost no stutter with the sound.

Supertuxkart, on the other hand, seems to work but slows to a near halt.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Hey, do you mean my instructions to get regular alsamixer working, or did you manage to get gnome-alsamixer working (because I still can't)?

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

You can always pull up a Debian chroot prompt, type
If that doesn't work, type
and look at the list of windows until you find the right one, then substitute a part of the actual window name for "sword" in the above example.

You can also just use IceWM to run it...

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets[QUOTE=qole;201936]You can also just use
 

This worked great, thanks. Is that all your "Make OO Fullscreen" app is?

I originally tried to, but I get the error posted below. Why would an app work in the chroot but not via Ice? I have also tried running via the '/root/debian hilda' and 'cp .desktop' methods, but neither work. Gnomesword only works via chroot and closes automaticly when the chroot is closed (this may be normal behavior, I don't know).

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Well, you should be running it in the chroot either way; that may just be confused terminology on your part, but I suspect you're not doing it that way.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets[QUOTE=qole;201936]You can also just use
 

<blush> You've caught me! :o


I recognize this. This was one of the reasons why I made the "hilda" command. You ran gnomesword as root the first time (in the chroot prompt), and now you can't run it as user (which is what happens with all of the other methods). At the chroot prompt, you have to do the following:

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Sorry, no. Gnome-alsamixer doesn't work for me either, but fiddling around with it got all the right packages installed so that sound started working. I really don't know what I'm doing at all, but I'm learning a lot doing it. It's like getting a new gadget. Thanks for making this possible, Qole.

BTW, frozen-bubble is a seriously addicting game. Beware!

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Another neat way to toggle fullscreen, is to use evrouter + wmctrl, after installing evrouter, just put:
"Internal keypad" "/dev/input/event2" none key/64 "Shell/wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -b toggle,fullscreen"
in ~/.evrouterrc

and at startup, run:
evrouter /dev/input/event2
(you may need to first change permissions on /dev/input/event2, or use sudo.)

Then you can toggle by simply pressing the normal fullscreen button.

I also have:
"Internal keypad" "/dev/input/event2" none key/65 "XButton/3"
in .evrouterrc, so the right button sends a right click (like in the vnc viewer)

evrouter is neat :)

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Cool tip.

And of course, if you have usbmouse, you have evrouter; that's what we used to map events to clicks. If you're gonna use grown-up apps, you oughta use grown-up peripherals. ;)

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Pingus works. It stutters a bit in the title screen, but once you get to the game, it's very playable with the stylus. So far, anyway. My 5 year old is engrossed with my N800 playing it. That should keep him out of trouble for a few minutes.

Start it up like this:

hilda pingus --fullscreen --geometry=640x480

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

We've pingus on ITOS, though. ;) It does have a memory leak, which perhaps the Debian one doesn't, though.

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Hey wow, so we do. Pingus on Debian on the N800 isn't perfect either. It gets stuttery the longer you stay in a screen.

Chromium is too slow to be playable.

Blobwars (Blob Metal Solid) works GREAT. The only problem is that the opening screen says "Press space to continue." So on my N800, I had to go into windowed mode to bring up a keyboard so I could press the space bar. After configuring the keys, it plays just like the desktop version, except that it can get bogged down if you start blowing away lots of bad guys all at once, which can be good because I can then savor the moment. This is my son's favorite game, so this is a big win and Daddy is a hero tonight. :cool:

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Chromium and supertuxkart both take advantage of hardware 3d acceleration. Please realize debian chroot or booting debian does not give you hw 3d acc. Thankfull frozen bubble doesn't need that, I imagine how fun it is!

Cheers,
S

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

That might be the magic I need, thanks for the tips! It's sort of a 'Forced-Hildonization' ;)

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

I realize that. I'm just impressed that opengl works at all, even if it's without hardware acceleration. I knew supertuxkart wouldn't be any good, but I hoped chromium would be better than it was because it's less graphically intensive.

I'm serious about frozen-bubble addiction. :)

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

Yeah, Chromium's actually remarkably intensive for a top-down scroller; makes for beautiful graphics, though, on machines with hardware!

Re: Debian Apps That Run Well On The Tablets
 

How do you install evrouter?
apt-get install evrouter doesn't work :/