Hi All.. little old me again.. I finally got around to setting up my apt repository... this is how you can add it to your debian if you would like some of the packages I build (and if anyone would like their deb added to it you can let me know; I can make a maemo one if there is high enough demand.. but I know there's some purists running around here that complain about "Yet another Repo"):


In a debian chroot; or a debian root terminal run the following commands:

And then modify the following file to add:

/etc/apt/sources.list
And now..


GXmame - A GTK frontend for Mame..
xmame - An Arcade emulator.
Emelfm2 - Most of you know this one.. a powerful File Management software.
QTStalker - Some kind of Stock's program that is apparently pretty good .
ta-lib - These are special needed libraries for qtstalker and who knows what else .
KDE4 - Many, Many kde4 binaries. See Note
DashPC - A UI designed to control Multimedia in a car
GFeed - A GTK+ based RSS Feeder
E17 - Enlightenment's Development e17 packages. People asked for them in the other thread.. it's not maemo; but maybe still useful?
Midori - A lightweight and speedy browser. Works great for tablets.
mpd - A modified mpd that works with tablets (just the config file was changed)
Hildon - Several Hildon packages used by skeeps for his LXDE environment.

Note: There is one problem I can foresee with my repository. Because I am hosting binaries for kde4 this may cause problems if you intend to use the more stable kde3. Because the kde4 packages are newer it might try and install those instead of the kde3 packages. I recommend you do what is called apt pinning to resolve this only if it is an issue... to do so you create an /etc/apt/preferences file and add:

Confirmed. If you want to use KDE3; install it before adding my repository - OR install what you want from my repository and them remove it. Another alternative is to use the Deblet repository at packages.tspre.org - it has my packages excluding the KDE4 ones so it won't confuse KDE3.

(replace lenny with sid if you are using sid)

But this will have one problem with qtstalker.. it might try and download the older version of qtstalker from lenny/sid instead of from me. If you want qtstalker and you have pinning in place.. you should be able to run
Which I think will pull mine specifically. This is my first time running an apt repo so I'm still not 100% how this will work with the other repo's but so far the ones I've hosted work for me on my Tablet.

Just posting that it is all operational now.. apt-get update and you'll have kde4 files and the few packages I've built so far.

Im going through freshmeat and sourceforge to see if I can find any interesting ones that aren't already in the debian repo's.

STSKeeps - would you be interested in hosting your repository here instead of making it local?? Or was there some reason you wanted to go local?? It seems to me it's harder to keep a local repo up to date when you change things.. requires a new subversion sync...

Thank you very very much!

I just installed KDE4.1 to my easy debian chroot with ext3 partition and its a lot faster than i heard in Keblet thread.

I haven't tried it in the chroot environment yet.. that surprises me though.. you would think it would be slower with the maemo overhead.

ETA: Maybe I'm just too impatient? But it took me a couple minutes for the default file manager Dolphin.. which is too long IMHO.. and then when I tried navigating it I just felt encumbered.. Obviously without real speed tests this would all be open to more peoples interpretations. Glad to see you liked it.

okay, it is not a lot faster. It still tooks some time to start and it gaves me a lots of errors. I am just very happy with it...

I am now working with my swap, because mostly i cant even open kde4 apps with 94mb swap. But when kde sometimes start its awesome!

I have been tested Gnome in deblet and in chroot and the chroot was faster. I dont know why, but gnome in deblet did not work, startind a single application like roxterm reboots tablet after 2 minutes lagging. Sometimes i chrooted to my deblet installation and ran apt-get from there because it was impossible to do it in booted debian. It might be my bad installation. And i know it was. I like more running debian apps in chroot, because i mostly fail installing deblet correctly. But KDE4 runs in chroot, and i dont think it is too slow, but it is still not very usable...

