I prepared a card image of debian jessie to try on the N900. I am posting the torrent here for those willing to have some fun with it :-)

This is a minimal image, and not meant to be production-ready, but I find it worth a look.

The image is to be flashed to a 2Gb+ micro SD card:
where sdX is your device. This will destroy the contents on the card!

The image uses upstream linux 3.12 kernel from
with branch
Check http://elinux.org for the current kernel status.

To boot, Pali's u-boot is required. Use the following file in Then run and if all goes well, you can reboot and choose debian at the menu.

It boots to the console and there is only the root user. The password is By executing you can start enlightenment. Choosing the mobile profile gives a nice touch friendly interface.

You can load the n900 keyboard tweaks from the Arch Linux thread with
In that thread there is even a map of the keyboard http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=205

To quickly connect to wifi, use the following:
When you are satisfied, you may proceed to network configuration in or using the network manager of choice.

I am thankful to the authors of all the pieces that have been used here to make this possible!

Have fun ;-)

thread hilights:
* for keyboard led, see post 53
* for battery info, see post 54
* to chroot into maemo, see post 57
* to set keyboard under X, see post 58
* kernel 3.16.0-rc1 on post 99; instructions on post 98

Thanks for your efforts and your work. I'm going to have more informations about debian jessie and test this image. I will post my feedbacks or problems!

Thanks. I've been working on something similar. I plan to release some helper scripts very soon that will make it easy for anyone to bootstrap and customise their own Debian Jessie system with a recent kernel. I hope that eventually Debian will be a real alternative to Maemo. I'll be sure to check out your image to see what you've done and if there's anything useful I can use in my scripts.

Some screenshots will do great

I appreciate your work and like your optimism, so not mean to discourage at all... But as history of such efforts have shown, I'm afraid that, if we add up all the bits to have Maemo-comparable battery usage in Debian-like system (thus, implementing power-saving features and rules) - not to mention such "fancy" things like phone functionality - we will end up with something like Mer. Realizing, that we've re-created work that others did already, years ago.

One of the Mer developers just told me, once (in another "Debian-as-alternative-to-Maemo" thread), that it starts with patch to ignore screen input when locked. Then, it proceeds to actually shutting down touchpad (which eats lotta hell of power, if compared to really idle standby), not only ignoring it. Then you add... And, after months of work what started as mainstream any-distro on N900/whatever device, becomes a patched together frankenstein, or, at best, a Mer clone.

/Estel

If I wanted Mer I would be using and contributing to Nemo. Whilst I appreciate the work that the Mer team have put into their project, I'm afraid it's not an acceptable solution for my usage. The beauty of Debian is that it's very modular and components can easily be swapped out with an "apt-get install". Try running an init system other than systemd on Mer. It can be done but not without porting effort and even so, I doubt it they would accept it as part of their project as they intentionally have a very specific base system. Mer is also plagued by being business-focused which means they stick to outdated GPLv2 packages to allow vendors to Tivoise their products. Not to mention the array of software that Debian has accumulated over the years which you will never see in Mer.

I realise there will be many patches involved to achieve the power saving performance of Maemo but I don't see why it has to be a Frankenstein. Focusing on a specific Debian release means that it will be far less of a Frankenstein than the Etch+Lenny+Squeeze monster we like to refer to as Fremantle.

The Debian effort will be far from a Mer clone. We may have to recreate a lot of the work that others have done in Mer but it will be worthwhile in the end in order have a mobile operating system that excels where Mer and Maemo don't.

Seeders? Or direct download link?
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How you did this image? How about adding user-account, autostarting X, and keymap (things mentioned on first post)? I know it will still not be production-ready, but little closer.

I see lot of potential of this (more than my latest attempt to seriously update Fremantle: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91709).

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Can I use repartitioned internal flash instead of card? (No spare cards on hands.)
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Does qt5 work with touch and hw keyboard? If so I could be really interested here.

Aapo: Maybe you could try building hildon or qildon using this image. See how much fremantle stuff can be shoe-horned into jessie as opposed to trying to shove jessie into fremantle.

As its targeting a specific debian release, why not make it its own release instead of trying to keep 100% compatible with fremantle. We now have mce and bme replacements. Replacement apps in qt4 should be easy to port to qt5. microbe was based off sailfish-browser, so that can easily be changed to qt5. FMG, Pail and co. have been working on upstream kernel.

Maybe even swap in connman.

Incidentally, it's my situation, as well I just lost hope for a N900'ized Debian long time ago, amongst ashesh of plentora of projects that were left unfinished, due to overhelming amount of work needed, and to few hands willing (or able, skill-wise) to do the job.

Anyway, if it would ever happen, I would be very, very glad. Count me in for any testing, or anything else that I'm not short on knowledge, for

/Estel

Would also be interested in booting/testing from internal, mmc currently in use in Jolla. (and count me in if you need testers or other low skilled helpers)