So, I decided to make a list of hack challenges that could be interesting to see in Deblet, for people to work on if they want to and gain fame

Some of it is low hanging fruit and some is a bit more advanced. And when I say hack, i mean the traditional sense of hacking up a solution for it In any case, they are things that could be interesting to see in Deblet, and on the tablet in general.

Bold challenges mark they're active and work being done on them / people looking at it, underlined means they're done. Italics means they're done and committed to Deblet in some way.

Deblet Hack Challenges v1.0:

* Google Gears for Deblet (epiphany-gecko, xulrunner, iceweasel? or compile Firefox so we don't have the problems with recognizing user agent?)

* A2DP package:

Hint from lardman: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...16&postcount=2

* Adapting Easy Debian scripts to Deblet so they can be configured by the installer, and the challenge on http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...9&postcount=10

b-man working on it: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...54&postcount=4

b-man posting tarball: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...5&postcount=18

* Brightness slider activated by clicking in systray, a script using maybe zenity or similar. mb-applet-launcher can be used for making systray launchers. It should maintain state between reboots and be set in /etc/X11/Xsession.d script

Stskeeps completed it as tablet-backlight: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...74&postcount=8

* Rotation applet in same manner as the one before

* USB host/gadget switch control as manner as the one before

* Adjustment of dimming-blanking time (source is in http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...9&postcount=57 for simple python scripts talking to dsme with this purpose)

* Finding a way to deal with the different Xmodmaps for different N810 keyboards/etc.

* Isolating what battery applets understands HAL battery reporting (as that's the only stuff that works on tablet) and document these on wiki.

* Making Hildon Input Method Framework work in Deblet.

Stskeeps, qwerty12 working on it and thanks to n3x for the idea: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...8&postcount=19

HIM on Matchbox in LXDE: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...1&postcount=20 . HIM seems to require matchbox wm extensions to dock properly.

* Establishing stable ways to get Deblet installer going on 770. So far the issue is that OS2008HE only has like 5mb left in flash.

* Finding simple Camera applications that work with the v4l device for snapshotting and recording and documenting these on wiki.

Application found by Stskeeps: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...9&postcount=11

* Finding ways to optimize Deblet to perform better, both in booting time (bootchartd is very useful for this) and runtime. I've had upstart running but it didn't do much difference.. under this also making the batteries last longer

One-two fixes from Stskeeps: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...9&postcount=14

* Fixing mpd (I think it has some errors while installing?)

qwerty12 working on it: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...08&postcount=7

Hint from fatalsaint: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...08&postcount=9

Package from fatalsaint: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...9&postcount=22

Done by fatalsaint: [url]http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showpost.php?p=222532&postcount=25[url]

* Making a LXDE based environment instead of the xfce4+matchbox environment that's standard right now, on par with the interface in Debian beta3

johnx working on it (no post yet). nit-env-lxde base without much contents committed by Stskeeps to repository. Hint from jiiv: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...9&postcount=21

* Trying to make GPS driver work in Deblet

* Making bluetooth DUN work and maybe PAN.

Progress from Stskeeps: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...9&postcount=16

* Working on documentation for Deblet, tricks and tricks, pitfalls, etc (wiki access is easy, just ask me)

* "Easy Deblet" package using preseed confs and presets (mentioned in to make the installation very easy. Information about preseed confs and presets in http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...9&postcount=57

* Script to show a "charging" moving logo (can't be the nokia gfx) when Deblet has been started off charger (and to resume when "on" button is clicked, and turn off when charger is removed). You can get boot reason from /proc/bootreason.

* "Easy" USB networking, maybe?

* Studying how a flash user interface could work on the tablets running in gtkmozembed for instance and how power hungry it is?

* Package to make flash sound work (according to fatalsaint it's a matter of getting osso-esd and use this as esound daemon)
Hints from fatalsaint: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...98&postcount=5

* See how Wammu (http://wammu.eu/) works on Deblet.

* mplayer on Deblet

qwerty12 showing interest in this in http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...08&postcount=7

* fillin-packages for gstreamer libraries that are tablet chip specific (see http://trac.tspre.org/svn/deblet/tru...ald-addon-bme/ for an example.)

* "Backup" program that can rsync the /home away or something
fatalsaint referring to Flyback: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...98&postcount=5

Backup to S3 possibility: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...05&postcount=6

* Ways to tell a user if there's WMM/proper powersave features on connected AP is enabled or not? (not sure if this can be done)

* Finding ways to bring right click stylus to non-gtkstylus capable apps/desktop environments.

* Maemo Mapper for deblet?

* "Geek-oriented" environment that targets the more advanced user, - rdesktop, vncviewer, USB gadgets, controlling music daemon on other computer, - you know the type :P

* Event handling scripts when gpio switches are activated (batcover, etc).

qwerty12 showing interest: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...08&postcount=7

* Maemo chroot - like there's Debian chroot, is Maemo chroot possible?

If anyone wants to take on any of these tasks, write it in this thread and use your posts as progress updating with knowledge about the task or simply to document the hacks. I'll edit this post who does what and other status information.

If anyone comes up with some more challenges, feel free to write them in the wishlist thread ("What would you like to see in Deblet 1.0 or 2.0? (Wishlist thread)") and they would be included in next iteration if this is a success.