I should elaborate myself then... (also; I almost guarantee your gnome problem and a lot of your issues will be the 94 mb swap.. everything ran like CRAP with even 128mb swap for me... I now have 600mb swap and my tablet almost NEVER reboots on it's own. Multi-tasking is easier too.) Maybe this will help people decide if they would like to try KDE4 or not..

Now the reason I say KDE4 is useless:
I want my tablet to function. Function means different things to different people.. but to me I want to be able to work on my tablet; and only feel slowed within reason for a 400mhz machine.

Now; the fastest window managers that I have tried so far are WIndow Maker; and IceWM.. But both of them are very cumbersome in configuration; applications; and general management of the desktop itself. Thus; while they are speedy - and don't get in the way; they are generally just an all around pain.

The next step up is XFCE... it is a little slower; but it provides easy management - and most of all a terminal that allows me to copy and paste; as well as other goodies.. and only at a slight speed cost. XFCE is a great choice (and one of my favorites even for a desktop machine.) The speed to functionality ratio of XFCE is the best IMHO.

KDE3 and Gnome are next. Both of these are slightly slower than all the previous but give you even more benefits to management, terminal capabilities, usage, and friendliness... The speed to functionality ratio to these is acceptable IMHO. And the winner for my favorite so far for the Tablet is Gnome.. for the simple fact of the extremely easy hack that grants gnome a completely functional Right Click. This is severely lacking in all other desktop environments.

And then there is KDE4. KDE4; so far as I can tell to this point; grants us nothing of value in the way of operation or management (and in my personal opinion, took the vista route and went backwards in these fields by moving everything).. it does grant us a better, more impressive "looking" environment to work in.. As well as a supposed "better" file and management utilities; but it comes with a larger speed loss on these devices. IMHO the speed to functionality ratio of KDE4 was just too poor.

I'd say that kde4 is "usable".. in the sense that when I installed the "known good" applications in it, IE: Epiphany, Xchat, etc.. I saw very little performance degradation in these applications - they were perfectly fine.. And the kde4 MENU works fine.. but the built-in kde4 applications like Dolphin, and Konqueror and the KDE4 configuration panels (the items that were supposed to be "better" for KDE4) fell well into the category of "not functional" because they were the kind of applications that you would launch.. start doing something else.. and then they pop up after you've already forgotten you were trying to run them. Konqueror was the worst of them.

So.. KDE4 will give you a good looking environment; and the menu system works (if that kind of menu system is your thing - again, think a hybrid of MAC and Vista.. I swear that's what it reminds me of.) So it's usable if you stick to your current applications in the new environment.. they will be a little slower; but not too much to notice. But the apps that come with KDE4... I just wouldn't bother.. they just slowed me down to the point of frustration.

Ok, you really know what you are talking about.

I know trying to use kde4 is mostly just a waste of time, but i am only 14 years old (that explains everything!!! ...my stupid questions... ...and answers...) and i like trying everything new with my tablet: i like wasting my time for this .

Thank you fatalsaint, i am now trying it with larger swap

But i dont understand, why Gnome in deblet with 94mb swap works slower than Maemo with Gnome in debian chroot with 94 mb swap?

Just a stab in the dark would be Xephyr + Matchbox X-windows footprint is smaller than xomap's..... but I wouldn't think so....

could also be that core changes were made to debian itself for maemo in the way of startup services and what not that result in less memory usage...

In other words... I have no idea

I can start kde 4.1 by typing startkde in debian root shell, then it goes like half hildon half kde. When i start it by typing xkde (i modified icewm start script) in shell it first vines about permission errors in /home/user/.kde4 and then xephyr window shows me kde4 startup-screen and then it says Kde is unable to start: /tmp is out of disk space.

Is my swap partition mounted to /tmp? Why /tmp is out of space? I have cloned it-os to internal sd and i boot my maemo from there it is not even half-full, and debian's rootfs-partition has almost 1.5 GB free space...

I think it is weird that it starts to the same screen, but it wont start to xephyr...