I see this device's future as a "classless device". First of all, it is internet tablet for a quickie internet experience with wonderful resolution no other device can provide in the same class. In the future you can also use it as remote controller AND pda AND notepad AND e-mail AND database AND ebooks AND voip AND gps AND "add your enthusiasm here". Right now I have used it couple of hours as a portable internet radio with excellent sound quality coupled with quality headphones ( I just wish, there would be option for not turning wlan off, when cover is on). It might be not the best device to do above mentioned things, but it's power is in versatility. So I still think it is a valid question, if we can install software on MMC

Not to digress from this fascinating thread, but I thought putting the cover on only turned off the display and did nothing whatsoever to wlan or Bluetooth.

It disconnects wlan connection and then of course internet radio drops out. Shame, it would be nice to protect screen while listening. Haven't tried it on bluetooth.

The X Server is the software that runs on the 770 which displays the GUI (based on information sent over the network to it from the app) and accepts user input (which is processed where the app is running). The X Server is already installed on the 770 and so is dropbear SSH. All that's needed is to install OpenSSH instead (Real Nitro explained why and how to). It shouldn't take too long for somebody at Nokia, or maybe Matthew Alum at openedhand.org to make OpenSSH the default SSH. Another step that will help most people is to simplify the creation of desktop icons that contain the SSH script. The icon contains a trivial, one-line script that amounts to tuning in what channel you want to watch, to use the TV metaphore.

It's very insightful of you to note that developers should take note of this and ignore it at their peril. That's absolutely the whole point of the comments I've been making. You see, the GNU+Linux and BSD communities think X is how you do graphics, keyboards & mice on those operating systems. Well, yes, that's true, but it's also how you split an application into two parts so that users don't have to directly deal with the hardware and software costs of the computing resources which actually run the apps. It's very similar to the way a TV viewer doesn't have to directly deal with the costs of producing TV programs that are broadcast (or otherwise delivered) to the viewer's TV.

All any existing X app has to do is to serve up its GUI to the 770 in the 770's display format - 800 x 480. The app will even be a touchscreen app - automatically - without any code at all in the remote app. If the client application is capable of detecting the resolution of the X server's display and of automatically sending GUI information to it that suits that specific resolution, then that X app has been written correctly and is useable now.

I was just reading the PDF of the manual and noticed a couple of quotes which shows Nokia's intention for the MMC card:

I'm tending towards not fighting the intentions of the device. It is best to use the RS-MMC for holding media -- eBooks, photos, video clips, etc. -- not applications (you'd lose hot-swapability) or application data (you'd lose hot-swapability plus the built-in backup utility will not know about any application data you store there).

That being said... I'd be happy to have more space for storing applications and application data, if someone figures out a convenient way.

I can appreciate that there are many opinions on how and why people want to use their machines, but along the original lines of this thread, has anybody really documented a worthwhile solution (particularly for a Linux newcomer like myself - though I'm technically competent in the Windows environment) on how to install apps to mmc? The wiki seems to point back to this thread and I can't see the woods from the trees here. I'm not particularly concerned with hot swapability, and x-windowing is fine if my machine would hold a connection for more than a few minutes and I had a permanent connection to a wireless network (which I don't.) I don't mind switching the machine off before removing the mmc because this will happen rarely for me. I want to maximise the available memory and will look into partitioning and swap files as well. As far as I'm concerned the mmc is there and I want to use it to the best of its ability in order to spare the small amount of on-board memory on offer. If I have to backup an image of my mmc manually then so-be-it.

From what I can gather, by the time you consider all of the potential apps that will be available from maemo over the medium term, 64 megs seems an awfully puny amount. I bought a Sony Clie about 3 or 4 years ago and it had the abilty to run apps from the memory stick then. It surprises me that this functionality is not available out of the box now.

Has anybody found a good solution that they can add to the wiki in a clear a-b-c kind of style? Or point me to some place where this has been well documented already.

Many thanks.

I haven't seen the procedure honed to this level yet, having been on the lookout here, on the wiki, and on the maemo lists. I've expanded the wiki page a little to try to make it more clear what hurdles need to be overcome (and also added a link to a mailing list post where someone describes how they accomplished it). If you're not comfortable experimenting, it might be best to hold off on this until more folks have weighed in on how it is best accomplished.

Mike

Completely OT - but why is there more than one Wiki for the Nokia 770? Shouldn't we be updating a single 770 Wiki, my preference being the Maemo.org wiki in the "HowTo" section? Having two wiki's seem divisive and it appears that iTt is competing with maemo.org (which I'm sure is not intentional, although I just don't see any other reason for a second wiki when one already exists elsewhere...)

I see the two sites as complementary, co-existing in the same way that user and developer mailing lists do. The two wiki pages on converting videos (maemo version, itt version) I think are an excellent example of how the two sites can cover the same topic from different perspectives.

Mike