Hiya everyone!

Please bear with my total newbie approach, and don't be too harsh!

I just got my N900 on Sunday, as did my boyfriend. We went to get new phones, I'd not even heard of this phone, and I wanted a Windows Phone for the apps, saw this and fell in love!

It's been a very long time since I did anything with Linux, but this gives me a good excuse to get started again (like I actually needed an excuse.. well... I can only run Linux in VBOX at the moment as I don't have the money for a dedicated linux box, and my PC is always being used either for gaming, or 3d graphical stuff, so running VBox along side that kind of makes it fall over :-( ).

I need a new pc anyway at some point, so maybe some time towards the end of the year I'll be able to afford that, and my current PC can be turned into a linux box.

I'm very far off being able to do any kind of dev work, though I used to dev on linux,but it was a long time ago. I'm sure it'll come back to me, but I've spent a long time on morphine recently and I'm finding remembering anything is quite hard. This is partly why I'm going tobe such a newbie and ask what are probably really basic questions, and maybe stupid ones. My brain hasn't really recovered and I find it very hard to do 2+2 = 4... I tend to come out with 5, and mix everything up. So finding my way around big sites like this can be difficult for me.

So.... my main questions:

1) the bug I mentioned on this site... whenever I search, it comes up with:

Your search - repositories (site:garage.maemo.org | site:downloads.maemo.org | site:maemo.org | site:wiki.maemo.org | site:bugs.maemo.org | site:repository.maemo.org | site:stage.maemo.org | site:lists.maemo.org ) - did not match any documents.
No pages were found containing "repositories (site:garage.maemo.org | site:downloads.maemo.org | site:maemo.org | site:wiki.maemo.org | site:bugs.maemo.org | site:repository.maemo.org | site:stage.maemo.org | site:lists.maemo.org )".

Obviously there I searched for repositories. It's adding all the site search stuff, so it's trying to search those areas of the site, but it's adding it to the actual search function, apparently incorrectly, and I can't search for anything at all.

Hmmm?


2) Test stuff.
I've found a couple of apps I really like the look of in the testing phase.
But some of these have no current test feedback at all, so I want to kind of save them as projects to look back on later on, say in a month or so, and definitely if they go live.
How can I do this? Is there some way to be notified if a project goes live?
Remembering things is a really big problem for me, so I could just put a list of links into a notepad file and try to remember to check it, but it's quite hard that way.

3) More test stuff
There are some projects that have feedback enough that I feel secure in getting them and I'd like to contribute to the feedback stage.
So I've downloaded a couple of apps that are in the test phase.
I know I could just comment saying "this happens if I do this", but I'd rather do something that definitely helps out the developer. What's the best way to add feedback to a project?

I also can't log in, but I only just made a garage account, so that might be why. It might work later.

4) Brainstorm.

OK so I had something I really wanted on the N900.
I went to the brainstorm section to see if anyone else wanted it, and lo and behold it was there in the popular bits.

Now... the solutions posted. Are they peoples ideas on HOW this could be fixed... or have they done it and this is telling people what they've done, and I somehow need to find it?

Also, the milestone is Harmattan on the one I want.... does that mean it won't be looked at for Fremantle?
It says it's under consideration, so I guess I should wait til it's done?
Again, same with the projects; can I save this somehow to keep coming back and checking it? Or get a notification when the status has changed?

I guess this would be a subscription to the project / brainstorm... but I can't seem to find it anywhere onthe pages.


I think that's all I have right now.
I'm really sorry these are such basic questions!

Thanks for any help!

Nicola

Hi Nicola, welcome to the forums - and congrats on your shiny new N900!

Don't worry about being noobish, it is in my name after all I hadn't used linux until i got the phone in december... and my first app is almost in extras testing - so it really can;t be that hard hehe

Will try and answer some of the q's

1) Memo search - has issues with anything over a few words... if you know google, you can search the site through there...
Also - try going into community, then click on wiki (middle ish) - then search, seems to work a lot better

2) Very good question.... i save them as bookmarks if they have a page to re-vist...
There is an app called appwatch that lets you see the score and newest promoted apps - it's a bit of a handful but works

3) This can depend on you and the developer... Feedback is normally done by the talk page - if there isn't an app talk page you can start a thread or message the developer
you can find a list of all packages here - http://maemo.org/packages/
From there you can see old versions and the author - maintainer.

The logins are a known pain
Bugs - for definite bugs ... (Separate login)
Wiki - if you know something we don't or can help write - great place to help out
Garage - for coding updates (Not used yet lol)
Talk - for generally everything else
Brainstorm - for brainstorming, but the talk page is a good place to start.

When creating a post you can start with [Announce], [Request], [Brainstorm] etc.....


4) The brainstorm ideas are suggestions on ways the problem or brainstorm can be fixed / completed in most cases. There are different stages, so 1 is initial, then people add fixes to help the brainstorm, then people vote....

Some brainstorms are for improvements, some for work arounds, some for community etc...

The Harmattan discussion is a big one, i would suggest taking a took at posts by QGil (Nokia man in the know), as there are lots of discussions about meamo6/Harmattan turning into, being part of Meego - a merger with interl. That doesn't mean it is vanishing, or there will be less support, just a new thing with QT etc still being used. Read a few posts though

By the way, very good questions!! - lots of people speak lots of languages on here, so sometimes it's best to be patient, we have all been new to here once, and technically i still am :P