If anyone needs SVN access to commit work done through tasks or want wiki edit on http://trac.tspre.org/projects/deblet, just private message me here and I'll set it up for you.

Also, I'll gladly answer questions related to doing the tasks if you need some pointers on how to start with them. Even if you cannot do the actual work, but if you have knowledge on things on how it potentially could be done, you're more than welcome to write about it in this thread.

Thanks to all the people who have done interesting Deblet/Debian on tablets hacks so far (Deblet Hack Challenge 0? - you've done a great job at experimenting with this stuff already.

Why doesn't the standard Bluez-utils + ALSA (+ option DSP stuff) work?

Or is all sound troublesome...?

Nah, I just haven't looked that hard into what would be required - as said, some is low hanging fruit :P

I think i can work with this , i am currently working on a piece of software called "Cdeb2", witch acts like "Easy Debian", but is built on a fairly diffrent framework, First, it is built mainly to work with Deblet, second, I am trying as hard as possible to make this as user-frendly as possible; like easy debian, it can be easily configured from a cdeb2.conf file in the /home/user/MyDocs/ directory witch means you can easily edit the file from the filemanager, Also, the really cool part; If you happen to acsidently delete the config file, cdeb2 will replace it with a new one leaving your settings in tact. (planning to write a script that totaly re-builds cdeb2 if worse comes to worse) Also, it automaticly will run a fsck if Deblet is not mounted. (witch i will eventually add a option to disable it) Also, i am planning to actually make this graphical, as in it's own window, kinda like what i suggestsed with the Deblet installer, but it will have it's own configuration window so eventually, if it can be done, we would no longer need a configuration file. And i will add a feature that gives you the option to activate or de-activate X and much, much, much, more.

Think of easy debian totally re-designed and with more options

If you want to see the scripts themselves, just send me a pm and i will provide a link.


Btw, That's whi you haven't seen me on the forum much, i've ben busy working hard on this software, witch is ony 1/4 complete.

I will take a few of these one when I get a chance.

For backup software I have used Flyback a couple of times and it works OK. We should make a deb of it. You want an external USB device to backup to.

For sound you want the files libesd0 and osso-esd .. they are older versions and they conflict with a newer version required by some other software on the deblet.. so you need to 'force' install them. You also will need libosso1 available in the debian repo's. I do not know the licensing issues with the maemo packages.. maybe we can build our own deblet packages that includes both of those and somehow gets around the "conflicting file" warning?

As I have time to look at these and others in the list more I'll update this post.

(b-man.. I recommend you work with qole if you guys are working on similar projects .. 2 heads is better than 1 and all that.. and no need for parallel projects on something this small).

I'm also thinking something along the lines of http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/007641.html could be interesting for users in general.

I'll take up some of these, I've already done work on some of them for maemo.

MPD I could do for sure, mplayer is a possibility. Event handling is something I might do if I have time.

For esd, what I would do is pimp up the version number, make it create symlinks to any higher versions of the libs the old esd installs to the old versions and set
Provides: esd
Replaces: esd

tags in the control file.I haven't read all of the debian policy but I'm pretty sure that would do it.

You can't build osso-esd from source unless you want an esd daemon that talks to /dev/zero

Ok, I did plan on doing that but now it seems like my debian doesn't want to boot
I'll remove the current debian and replace it with gnome.

Edit, I can't get a working deblet atm, maybe i'll restore original kernel and try installing gnome again sometime over the weekend. Or maybe KDE

Progress on Brightness applet:



It remembers brightness values through executions, and will soon remember between reboots too (Xsession-based).

It uses zenity and a brightness setter is already in dsme-tools.

EDIT: All done It's now in the Deblet repository + SVN snapshot, as tablet-backlight. You will need to add an application launcher for /usr/share/applications/deblet-brightness.desktop to have it in menu bar, else it's in the menu under Settings of the different desktops. It also remembers the state across desktops (try to set the level low, press ok, reboot, and notice the change in brightness when the environment starts up

Forgot about these.. for MPD the only problem in the installation is the default config file does not work.. it crashes.

As soon as I modify the default config file to point to:

/home/user/music
/home/user/music/playlist (with correct permissions)

And then add the sound device "ao" then it works with apt-get install mpd again. Maybe we could build a tablet-mpd with the "provides mpd" and has the correct tablet config file inside of it... ?

Or we make our own "mpd" and increment the version number so that apt prefers our mpd deb over the correct one. (this might be more seamless and help with other apps that 'depend' on mpd)

Mplayer you have to pass -ao esd and some form of video flag.. and it'll play but extremely choppy... I imagine the maemo mplayer was built somehow lighter-weight than the regular debian mplayer?? much like the Maemo ESD files???

Yes, I would much prefer to do that, epoching the version number would work. I also want to add in the processor vfp optmisations so rebuilding from source + with the debian packaging diff would do it for me.

Indeed, it's heavily optmised for the tablet, processor opts etc and the default video output is the omap framebuffer straight. I want to recompile the maemo version.

The esd differentiates in the fact it can actually use the dsp, unfortunately the dsp headers are not open so the only way is to use maemo's one.