[Discussion] Rejuvenating Maemo with DebiaN900
 

TL;DR: The idea: use vanilla Debian to get a great mobile experience on N900 (and possibly other devices) and replace Maemo
The question: are you in?
The task for now: discuss the shape

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Here and there I saw some posts of people playing with DebiaN900 or willing to do it, wanting to shape in a way it could possibly replace our dated Maemo.

We're really missing an up-to-date GNU/Linux system for the geek. Whether you have an N900, N9, N950, a libhybris-compatible Android phone or anything that can run GNU/Linux - you could benefit from it. Or maybe an N8xx...

But a couple of freelancers playing out with Debian on N900 is not enough to make an OS.

Many questions appear: should we bring h-d? What about compatibility with Maemo apps? Harmattan apps? Calls? The UI? Exchangability of DEs (GnomeShell, Unity)? Nemo UI (Glacier?) ? Sailifish UI someday?
Maemo-only frameworks (alarmd)? Accounts integration? On and on and on.
How far do we add to vanilla Debian?

Before we discuss all those questions: are you in? (even for a small task)
When we have the manpower, we can get down to technical discussion and dividing tasks.

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Current team:

• marmistrz

Re: [Discussion] Rejuvenating Maemo with DebiaN900
 

Nobody expects to get closed Maemo bins working(too bad), but a multitasking Maemo feel and appearance OS built on top of perhaps Ubuntu Touch or the like would be great, especially when we get mainlined Android kernel and drivers so we can run bog Linux on Android hardware.
I am so very disappointed with the performance(on great hardware) and horrible app integration on my one Android(Cyanogen mod) device.
It is frustrating that my degrading battery and appearance but well tuned N900 is nowhere near having an object of desire even close to suitable for my puropses.

Re: [Discussion] Rejuvenating Maemo with DebiaN900
 

Good luck with that! It was pretty much broken in Squeeze, and was removed afterwards. At least I couldn't get it running reasonably on vanilla Debian back then.
Some people have tried to get Hildon running on newer frameworks (I think Aapo and Android_808), but I don't remember if that yielded any satisfactory results.

As a first step you could try to get at least Matchbox running. It worked in principle in Wheezy, but there were some major flaws in the UI design. I believe I found it impossible to return to the desktop by means that are available on a N900.

The 1st major point why I haven't replaced Maemo on my Main N900 yet.
The 2nd would be battery life. I got about 6 hours idle with a battery that runs Maemo idle for a week. I'd want at least a day (with suspend2RAM if incoming calls can wake it up).

No idea about the rest, but forget Gnome and Unity! These are way too heavy. LXDE works mostly fine, so should any window manager. I guess Enligtenment and Mate might be ok too. But I doubt, even Xfce would make sense.

Not at all! Otherwise someone will open another thread just like this one in two years.
Any changes that are necessary would have to be integrated into Debian, to maintain them in the long run.

No, because I don't think it's feasible.
DebiaN900 is a great playground and wicket has my utmost respect for putting it together (just like qole, who pretty much made me buy a N900 just by creating Easy Debian), but in the end the "open" N900 is just locked down too much, to fully revive it with a purely community-driven OS.

Re: [Discussion] Rejuvenating Maemo with DebiaN900
 

Well, getting the closed bins is the last thing I'd try, when everything else is working.

Fortunately, most Maemo software is open source. But the real way we handle it is up to discussion. First we need to make sure we have the manpower to do it.

You mean that the N900 isn't suitable anymore or that you can't find anything else suitable?

Re: [Discussion] Rejuvenating Maemo with DebiaN900
 

+1. Changed the OP "how much do we add to Debian"

Can you please justify? We have pali's linux-n900 (basically upstream) so the drivers are not (such a big) problem.

Re: [Discussion] Rejuvenating Maemo with DebiaN900
 

So far I haven't seen any reports of someone phoning with the N900 on any other OS than Maemo (or Meego).

Re: [Discussion] Rejuvenating Maemo with DebiaN900
 

Here's a question: would it be possible to cobble together a Maemo-like interface for the PocketCHIP? I just received one of these wonderful little handheld portable computers. It doesn't have a lot of processing power, and the screen is just 480x272 resolution.

But the nice thing is that it runs Debian. Not Android, not Ubuntu Touch; just straight-up vanilla Debian. (It comes with a very minimalist "home screen" app that has shortcuts to a few apps and some settings, but that's it.)

Anyway, from my point of view, the best thing about this device is that it is unbelievably easy to repair or modify the hardware, and it is being produced in very large volumes. (And it's cheap!) So, for me, it makes a decent platform on which to do portable Unix tasks well into the future.

A Maemo-like interface on top would make the device even nicer. :)

Re: [Discussion] Rejuvenating Maemo with DebiaN900
 

Define "Maemo-like"!
There are multiple desktop environments that you can configure to work similar to Maemo's hildon and it seems like this device should be a lot faster than the N900.
So I think the only problem might be the low resolution. This could be tested in a VM in advance. And even if it is a problem, there are ways around that if you're wiling to accept a degraded display quality.

Re: [Discussion] Rejuvenating Maemo with DebiaN900
 

Well, if it supports Debian, then we could run the same OS configuration on PocketCHIP and on N900.

But it's not only about the interface, gnome-shell is somehow similar to the Maemo interface. We have the apps too. This is a bigger problem.

Re: [Discussion] Rejuvenating Maemo with DebiaN900
 

Hmm. I guess, honestly, I don't have much interest in modifying the OS on my existing N900s. I like Maemo as it is; moreover, given that no new N900s are being made (and haven't been for, what, 5 years now?), I'm not sure how long my existing supply will hold out.

The PocketCHIP hardware is fresh, cheap, and available. I'd really like to see a Maemo-like environment running on hardware that will exist into the future, rather than continue to husband the continually shrinking quantity of N900 parts. :(