fremantle on other platforms
 

asuming that you get omap3 and 1 gb of ram , open 2 tabs in microb and mediaplayer , and you get a call , the phone will lag because of cpu , why a faster cpu isn't a option? the blobs are for gpu and you need a new dsp?
and how about maemo , why isn't running on a new device if the mce is now open?

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

and that's your results of system performance evaluation of which platform exactly?
Please read previous posts in this thread on "we won't go for any other SoC than the DM3730 in Neo900" and the rationale why we don't. Plus, from my job experience I've got to know about SiErr in OMAP4 that are WONTFIX and impossible to work around in software in any reasonable way - unless you also control the modem firmware which - unlike Samsung, RIM, LG etc - we don't.
Thanks.

Because you haven't accomplished porting it to that new device. I suggest N9 for a worthwhile target platform - but that's actually OT in this thread and should go to http://talk.maemo.org/forumdisplay.php?f=58

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Even N900 doesn't lag with such a load, I wonder where did you get that one from. Maemo5 uses about 270MB with TMO and Facebook opened in microb, with media player playing in background and conky opened. Just tested that. And I can tell you that N900 opens various applications(contacts, conversation, phone, etc) faster that galaxy S4 mini. Draw your conclusions. If you can.

On N900 there is very little (if any) difference between device running on 600MHz and 805MHz. Assuming you put a sane load on it.

And honestly, after all those years I still don't grok why it is acceptable for my desktop (4 i5 cores, 16GB RAM) to need 5 seconds to load firefox (for example), but the same 5 seconds are not acceptable for my phone. That's perverted, sorry.

For various reasons already explained countless number of times in this very thread.

Also, for OMAP3 we can reuse GPU drivers from N9/50, the same goes for DSP codec nodes. Tested and tuned by Nokia for production devices, not the crap TI distributes on their webside.

Because all devices besides N900 are either with locked bootloader or lack too many features HW wise (or both) for someone to be interested in porting Fremantle to them.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

could you elaborate the missing hardware features , or in short : what ''hardware'' you must have to boot maemo?

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

If I read your question right (i.e. what HW I need to be interested in porting Maemo to other device besides N/eo900), the short list is(in random order):

HW keyboard
FM transmitter
resistive TS (at least as good as the one in N900)
uSD card slot
user changeable battery
video out

...and few more not so important (like hw volume keys etc)

If I don't read it right(so it should be - "what HW requirements has Maemo to be able to boot on a particular piece of HW") - well maemo boots in x86 ScratchBox with xephyr as X server. Skry made hildon-desktop working on arch-linux. etc. So, HW adaptation is not impossible, but me, personally, won't give up on the above (must have HW) stuff just to have 4 cores idling ;)

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

This should probably be in the porting thread, but :

Wouldn't it be easier to use a standard Debian OS with the HILDON UI on top? Use OpenMoko Debian.

Someone here has made this and there is a GIT (X86?), might be easier to port and use an already working OS from OpenMOKO/GTA03?

Then spend some time making the (custom?) Hildon even better.

https://maemo.gitorious.org/


Edit: Why is there so much whinging!!??
Just be bloody happy this happening!!

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

there is one phone that has
HW keyboard
uSD card slot
video out
it also have : 2 cores ,1gb of ram,capacitive touch,accelerometer, proximity, compass , lte ,nfc etc
the question is:can you(as in The Devs Team) port maemo to another device ? I'm willing to pay for that and I asume others are too

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

There is a guide on maemo site somewhere. This is the wrong place for that question.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

...which instantly makes it unusable for anything serious. Not that you have done any research into state of it's bootloader or hardware compatibility, haven't you?

And how the big F is it related to Neo900?

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

bootloader is unlocked by manufacturer , about neo : asuming extra thickness , big cover , price jumping 1000 bucks , that slow dm thing , how can you be so sure that neo will run maemo faster on neo compared to n900 ? you haven't run maemo on other device yet , hardware bugs , software ones etc.
Take the GTA04 for example?: how long and how many things need to be fixed?

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

moved to here from Neo900 thread, since offtopic there
I didn't plan to do moderation, but reporting didn't help

/j

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

how about answering to those questions? nobody ?

