Hi all

Does anyone know from Maemo summit or Maemo 5 SDK, if devices using Fremantle will still include, or have available to install, the Linux terminal?

I'm not sure if the new UI or inclusion of HSPDA might mean accessing using the terminal app is no longer possible.

Rich

There will be terminal for maemo5. If not by Nokia then by the community

Umm... I'm not sure how you could make it impossible to install a terminal app, and still be able to install any app at all. So I'd say definitely yes, it will be installable. Since it was once separate (you had to download and install yourself), and was added to the factory image in Chinook, I don't really see it being pulled back out, but I guess you never know...

As for the "Linux terminal", that's confusion of epic proportion.

Linux is the kernel, which knows about talking to devices, and throwing processes in and out of memory, and such things. You could swap it out with the FreeBSD Kernel (if you were, say, Debian) and the difference would not be horribly obvious, but the system would no longer have a trace of Linux on it. Differences would largely be different hardware support.

A shell, such as csh, provides a user interface to start/stop programs, maybe manage files, etc.; it's a layer over the kernel (get it? ). It is generally designed to receive keyboard input from and send screen output to a serial terminal, such as those that used to be used as consoles and remote stations for big iron. (You can swap these out too, and you'll have a different UI.)

A terminal emulator, such as xterm, is an app that emulates hardware, and specifically a serial terminal. You generally see a shell running in one of these, as you're rather unlikely to ever see a real serial terminal, if you haven't already. (Guess what? You could swap out different terminal emulators (that emulate the same model of terminal), just the bells and whistles vary.)

Of those three layers, you only see two of them, and the one you don't really see is the only one that's Linux; hope this helps to clear things up.

Yes.

No.

osso-xterm is actually developed quite openly and we want to go 100% community mode.

See http://wiki.maemo.org/Tasksso-xterm & https://garage.maemo.org/projects/osso-xterm/

And, further, there's been no suggestion that just because it'll have HSPA any ability to download and run any code you want will be restricted. In fact, the opposite.

Indeed, the move with things like the Android Dev Phone and the OpenMoko is to allow you to do pretty much anything on the hardware.

Given it'll probably be sold as-is (i.e. not part of a network/carrier subsidised deal by default), and it's the (US) networks which usually insist on these restrictions; there's no reason to worry.

Final thing, it'd kill what Nokia are trying to achieve with Maemo.

...so, yes, as the posts above say, a terminal app will still be available. Or I'll eat my N810.

Technically, you're saying here "yes, you know whether Fremantle/Maemo 5 devices will include, or have available, a terminal app" ;-)

Which no doubt is true.

I appreciate your attention to detail.

Yes, there will be an xterm officially supported and developed openly available in Fremantle. Maemo 5 with HSPA support offers no changes in the ways users can access to the shell, get root and so on.

Thanks, Quim. A few more positive answers like this one and there will peace in the land :-)

On a slightly related note, any chance that the gainroot script in Maemo 5 will actually just work without having to have the R&D flags "worked around" or turned on? I understand the original motivations behind it, but as things move forward it seems like a rather silly thing to have to hack up to make work, as there are lots of tasks that require root priviledges (and still requiring the user to KNOW that they have to do "sudo gainroot" first definitely still falls into the "the user won't be root and do silly things by accident" category). Just curious if anyone knows the story here...