Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

If the N900 is completely re-programmable then whatever Nokia bring out can be programmed into the N900 surely? Maemo7 maemo8 etc etc. that DOES make the N900 very unique if this is fact.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

Ye, I think it is ...keeping in mind the number of OS's ported to the device...

and I also remember this Maemo dude saying that meego may or may not come to the N900, if it doesn't he expects the community to step in and port it to the N900 !!

So yea the phone is awesome !! :D

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

I very hope it is possible to re-programme ANY OS into the N900 then all we have to do is juat wait ! because whatever Nokia bring out ... ha .. we can follow by simply programming into the N900.
IF this is true then we have the very first RE-PROGRAMMABLE MOBILE PHONE/COMPUTER in the world ! this is when the Maemo community can come into its own.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

i would have thought any device with flash and cpu can be reprogrammed but the os has to have the right kernel and drivers to support the device.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

The problem isn't fixing up the N900 for the OS, it's fixing up the OS for the N900.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

The N900's boot loader doesn't require a signed kernel to boot. That's why it's much more open than other phones, which only boot signed kernels.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

Yes your right this is why i think no N900 owner needs to worry about it becoming outdated as far as i can tell and i am looking at every factor i can see ( but i am no way a linux expert) it means what they all say about the N900 that its a hackers dream being completely open that people just have to be patient and wait for any problems to be sorted out by developers or nokia themselves, i personally think this N900 has got to be the very first of its kind as it can never be left behind in future developments hmmmmm someone prove me wrong here please !

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

If this is true, then that means we just bought an iPhone and HTC Nexus.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

i did not yet find an easily read and understood chart of which parts of the n900's hardware are _not_ open.

coming from the freerunner i know we had some issues mostly with the gsm chip (it took some bothering until the producer provided a fixed firmware) and the graphics chip (specs available only under nda, although the chip being discontinued), though the gsm is encapsulated and communicates via at commands and the graphics chip received some heavy reverse engineering, pushing it somewhat over the limits intended by the manufacturer.

iirc there are some crucial parts which have closed drivers only, meaning once nokia loses interest in the n900 (which seems to have happened already, given the hassle with meego), we are pretty much screwed.
let's hope either nokia opens the specs and makes free drivers possible or there are enough hw guys to reverse engineer those parts.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

someone already tried to boot into Ubuntu 10.04 (netbook / armel beta 2)?

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

i wish they did release the drivers would take along time to reverse engineer open drivers

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

http://wiki.maemo.org/Why_the_closed_packages lists a few things, also Stskeeps is working on listing openness on a per-package basis, see http://mer-project.blogspot.com/2010...-pr11-and.html

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

After reading your links i found an obvious way forward in the future development of maemo but Nokia would certainly land themselves in hot water if as a company it ceased to undergo and implement changes for the better but also tried to stop by not making open any source code needed for the future of its own creation !
then the route anyone would obviously take to start with will come under the open development/why the closed packages , ie:
Requesting the opening of closed components

If you want a Nokia closed component to be open, please see Open_development/Licensing_change_requests

The chances of success of your proposal will probably depend on how it fits within the following reasons for a relicensing:

1. Fixing a bug: The package is in non-free although it looks like it's actually an open piece of software. In this case forget about Brainstorm and simply file a bug and CC maemo.org distmaster on carsten.munk at gmail.com.
2. Nurturing application development: There is a strong argument proving that opening a component will bring more and better apps for end users.
3. Spread of Maemo driven technologies to other platforms: A component fits well in a gap existing in other Linux/OSS based projects and there is a concrete interest on collaborating and contributing to a component if it's opened.
4. Community maintenance: A component is receiving low attention from the official maintainers even if it has high attention from the community and there are developers volunteering to contribute to it if the source code is available.
5. Better architecture: Probably covered by 2 or 3 but just in case. A closed component is sitting in the midle of open components making things more difficult that needed to developers interested in that area.
indeed guys like yourself are very important to end user as a way forward with Nokia.
There is obviously some problem Nokia is not telling anyone so lets just wait and see what happens in the near future.
Andre please keep up the good work !!! very very usefull information in those links !!! THANKYOU.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

what about symbian 3 duel boot??

remember symbian 3 is open source now

if we couldnt port the whole o/s what about some of the phonebook features like groups etc

it will support qt as well so maybe some qt parts of the o/s will be able to be transfered iam thinking nokia maps will probably be qt on symbian in the future

its going to get very intresting over the next few months thats for sure

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

Yep couldnt agree with you more !

