Debian *early beta* Release for N800/N810!
 

Got anyone's attention?
(Link to the wiki page: http://www.internettablettalk.com/wi...p?title=Debian )

What this is: a downloadable early beta, tarball of Debian that you can boot from your SD card.

Who this is for:
* Linux gurus who run alpha and beta software for fun
* People who want to try and improve how Debian runs on the NITs
* People interested in having Debian running on a tablet so they can get Hildonized apps for ITOS working right on Debian/Maemo.
* People who just want to play with it.

Who this is not for:
* End users
* Sensible people who expect finished software.
* People who don't like the command line


What works:

* X11
* Hildon Desktop!
* Touchscreen
* Wireless (even WPA!)
* CPU frequency scaling (cpufreq)
* Bluetooth
* suspend-to-ram: works, seems reliable (echo mem > /sys/power/state) (watchdog will kill your device in 60 seconds though :/)
* backlight control: works, access to all 128 levels. (echo 90 > /sys/platform/

What doesn't work:

* Sound (is a dsp task. we might need to borrow gstreamer libs from maemo to get this to work)
* Power Management (is largely done through dsme, this could be difficult)
* Buttons (I can get a keycode with showkey, but they don't work in X11)


For more info: check out the wiki page: here.

I know people will have a lot of questions, and I don't mind answering them! However, please read the FAQ on the wiki page I just linked before asking questions. And if you ask a question and get an answer, please add both to the FAQ. Thank you and happy hacking!

-John

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Looks great -
Now since everyone knows they are gurus they'll download it and start complaining that it doesn't work they way they want it to!!

Under what doesn't work you did NOT mention teletransport and I can't seem to get it to work?

What am I doing wrong??

Beam me up Johnx!!
:)

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

On the Sharp Zaurus PDAs, Debian is one of the foundations (with Ångström) that people have recently been using to boot Google Android environments. Maybe it would work on a tablet too ?

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

- excellent work! will be looking forward to this...

- it'd be great to get to the point where there's good hardware support and a bare-minimum (text-based) install w/networking... most folks (i believe) would be able to take it from there... (this would be a flexible approach, rather than say, 'here's the install with such-and-such a gui desktop'...

- i was not aware of the hacked init-fs? it'd be nice to have a URL in the wiki? (but yes, i will look for this)...

- tks for posting this... adds a new dimension to the IT i wasn't aware of...

- anyone have any good URLs for a starting place on alternative IT booting/setup/desktops?

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Wow, thank you. Trying to debootstrap Debian was one of the first thigs I wanted to try when receiving my n800. But now you have done it. Cool Job.

Next thing should be creating a own repo.


You should Link this in the wiki article:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ght=debian+770

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

First, I'd like to say thanks for all the encouragement. :D It's always nice to see.

Interesting idea. It almost certainly would work with a little hacking. The one big thing that stands in the way right now is that applications that want to draw directly to the framebuffer (like mplayer -vo fbdev) have no problem writing to /dev/fb0 but what they write never shows up on the screen. Since Android relies on writing to /dev/fb0 we might have a problem until this can be worked around.

Believe me, I'm interested in hardware support too, so this should improve. I'm always interested in help though, too. :D As for a text based install with networking...That might be fine for the N810, but without a keyboard the N800 users won't get very far I think. I don't know of any onscreen keyboards for the framebuffer console. As it is I used the slimmest install of X11 (which I think everyone will want on their tablet anyways). All this does is drop people off into an xterm and an onscreen keyboard. From their they can setup networking or do whatever else they want.

Here's the "Boot from MMC" howto: http://maemo.org/community/wiki/HowT..._From_MMC_card
It applies to 2008OS as well since fanoush updated his initfs.

Well it's my thread so I might as well plug the wiki page I made. heh. Basically if you're using fanoush's initfs all you need to do is point the initfs at an filesystem that contains /sbin/init . init will be run and can do whatever it wants to the rest of the system. I really do need to see what it's handed in terms of mounted filesystems though. :/

Done! Remember, it is a wiki. You *can* just add it yourself. :P

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Is this because Xomap is hogging the framebuffer all to itself, or something?

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Yesterday it kicked me out of the wiki, as soon as I logged in.

One problem that I have seen on the N800 of a friend:
When trying to write big letters, matchbox-keyboard closes.

Can someone confirm this?


Ah can't await my n800

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

@kotzkind: Yeah. I can confirm that shift and control both cause matchbox keyboard to crash. Something seems to be up with keymapping in X. I'm looking forward to any help so hopefully your N800 comes soon. :D

@dblank: This is before Xomap is running. There might be some special trick to initialize the framebuffer.

also it seems like the wiki was kicking people out as soon as they logged in. It only happened to me in firefox not opera so I thought it was a problem with cookies. It seems to work now in firefox for me, so I'd appreciate if anyone who wanted to update the wiki try again and tell me if it still doesn't work. Thanks!

BTW: updated wiki and first post in this thread with current status.

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

My friend said that when x.org is installed (xomap is still used) shift and ctrl works.
x.org doesn't work, so don't remove xomap.

Does someone know what xomap is?
An changed x.org or something like this?

Edit: Ok it's an optimized xserver.