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

People have gone nuts these days why ? 1Ghz is hell lot of power for a handheld :)

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

open a flash site and do something else and will see how 1Ghz isn't "a lot of power" . fremantle was designed for multitasking , when was released was a good one hardware-wise , but now it struggles , many keep n900 due software part aka maemo and hwkbd

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

take a step back and look at the big picture.

N900 is one of only two devices iirc that i can think of that were released with Maemo5, the other was chinese. Scratchbox is a dev environment so there are some bits that don't work fully because the hw is missing.

Neo has similar hw at the core (eg cpu, gpu) and some different (eg eMMC, modem). As there are some similarities, certain components will work as is. the rest will need a new solution, be it a compatibility layer or RE'ing a closed source binary like what has been done for MCE. once this work has been done once is should highlight issue porting to other devices. 2nd device will show if the work done originally is sustainable or if a new solution is needed.

if you drastically change core components, the base os may not even run on the new hardware so where are we then? porting team would have to do a hell of a lot more work just to get to point where they are now. think how many differences there are in hw terms between say an s4 and n900.

then there are infrastructure changes to consider. supporting multiple devices is going to need changes to repos structure. it might need changes to existing n900 packages to pull in hw specific packages depending on device. existing packages might need spliting.

the work being done on the phone they want to work on is going to benefit anyone who wants to port to something else. if you aren't happy with there choice of device, just be thankful for what they're doing as it will help if you try to port to the device you want.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

I'd love that and quite frankly the potential for this option is an important reason why I want to get a Neo900.
I consider Fremantle more or less a fallback in case Debian turns out not to work as I hope.

Unfortunately I don't have the skills to port Hildon on my own, so basically what I'll be trying to do is get Debian/armhf running on the Neo900 with some UI already in Debian that works on the small screen.
So far the best I've come up with (in a 800x480px VirtualBox window) is Enlightenment.
At some point I realized that what I was doing was pretty much the same Jeff Hoogland has already done with his Bodhi distribution, so I started to look for inspiration and even to copy parts from Bodhi to my Debian vbox. (@Jeff: in case you read this, thanks a lot!)
One problem I encountered is the stability of e17. Of course this will have to be evaluated on the target plattform, but I'm kind of sceptic if it will be stable enough for my needs.
As a fallback I also tried LXDE, but if you want something less cumbersome that the Easy Debian UI variants traditional desktops just don't work well on a 3.5" touch screen.

In case you feel up to the task of porting Hildon to Debian I'd be happy to assist, but I have no programming skills to speak of and my packaging skills are dubious at best.
I tried to run matchbox in Debian and I tried the hildon package that was in Squeeze. None of them seemed to be promising.

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

@Sulu did u try bhodis tablet mode ?:)

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

Yes. E17's tablet mode was the only mode that was promising in some way.

In case you're interested, I documented some of the things I did here [1]. Most of it is about configuring Debian's e17 to work (not to look) similar to Bodhi's e17.
It's in german, but your favourite translation tool should work well enough.

[1] http://debianforum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=145854

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

I had the same idea with Mer and Cordia but I was told if I want to port that its what I should go do myself, since this is called neoFREMANTLE...

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

seems you all are missing the rationale. It's for sure NOT for the NAME of something.
Use standard Debian ->

• mafw: none -> Mediaplayer OpenMediaplayer, Gallery: gone
• alsaped: none -> consistent handling of audio in all situations, for all sources and sinks: gone
• PA XPROT: none -> sooner or later your speakers blow up (unless we fix that on hw level).
• standard upstream kernel -> optimized power handling of maemo kernel: gone; standby time: abysmal (watch out! oversimplified picture - power handling depends on whole system)
• MCE (and all the stuff it needs, like dsme etc pp): none -> complete state control (ringtone, vibra, indicator LED, screen lock, orientation, backlight brightness): gone
• HAL-addon-bme & friends: none -> proper battery monitoring, low-bat warnings, clean shutdown: gone
• liblocation: none -> all location aware apps: gone

and so on and on (probably I missed to list 60..80% in that enumeration)

We use fremantle since it's mature and been tested for 4 years now, basing on chinook and diablo. We know it's working. We don't want to invent yet another system. If you want to do exactly that, you're of course free to do that but at least anything in context of Neo900 is clearly meant to give fremantle and all the apps made for fremantle a new life.
You might have missed that detail, but to me it seems Harmattan (N9) and even Sailfish (Jolla) are using pretty much every single detail of the subsystems I listed or missed to list above. Guess why! While other distros use exactly zero of all those.