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

Problem is if reverse engineered components leading to complete open source i am sure Nokia would clamp down and do something about it so i think pointless to even think about reverse engineering plus as you said the cost is massive these days.
Better that Nokia land themselves in deep water so they could then be forced to let it out ha.... nice thought.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

i am not talking about _packages_ (or software other than drivers).
it's not maemo i care about (i'd very much prefer a proven good and independend distribution, debian, instead of the crippled stuff nokia provides and abandons as their fancy takes them), but the hardware.
i guess the basic parts work out of the box, but what about cameras, sensors, gsm, wlan, ...?

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

on what legal grounds?
reverse engineering, if following certain rules, is fully legal.
nokia's policy in the question of maemo6/meego has, imo, a lot of people made distrustful of nokia's intentions to protect customers' investments.
i paid a lot of money for a device i don't want to fall in the "no fixes/updates for crucial parts" trap with, as i have seen happen to other hardware (fully) supported by closed drivers only (have a look at amd/ati's policy against their customers who do not buy a new graphics adaptor every few months).

after all, clean room implementations of reverse engineered drivers are an important part of the linux kernel since its very beginnings -- and it allows nokia to abandon products while pointing to open projects continuing development.
nokia adopting open source is not a matter of doing good, but of reducing costs (what would be maemo.org for if not helping nokia cutting down costs of customer support?). and if open source projects help provide fixes/updates after eol, nokia gains customers (because they can always point to o/s projects prolonging the lifetime of the products) and saves costs.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

It wont run iPhone OS as it is about as closed as they come and only carries support for the iPhone hardware, is a big no no no on that one, and Android is a flavour of linux, yes, and has already been seen in the wild dual booted on an N900, check out a google search and you will find. But as stated above, if some of the hardware is closed, and remains closed, you will never get full functionality out of any other OS as no drivers will be available.

Pete

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

I very much doubt Nokia could even think about "abandoning" Maemo so you will just have to wait like the rest of us to see just what Nokia will do with the N900.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

firstly: maemo _is_ dead. with meego nokia will hardly spend any money developing maemo further.

secondly: i repeat, i don't care for maemo, i care for the drivers -- the n900 will run without maemo every day, but not without drivers for all of the hardware.

even if nokia did not abandon maemo in favour of meego, that does not mean, they will provide newer drivers for newer kernels in future.
seeing how hard it was for nokia to commit to the very recent n900 when meego came into the game, i have little trust in nokia giving the n900 noteworthy attention after >12month after the release.
thus, w/o open drivers we are stuck with old kernels and unfixed bugs.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

[QUOTE=arne.anka;604105]on what legal grounds?
reverse engineering, if following certain rules, is fully legal.
nokia's policy in the question of maemo6/meego has, imo, a lot of people made distrustful of nokia's intentions to protect customers' investments.
i paid a lot of money for a device i don't want to fall in the "no fixes/updates for crucial parts" trap with, as i have seen happen to other hardware (fully) supported by closed drivers only (have a look at amd/ati's policy against their customers who do not buy a new graphics adaptor every few months).

Any component that is closed is usually copywrited for that very reason so to strip down and spill out the full contents of any device under those conditions IS illegal so the way forward would be to work with the manufacturer and if enough people complain i am sure they will do the right thing, incidently why is the Maemo org here ? ok as you say it cuts costs from the engineering software side for Nokia but i very much doubt they will fall into the trap of not updating , watch and you will see. far too many people are now watching just what will happen with the N900.
I have done my fair shair of moaning and griping on here so now i take the silent approach and wait and see then act !.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

The problem is, as arne.anka pointed out that all the device drivers and protocols should be open and documented, IIRC mer requires closed parts from maemo to charge battery, etc, anyway it does not have accelerated graphics, nor there is an open app to use it as a phone.

