Thread: Donating (award) devices to eyes, itsnotabigtruck and qole ?
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rcolistete is offline rcolistete
2012-06-30 , 01:20
Posts: 1,269 | Thanked: 3,961 times | Joined on May 2011 @ Brazil
#10
Originally Posted by qole View Post
My N950 is still working fine, it just has a cracked screen which makes it a little hard to read.

I have received many wonderful things from Nokia over the last few years, including trips and devices.

I bought an N9 "for my wife", but mainly so I could have one of those wonderful "museum pieces" in my home.
Qole, the Easy Debian community (yes, you and others have built an Easy Debian community using N8x0, N900 and N9) needs your contribution, energy and knowledge to help release and support an easy-to-install-and-use version of Easy Debian for Harmattan.

I think you need 2 devices, one with open mode kernel installed, other with only Inception installed, to represent the user base. Today, do you really have 2 devices to develop and install anything you want ? If you don't, IMHO you deserve a N9 (or N950) device from the community.

Originally Posted by qole View Post
I have two big problems right now, and neither of them is "I need a new development device".

The first problem is that Harmattan security was designed to be incompatible with my chroot solution. This means that the only way anyone can install an "Easy Debian" is to install an unofficial "open kernel" that displays a big "ZOMG YOUR WARRANTY IS VOID!!!11" message or an even more unofficial security crack (Inception). There is no way any package I make will ever be allowed into any official repository, because of its dependencies on such things. It may not even be allowed into semi-official repositories such as apps.formeego.org, but I haven't researched this enough.
We can try to discuss with the community whether Inception (or some software depending on it) could be made available in apps.formeego.org.

Originally Posted by qole View Post
It seems pretty clear to me that Easy Debian is not just ignored by Nokia as it was in the past, it is discouraged. And that is pretty discouraging. I could probably put together a package over a weekend, but getting it published will be very difficult. And if I get it published, then I'm in for a world of pain when it comes to supporting the package, because so many things can go horribly, horribly wrong and that just doesn't sound like much fun.
Even if Easy Debian for Harmattan is published like OverClocking for Harmattan, with one/two .deb(s) depending on Inception (for example), I am pretty sure there will be thousands of users installing Easy Debian on their N9 ! One simple reason : there is no office editors for Harmattan, so OpenOffice / Abiword / Gnumeric within Easy Debian are a solution for many thousands of N9's users. The N9's user base is estimated at 1-3 million users, greater than the N900's user base.

My 1st blog article about Easy Debian Debian for Harmattan has 1.3 thousand views since Mars 2012, with more than 3 hundred views in one day. The 2nd blog article showing virtual keyboard working on Easy Debian @ Harmattan has 3 hundred views since April 2012. I receive many comments and help requests.
So there is huge interest about Easy Debian for N9/N950.
The only current problem it is the manual procedures of installing Easy Debian @ Harmattan : post #57 and post #125 of the topic "Chroot Scripts for Harmattan Open Mode".

Itsnotabigtruck's Inception and Javispedro solution for virtual keyboard made Easy Debian @ Harmattan pratical to use even on Nokia N9 (i.e., without physical keyboard). I have it on my N9, OpenOffice Writer is incredibly fast taking 10 s to open (faster than some computers) !

My proposition :
- you accept one N9/N950 device from the community;
- we (you, me and others) can work together to release a .deb install file for Easy Debian for Harmattan (depending on Inception or open mode kernel), maybe also an Easy Debian image specific for Harmattan;
- I don't have enough knowledge of Easy Debian tricks, so I depend on you, but I can help packaging a .deb, making some scripts, testing, etc.

Originally Posted by qole View Post
My other main problem is that this is the sunset of Nokia's Linux OS. After years of developing and supporting the chroot solutions for Maemo, I'm really finding it difficult to continue development when I don't see any road forward for my work.

I've really been deflated about this whole thing. First, Nokia crippled their wonderful OS with a user-hostile security system, then they laid off all the great people who developed Maemo and MeeGo, and completely and utterly abandoned the whole platform.

It is so very hard to keep up my enthusiasm in the face of these odds, and I confess that I have mostly failed to do so.
My plan is to use & develop for my N810, N900 and N9 until at least 2014, because the Maemo/MeeGo community is alive and strong.

Easy Debian on Harmattan is already the best chroot solution to run Linux on any smartphone :
- because Harmattan has X11 and N9 hardware is fast (huge 1GB of RAM and 1 GHz Cortex A8);
- Android solutions don't have X11 and rely on VNC client/server to run the GUI, which is ridicoulously slow and not pratical to use.

We can indeed make the difference in this mobile world.
__________________
Python, C/C++, Qt and CAS developer. For Maemo/MeeGo/Sailfish :
Integral, Derivative, Limit - calculating mathematical integrals, derivatives and limits. SymPy - Computer Algebra System.
MatPlotLib - 2D & 3D plots in Python. IPython - Python interactive shell.
-- My blog about mobile & scientific computing ---
Sailfish : Sony Xperia X, Gemini, Jolla, Jolla C, Jolla Tablet, Nexus 4. Nokia N9, N900, N810.
Last edited by rcolistete; 2012-06-30 at 01:26.
 

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