PS: Maemo is Debian, with several special tweaks on top. So where's the rationale to use "standard Debian" (I.E. a maemo with all special maemo tweaks stripped) and do the tweaks again? There actually IS a rationale, when you call that process ReverseEngineering and do it for the closed blobs only, while keeping the FOSS parts that turn Debian into Maemo. "why buy a 4WD model? Wasn't it easier to buy the standard model and mount something to it that drives the front two wheels as well?"

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

I understand that, but this is already an open distro, I understand that more work will have to be done in actually building the OS. Maybe I've been led to believe that the N900 is more closed source than it already is

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Maemo may well be 4 years mature and tested but it has also accumulated of 4 years of known security vulnerabilities which have already been fixed in Debian. This, and instant access to the Debian repos are my main appeal for using standard Debian and I don't think I am not alone on this.

By no means do I want you to change what you are doing, I realise that we would have to build this ourselves. Obviously we won't want to use the standard upstream kernel and I would hope that we could construct a runtime environment to run the rest of the Maemo components until they can be ported to Debian.

Maybe I'm getting way ahead of myself and have overlooked the complexity involved in this but it's certainly something I would at least like to look into when I finally get the device in my hands.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Check this thread http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91709

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Just my personal view:I don't care.

I hope you can fix that on the HW level somehow, otherwise is there reason why Debian's PA can't be told to work like Fremantle's? (this is so not my field of expertise)

Is there a reason why this can't be imlemented in Debian (custom kernel+some other packages)?

Yay! :p


Maybe someone would care to complete this list - especially when there are potentially HW-damaging items on it?

You don't know how much it pains me to hear that from you (again).
From a Debian maintainer's POV (I'm none) Fremantle was broken from the start. It was a crude mix of Lenny and Squeeze with even some parts coming from Etch.
Everybody who asks for help with a system like this in a Debian community will be asked to throw it away and start over again.
Fremantle is the impersonation of dependency hell. For Easy Debian we had to patch PA since the Squeeze images, and starting with Jessie we'll have to patch glibc (assuming it will still work when Jessie is released). Some packages are already broken (gparted on armel/hf, gimp on armel) and this is not due to the architecture (the same ED images work fine on my Cubieboard2). And it will only get worse.
Quite frankly I'm tired of this and it even made me stop my activity on TMO because in the long run I didn't see any future in the N900/Fremantle. The Neo900 with the potential to run Debian (the real thing) changed that.

Now, don't get me wrong, I highly appreciate what you are doing to keep Fremantle alive. But in its current state (the state it has been in from the start) I don't want it anymore. It is not compatible with Debian and therefore it is NOT Debian.

Enough with this whining. The rest I'd have to say (positive and negative) has already been said by wicket.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

I was under the impression that NeoFremantle would not be ready and the Neo900 would ship with another OS (probably Debian). Does this mean that we will potentially have to wait for NeoFremantle for a solution to this?

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

The annoying thing is that right now, with the current resources, building a new device based on omap3 is easier and faster than noving fremantle to another device...

If more OS developer resources were available, probably the next hw platform with somewhat good linux driver availability would be the Allwinner series SoCs. I believe some of them have almost complete linux support, except for graphics. They're also mainly aimed for tablets and not quite as power lean..

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

removing closed source packages and forward porting patches is for me the way to proceed at the moment. any idea of updating needs to address these.

cssu is already doing this where possible (pixman comes to mind). Aapo's work on rebasing against Debian 6 shows whats possible but is hindered by these blobs. pali and fmg (and those i forgot) are working hard on upstream kernel, just check out number of features added in 3.13, but again need lots of LD_PRELOAD shims IIRC to get it working with the rest of it. then there's omp, clock replacement, calculator....

debian stable releases have plenty of testing due to their release when ready attitude, something the debian maintainers should be proud of. switching to a base where we can track the upstream stable point releases would help aleviate (sorry if spelt wrong) some of the cssu guys work. switching to upstream kernel reduces number of backported fixes/features they need to maintain.

so i see why you may want a new updated version, but we need to sort out the one we've got first and that won't happen whilst we have to rely on closed source drivers/components.

Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
 

Hi!

Could You contact me?
I would have some questions about N900!;)

Thanks a lot!

My email address: dedista@ and google mail dot com

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

I would like to know how to port maemo or which rough steps are needed. This should allow us to start porting very quick when the Neo900 is released.
So I was looking for a cheap device which could be useful to make a proof of concept.
My problem is now I don't have a clue how to start.

Should I study linux from scratch or just build a kernel and copy the rootfs?
Which toolchain I need to use?
When I am using the same toolchain as N900 do I need to compile all packages?
So first thing is taking the N900 Kernel and add all hardware drivers for the new device?

I would appreciate if someone can put some light in this matter. I will also document the work that it could be used as a guide.

I choosed following hardware it has some kernel source (don't know about hardware status support) and you could boot from sd card:

lenovo A1_07 Kernel

TI OMAP 3622 1GHz Cortex-A8 single-core processor
MDDR 512MB
16 GB
GPU PowerVR SGX530
600 x 1024 pixels

Is it possible and feasible to port to that device? If somebody want to jump on this project and try to port maemo with me, I would donate 2 used devices for the first two seriously willing developers which have some experience in kernel work and porting.

The benefit of this project could be that some owners of the A1 will get interested in Maemo so the community can grow a little and we get new manpower.
Also the project will be teaching and training the community for the release day of Neo900 how to help porting maemo to it.

What you think?
Everyone is welcome to jump on and participate.

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

If you've not already seen it, you may want to look at the main porting thread.

The BeagleBoard-xM might be a better candidate as it uses the same SoC as the Neo900.

Having said that, I believe the biggest porting issues right now are the closed components which must be reverse engineered and rewritten. You don't necessarily need a single-board computer to help with that.

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

I have seen this but missed the omappedia wiki link about beagle board.
Thanks!

However this generate more questions.
Are there already somewhere kernel patches which are needed for Maemo5?
Are there already somewhere kernel patches to get Nokia SGX module running?
Are there already somewhere kernel patches for gst-dsp?

The beagle kernel and defconfig link are no more valid.
Does somebody can upload them for me?

So which would be the best choice for the basement kernel development, start with pali's and patching for a1 or start with a1 and patching maemo/Nokia SGX?

Ok it would make life easier when it goes to Neo900.
However I like the idea to have another device, which is not only for hacking and development and runs maemo.

So I can't use binary stuff from N900 for the first try?

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

I guess we could get Fremantle running on N9/50 if we had a decent kernel runing there, see the N9/N950 upstreaming force.

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

Unpatched mainline kernels are already bootable on the N900. Whilst I personally haven't tried booting Maemo, others have. Have a look at http://elinux.org/N900 and http://elinux.org/N900/Changelog for a recent (last updated in August) status. For Maemo, you need to enable CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED and CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED_V2. I recommend using Pali's kernel which is more complete as it includes extra patches that are yet to be mainlined. The two SYSFS options are already enabled in Pali's config.

Pali's kernel includes the SGX patches. I believe the user space SGX drivers from Maemo should just work on the N900. If you find they don't work on other platforms, you may want to look at http://software-dl.ti.com/dsps/dsps_public_sw/gfxsdk/. v4 is needed for X11 as support was dropped in v5.

Pali's kernel includes some DSP patches. The tidspbridge driver used to be in mainline but it got removed because it was broken (see the elinux.org page).

felipec did the gst-dsp user space work for both the N900 and N9 at Nokia I believe. I don't know if it got upstreamed. If not, have a look here:

https://github.com/felipec/gst-dsp

I would start with Pali's kernel but if you have trouble booting it, take a vanilla mainline kernel which I would expect to work without hardware video acceleration. I guess you could work either way, it's a case of personal preference really.

Sounds great!

By all means give it a try!

Re: fremantle on other platforms
 

gst-dsp and gst-omapfb were added to buildroot but not sure if they were upstreamed yet. However they were removed when gst-ffmpeg was replaced by gst-libav as they are not available for gstreamer-1.0.

http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/b...ry/041215.html
http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/b...ry/041217.html
http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/b...er/078765.html