There is already a full middleware that take cares of phone/device management (www.freesmartphone.org) and much more.
Actually it full supports the OpenMoko Freerunner (emh.. it's the really first open phone/mobile computer in the world), and there is working progress to support palm tre, htc, and other phones.
But here we have ony few guys working, some one external is trying to add support for the N900, but this is a real hard work without specifications.
While on the phone part I'm quite sure that ofono will support the N900 modem (with the implicit opening of specification), I have some doubt on the "device" part.

Having specifications opened we'll have a full FSO working on the n900 in a couple of months, and for sure a lot of peoples from this community will join the FSO/SHR community that are hard trying to create a real open phone/device stack and relative consumer applications.

Anyway an ofono/fsodeviced hibrid solution is possible too (we are working on a project based on that for the freeruner), so again the priority is to open the device related parts.

Regards

Niko

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

I will make a suggestion here which takes me back a few years to say the least ha, when the next update does arrive from Nokia then it needs to be grabbed and stored in full because surely it will include ALL drivers inparticularly the ones for the closed components in the N900 and there you will have full source of all drivers. I will not go into the full situation here but we as a team of 6 engineers hacking the videocrypt system 1 used by BSKYB many years ago we also had a situation with 3 of 4 ic's that were closed and by grabbing everything they sent to the decoders ( in particular the shutting down or flagging ) we were then able to completely reverse engineer every component needed to crack the system, ok thats not a legal way forward but given that Maemo is supposed to be open in its entirety Nokia should and can no way leave the N900 on the shelve especially when they realise its future in the mobile phone market.
There are many ways indeed to make life a lot easier in the future development if Nokia play ball. If they dont i am sure there are many ways to force there hand here.
The only reason i am saying this is simply because £500 is a hell of a lot of money to spend on a mobile phone/computer for then Nokia to abandon its future as i am sure everyone would agree here. I dont know the facts about how the Maemo org was started up so i am a bit in the dark here but if its in anyway in cooperation with Nokia then it should be true to say that Nokia would give all the help and support needed to progress further IF it decides its pulling out of future development of the N900 ( and i dont think for one moment they are ).
The thing i really dont understand is why Nokia is telling people nothing at all publicly about the N900's future, its future updates etc etc.
Thanks indeed for your somewhat informing comments.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

This is simply not true.

What they have not said that everyone wants to hear is that MeeGo be available for the N900 as a finished, end-user-ready OTA update. They have said there might be a user-ready version of MeeGo for the N900 available at some point, that is as yet undecided so they have not committed to it. However, if there ever is a user-ready MeeGo for the N900, it will no doubt have to be downloaded and manually installed ('flashed' on your device, wiping out all installed software, etc). The differences between Maemo and MeeGo OS will be too large to allow a simple OTA upgrade from Maemo 5 to MeeGo.

But they have officially stated many times that the N900 will not be forgotten. They have said the N900 will be the starting point for MeeGo development on ARM and have backed that up by already releasing a basic developer's build of MeeGo for the N900 with a more complete build to come soon.

They have released 3 Maemo/N900 updates and a major 1.2 update is coming very soon. At least one more update, 1.3, is known to be in the works. 1.2 is a significant upgrade to Maemo 5 adding some nice features, including adding critical Qt 4.6 compatibility which ensures most (if not all) software written in the future for MeeGo will run on N900s still using Maemo 5.

All this tells me that, as promised, the N900 is not forgotten and that they fully intend to ensure the N900 will have a long, useful life with or without an upgrade to MeeGo. And they have outlined there plans about as completely as they can at this point.

So - what's the problem?

