Mer v0.8 release and a call for developers of Maemo-extras software etc.
 

Mer for Nokia 770,N800, N810, N810W, X86, Beagleboard, Pocket Loox 720, version 0.8

Information about Mer can be found at http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer and release information and released files on http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer/Releases/0.8. It also has a list of known issues so please read them through first before installing.

If you own a N8x0(W), use the installer mentioned here. 770 instructions here. If you have VirtualBox, VMware, QEMU or Parallels, try out our VMDK or RAW images. Beagleboard and Pocket Loox 700-series instructions now available.

Next release is 2 March 2009 (0.9).

Highlights of this release:
* You no longer need to ctrl-M to press enter in the x86 versions
* Packages which uses maemo-select-menu-location can now be installed
* Hildonized Midori bundled (thanks to the developer, still a svn version though)
* Theme switcher & status bar/panel customization, control panel applet
* Open system sounds
* Ability to install Ubuntu Mobile applications (tasks-hildon, for instance, cheese-hildon)
* Ability to install a bit more gnome applications (gnome-core is still limited by libvte seam)
* Power saving of wifi should work
* Nokia RX-44 and RX-48 keymaps added but not yet automatically detected by HAL. There is a command in 'Known issues' listing how to deal with it temporarily. A fix will be available through updates eventually along with XKB configuration.
* BeagleBoard port. If you are interested in Maemo5 on BeagleBoard, you can contribute to the Maemo on BeagleBoard project - it is a good way to help Maemo5 become more cross-platform.
* Pocket Loox 720 port (HaReT boot from WinMobile). If you have a gadget with touchscreen that has a Linux kernel & X plus touchscreen support booting, with EABI, and is ARMv5TE or higher, come talk to us to get a port going to it.)
* Hildon session script now detects wether it should show a cursor or not based on touchscreen availability.
* Maemo Extras repository added to default repository list.

Mer is still a work in progress and as such you should not expect too much of it - feel free to join and help us out if you think something is missing :)

Thanks to the people involved in the sprint 0.8 that has lead to this release: b-man, wazd, zenvoid, Jaffa, johnx, DarkenCZ, qwerty12, RST38h, r2d2rogers, Meizirkki, thopiekar and timeless and others who contributed but not mentioned here.

If you would like to participate, read through http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer/People and http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer/Sprints and see if there's anything you can help out with. We're on #maemo (or #mer) on FreeNode, IRC, if you'd like to hang out and discuss.

As you can read above we have added Maemo Extras to the default application catalogue list. Why did we do this?

We have done it to highlight where your (Extras developers) applications might have problems when it is put in an environment more aligned with mainstream Linux - and also to find out where we need to work on Mer to make it more compatible with the Maemo platform. It is also a showcase to show how much can already be installed directly into Mer - as we try to be backwards compatible with Maemo.

Together with this release, we invite you developers to check your application from within Mer (you can probably do it on X86 too, - extras-devel are built for i386 too.) and see why they don't install, or not work/start (check ~/.xsession-errors). - You are also very welcome to try and build your applications (do it under x86, it is like developing for a Debian platform, if it works under x86, it probably builds in our armel builders too)

You are welcome to tell us where we are not compatible with Maemo platform - and we hope that you can use this experience to adapt your application to Mer (and mainstream Linux) early on - and share your experiences and problems in this thread or in bug reports to Mer.

Obligatory screenshots:

http://bsd.tspre.org/~stskeeps/0.8/screenshot00.png

http://bsd.tspre.org/~stskeeps/0.8/screenshot01.png

http://bsd.tspre.org/~stskeeps/0.8/screenshot02.png

Re: Mer v0.8 release and a call for developers of Maemo-extras software etc.
 

Thanks guys for the great endeavour to make this platform alive can't thank each of you enough, installation is going on and will bring any findings later.

edit: installation went smooth, set up ok swap and wifi all went ok midori browser fired did crash but gave the option to set preferences that is nice, there seems to be some crashes with the browser still under testing though, more feed back later

Re: Mer v0.8 release and a call for developers of Maemo-extras software etc.
 

Can we use this in vanilla maemo? If so, could you post a link to the binary (or is it just the one in the Deblet repository)?

When Christian attended the Summit, I was begging him for a hildonized version of Midori. I explained that he should really focus his browser on the mobile market in general and the tablets in particular, since interest in a fast, featherweight browser isn't very strong in the desktop world... Bundyo had ported Midori early in 2008 and so I brought them together for a chat... He and Bundyo chatted a bit, but Bundyo has gone on to build his own hildonized Webkit browser, Tear, and I had thought Midori was a lost cause to us... It is nice to see that Christian's helping out here!

Re: Mer v0.8 release and a call for developers of Maemo-extras software etc.
 

The one in the repo seems quite old, I think Midori moved over 0.1 these days.

Re: Mer v0.8 release and a call for developers of Maemo-extras software etc.
 

Re: Mer v0.8 release and a call for developers of Maemo-extras software etc.
 

Thanks so much. Wrong repository. :o

Re: Mer v0.8 release and a call for developers of Maemo-extras software etc.
 

qwerty12 compiled powerlaunch !

it's so cool to be able to lock screen and keyboard :)

Re: Mer v0.8 release and a call for developers of Maemo-extras software etc.
 

I have installed Mer 0.8 on my 770 and I have an issue with the virtual keyboard: the system boots well until the user name dialog box, but the virtual keyboard does not launch so I can not go any further. Before I had tried the previous version of Mer (0.7) and it worked well, including the virtual keyboard

Re: Mer v0.8 release and a call for developers of Maemo-extras software etc.
 

I'll take a further look at this when I get the donated 770, try and see if you can reboot and if that helps. Did you add swap when it asked?

Re: Mer v0.8 release and a call for developers of Maemo-extras software etc.
 

as reference I reformatted my mmc partition and untarred 0.8. I have 770, os2006 in flash, with he2008 kernel. No problems with virtual keyboard. Swap enabled. After initial input of user data I had to reboot though