Article "Easy Debian Harmattan with translucent virtual keyboard" in my blog, translated from portuguese-br to english by Google.

There is a table with performance comparison between Nokia N9 (Easy Debian with experimental Debian wheezy image) x notebooks running Ubuntu 12.04. Starting 1st time in seconds / 2nd time in seconds :

LibreOffice Writer 3.5.4 : 6s / 1s (XPS 15), 7s / 2s (A1215B), 13s / 6s (N9);
Abiword 2.9.2 : 5s / 1s (XPS 15), 7s / 3s (A1215B), 16s / 11s (N9);
Gnumeric 1.10.17 : 3s / 1s (XPS 15), 3s / 1s (A1215B), 5s / 3s (N9);
Firefox 14.0.1 / Iceweasel 10.0.6 : 4s / 1s (XPS 15), 4s / 2s (A1215B), 7s / 4s (N9);
TeXMaker 3.2 : 5s / 1s (XPS 15), 5s / 1s (A1215B), 4s / 1s (N9);
wxMaxima 11.08/12.04 : 2s / 1s (XPS 15), 2s / 1s (A1215B), 2s / 1s (N9).

Hardware descriptions :
XPS 15 : Dell XPS 15 L502X with Ubuntu 12.04 64 bits, Core i7 2670QM 4 cores @ 2.2-3.1 GHz, 1+6 MB cache L2/L3, 8GB RAM DDR3 1,333 MHz, 1TB 5,400 RPM SATA hard drive;
A1215B : Asus 1215B with Ubuntu 12.04 64 bits,, AMD C-50 2 cores @ 1.0GHz, 1 MB cache L2, 2GB RAM DDR3 1,066 MHz, 320 GB 5,400 RPM SATA hard drive;
N9 : Nokia N9 with MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan PR1.3, TI OMAP 3630 ARM Cortex A8 @ 1.0 GHz, 1GB RAM mobile DDR.

So we see that Nokia N9/N950 is very fast, between not too slow to same speed compared to netbooks, low-price notebooks and even high-spec notebooks !

PS : the notebook's bottleneck is the hard disk, while the N9 has flash memory. With flash (SSD) memory, state-of-the-art notebooks start the above softwares in 1-2 s maximum.

Good news. After disabling the MeeGo option "Settings->Time and language->Text input->Error correction", then Abiword and wxMaxima now show the text as its typed with the virtual keyboard.

With the above option on, the text is shown only after spaces or enter.

I've updated the FAQ #7 "Why only some keys of the virtual keyboard work ?" with this tip.

Thanks for putting easy-chroot 0.2, xmimd 1.2 and easy-deb-chroot 1.1 in your community shared repository.

The installation instructions of Easy Debian Harmattan in 1st post now cites MeeCatalog as an easy way of installation.

Version of Easy Debian Harmattan for Open Mode Kernel installed on N9/N950, so Inception isn't a dependency.

Dependencies to be installed before :
1) opensh.deb (download it from the open mode kernel PR1.1 site), copy to your N9/N950 and run as root (after 'devel-su') in Terminal :
# AEGIS_FIXED_ORIGIN=com.nokia.maemo dpkg -i opensh.deb
2) Easy Chroot 0.2, the same (B-2) from 1st post;
3) xmimd 1.2 the same (B-3) from 1st post.

Easy Debian Open Mode for MeeGo Harmattan : easy-deb-chroot-openmode_1.1.1-1harmattan1_armel.deb. Transfer it to some folder (e.g., "/home/user/") in your Nokia N9/N950 and install it by tapping with a file manager, or by typing "dpkg -i easy-deb-chroot-openmode_1.1.1-1harmattan1_armel.deb" as root in X-Terminal.

The rest is the same, follow 1st post.

Here is the source code : easy-deb-chroot-openmode_1.1.1.tar.gz.

See here the issues about the open mode version, so opensh is needed anyway.

Found the problem : FixDebImg calls synchroot which copies MeeGo '/etc/group' which is not compatible with Estel's image using Debian squeeze.

Solution : as root inside Debian, go to "/etc" directory, copy the "group.<current-date>" file back to "group".

The same issue happens in Estel's image upgraded to wheezy, as well as all Sulu's image (squeeze, upgraded to wheezy and pure wheezy).

Even on Maemo 5 Fremantle these images seem to have the same issue.

Post #137 is updated with this fix to Estel's and Sulu's images.

I have played a bit with an ubuntu image, used the linaro base image and added onto it.

One of the reasons I tried this was to see if the terminal would work inside the chroot from LXDE, mainly because some programs are launched as scripts.

And - it worked!

I still need to configure my image to get the kb working, am in the processing of updating it, but as you can see, it worked nicely. I don't know what is different, but I would appreciate if someone could advice on how to configure the image to be used as chroot on the N9.

Hello to all,

Sorry for being so noob in this, I downloaded MeeCatalog from Nokia Store and enabled the "Community Share Repository". Downloaded and installed Inception by tapping with a file manager (Filebox).

Then typed in X-Terminal as user :
$ devel-su -c /usr/sbin/pasiv
Seemed to work ok, and received the message "you can now have full access to the N9" or something like that , and Inception is now active.

But the next step: /usr/sbin/incept aegisctl_1.3_armel.deb does not work. It says file not found and I downloaded aegisctl and opensh too.

With the easier installation I have to do these 2 steps after installing inception?

"$ /usr/sbin/incept aegisctl_1.3_armel.deb
type the root password,
$ /usr/sbin/incept opensh_1.00_armel.deb
confirming again the root password."

I have PR1.3, thanks in advance...

Problably you are running the above commands in a different directory where the aegistctl and opensh .deb are.
Use ls (to list the content of your directory) and Tab to complete your commands when typing.

Please give some links about the base or modified Linaro image. And your steps modifying it.

will do so shortly, but am at work, and need to compress and upload file.

basically took the linaro ubuntu nano image, and uncompressed it into a 2g empty image.

apt-get update, hadd to add user as per instructions on your page, www.rzr.online.fr/q/rootfs

installed unity-2d, lxde

copied also usr/share/X11/xkbd and /var from debian image to get easy debian scripts working

downloaded xephwm, suxephwm, xephwm-id and suxephwm-id to usr/bin, although for now only xephwm works.


more details tp follow