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

It appears to me you do not read what people are currently saying about Nokia and the N900, you say NOKIA said this and said that but where ? can you point me and everyone else in that direction please because it will put a hell of a lot of peoples mind at rest for sure !.
Read the post on this very topic from arne.anka , firstly: maemo _is_ dead. with meego nokia will hardly spend any money developing maemo further.
The whole point of this topic was to find out if the N900 IS capable as any computer, is to have ANY operating system installed, this if IS possible makes the N900 a lifetime mobile/computer which can be upgraded as any computer can But obviously many things will be outdated such as proc speed video sat nav and camera etc etc, but right now the BIG problem is many many people are now thinking the N900 is dead.
I personally think as you have stated the N900 will serve us for a very long time with many many possibilities and updates, when people know this then many derogative and senseless threads on here will simply dissapear ha.
Many thanks for your thoughts very much appreciated !.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

The 'Maemo is dead - N900 is forgotten' thing has been discussed endlessly here and elsewhere. Search the forum or try here:

http://wiki.maemo.org/What_can_we_re...or_my_N900_.3F

It should answer most of your questions.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

Thanks for that valuable link which i suggest EVERY N900 owner reads !!!!
It is now clear that MeeGo WILL be developed for the N900 so as this topic asks " Is the N900 completely re-programmable" means that even if Maemo IS coming to a dead end, all N900 owners can be assured of their device not coming to a dead end !.
I dont want to start up a new thread regarding this subject but it would be wonderful news to absolutely confirm that the N900 will go on to be everything and more that end user expected, timing of course will be the question but you know the old saying ... good things come to those who wait !.
Many many thanks indeed for your input on this topic and please feel free to add anything you wish.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

afaiu, the OP did _not_ ask for maemo/meego!
neither did i, but both did we speak about the possibility of entirely different operating systems on the n900 -- which in my case turns out to be the simple, though almost consequently ignored question about the OPENESS of the HARDWARE (and the OP's question boils down to the same question, after all).

please take a minute before answering!
the question here is NOT maemo/meego but openess of the device to deploy other OS.

edit:
just realized, that_you_ are the OP ;-) nevertheless, my point holds true.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

Basically: being Meego developed also for N900, and being Meego fully open source, is it possible to get all the drivers' source and adapt them to whatever OS you want on your N900? (I would say Symbian to begin with a open source OS, maybe in dual boot)

If I understood this well..

(ps. can drivers still be closed source even if the whole Meego is open? I assume they can, looking at linux & ati/nvidia..? hmm, probably I know the answer to my question.. nothing assured :P)

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

meego being open source does not mean, that every part of their kernel has to be oss as well.
iirc, neither moblin nor meego force producers to open all of their systems -- if hw vendors decide to use meego, they still can provide closed drivers/extensions (as nokia, no doubt, will continue to do).

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

If you read all the links on this thread you will get a better understanding of what is in store for the N900 and as it has been pointed out to me there is talk from Nokia themselves of 1.3 update so the very fact there is to be a 1.2 update seems inevitable, the problem is Nokia are somewhat a closed shop and give out very little which in turn because of there slow slow attitude to updates and giving out information gets everyone guessing and obviously worried.
As i understand this, the Maemo software is open source but some of the drivers for the N900 are not open, it has also been pointed out by noobmonkey that Meego is a long way off yet and will be open source, ok all very confusing to say the least but one thing for sure you can rest in peace that the N900 will NOT become redundant and that development will take place no matter what on the N900 whatever OS it ends up on. I do feel however that somewhere along the line all drivers for the N900 should all become open source.
The big question is WHEN so we just all have to be patient and wait.
One thing can be sure is go over everything Nokia said about the N900 from the beggining of marketing and cross reference that with future developments, Nokia can not back down from there own words but people do have this way of mis-interpreting things and thats why everything gets all messed up. I will no way sell my N900 because i do see it as being a first of its kind in any event.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

when i purchased the n900, it was not for maemo/meego, but with the prospect of getting a fully working debian on the device.

maemo itself is far from that (plus it has deliberately cut off us from using debian's plethora of packages, taking up unnecessarily many resources in recompiling, porting, ... already fully working and well tested packages) and meego will be even further away, limiting reuse of existing apps even more (a policy, i totally fail to understand, since the huge number of apps already there easily would overshadow even apple's store).

my hopes rest entirely on the openess of the drivers and thus independence from a single company's fancies.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

Install Easy Debian.

You'd find the desktop UI of most 'standard' software is pretty hard to use on a 3.5" screen. Gotta have a finger-friendly UI. So that's of somewhat limited value. Apple couldn't simply populate the App Store with Mac OS-X apps.

Things are not that simple. Not all the hardware drivers are under Nokia's control to release as open source. Texas Instruments and others must be convinced to release drivers or open source alternatives must be reverse-engineered. Certain other hardware-related software, for instance for battery charging, has not been open-sourced by Nokia because of the obvious possibility of damage to batteries and/or devices due to improper implementation by outside programmers.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

If this post is read properly from Crashdamage he has a very valid point here.... Ok lets presume all drivers are open source, it would only take one bad driver written to destroy the N900, furthermore just what can any individual do with a complete openely written source code of the N900 ???? what possible use would it be to them unless they are an absolute expert knowing every single component used on the pcb of the N900, that is near on impossible for a single person as it takes a whole team to implement safe drivers for the whole pcb to function properly and as he states : for instance for battery charging, has not been open-sourced by Nokia because of the obvious possibility of damage to batteries and/or devices due to improper implementation by outside programmers , problem here is people are thinking way too forward and forgetting that the N900 IS a completely new design of a mobile and personally i think Nokia are somewhat brave to allow the openess it has done ( ok a point to Nokia ) all i can say is patience is a virtue and given time progress WILL be prevelant. I personally think it will not be long now before the N900 advances leaps and bounds.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

yup i pretty much agree entirely ;)

If you searched for threads like these there will probably be 20+ lurking about....

People just need to realize a few facts...
Nokia do not give out dates, and they rarely say their future plans... When they do ... unfortunatley people alter and change these to mean what they want to mean :D

So for example - Meego is being released, can either mean "A working version of Meego will be released, or released soon etc..." or "Maemo is no more, Meego will be the best, screw maemo, Meego rocks" - well you get my Gyst ;)

A few of the more experienced members here will hopefully explain things never work that way ;)

Meego go announced a few months ago, and a development version (basically terminal) is available. Tekojo said that Version 1.1 will be out in September (i think?) - i'm pretty sure this will not be a device/end user ready system - but i hope to stand corrected :D

Back to the main question.......
This is a very clever Open Source community.... and many of systems have been ported onto the device. So i'd suggest that a lot is possible with the N900. And future upgrades will be the same as any other device, hardware dependent probably :)

I'm pretty sure that as more information from the correct sources appear, the people in the know will let the forum know :D - as they usually do, when they know ;)

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

Heh... all discussions about the future of N900 all leads back to the question: "When will (next_firmware) be released?"

Generally electronic consumer goods companies don't give out dates unless:

a). They're trying to rally their troops for a new product launch.
b). They're trying to qualm the mass when a certain brown element has hit a spinning air moving apparatus.

Firmware updates.. packaging changes.. minor hard/software revisions... are all usually done without any announcements. It usually only matters to those who have made the purchase anyway, so it doesn't generate any positive marketing effect.... and if the release date slips (as all IT-development projects usually do) it will reflect badly on them. What's the advantage?

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

invalid.
invalid.

missing my point entirely.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

firstly: have a look at the history of linux and maybe the openmoko project.
secondly: what you describe is basically totalitarism -- someone tells you, that you are not fit to make decisions, that you are not fit to understand advanced information and if, by bad luck, you were, you still would be not able to use it correctly, and that he knows what is best for you (and everybody else), under all circumstances.

if i am willing to take the risk of "one bad driver" (or more), then that is _my_ decision.
if your argument were valid, there would be no linux today.

Re: Is the N900 completely re-programmable for any OS? if so we have no worries at all what OS Nokia bring out in the future.
 

i don't think the topic of this very thread was the question about "the next version of firmware" -- but it is true that annoyingly fast almost every thread seems to turn that way. there seem to be a few terms triggering pavlovian conditioning, regardless of the topic ...