Community release of hildon-desktop, and promise of Maemo 5 community SSU

As Nokia winds down its N900 support the community will need to step up to provide its own. Mohammad Abu-Garbeyyeh has done just that, releasing a number of core Maemo 5 packages with updates developed by Nokia since PR1.2, but not yet introduced in "PR1.3". His particular prompt was a change to the scrolling behaviour of the applications menu: He goes on to say, later in the thread, that he is preparing a proper community updates repo, similar to the Maemo 4 one from Lucas Maneos. This would provide both an interim release before PR1.3 is released (if it is) and an ongoing home for community-driven updates to Maemo 5.


Community Council election time again

One of your editors, Andrew Flegg, as Maemo Community Council chair, gets to announce the next date for elections to the community facilitation group. Every six months the community chooses five members to represent itself to Nokia, the outside world and coordinate internal activities where desired and/or necessary. Voting will be open for a week, and its last day will be Wednesday, 22nd September 2010. Nominations open this Thursday. Before then The next council, like the current one, will still be coordinating community activities during the transition to MeeGo. Some things are much firmer than they were six months ago (no bulk move of everyone to meego.com from maemo.org; MeeGo's Handset UX does run on the N900; no commercial grade offering of MeeGo (or Harmattan) for the N900 from Nokia), but the future of the maemo.org community is still dependent on whether MeeGo-Harmattan "Hacker Edition" becomes a realistic day-to-day OS for N900 owners, and whether or not a community of developers and users gather around it.



In this edition...

1. Front Page
   • Community release of hildon-desktop, and promise of Maemo 5 community SSU
   • Community Council election time again
2. Applications
   • tweetgo.net looking for new maintainer
3. Development
   • Nokia-led development of hildon-desktop stopped
   • MeeGo Touch Framework (MTF) documentation now online
   • Qt Mobility APIs now available in Python
   • New PulseAudio package to solve audio stuttering on N900
4. Devices
   • Maemo, on N900, running MeeGo Handset UX
   • Images of Nokia MeeGo (Harmattan)-running "N9" apparently surface
   • Increase N900 FM transmitter frequency range and power
5. Maemo in the Wild
   • Researching face verification/tracking with N900
6. Announcements
   • Fast London Tube Map viewer
   • Advanced Interface Switcher for turning on & off wireless radios
   • SMScon for remote N900 control via SMS

Nothing for N8x0 folks to read, again?

There are two possibilities:

1. Nothing particularly interesting or newsworthy happened for the N8x0 folks
2. The existing pool of contributors has missed it

In either case, you can fix it: do something interesting or - update MWKN with what's been missed.

Yes, it's obviously a plot to suppress news about the recent resurgence the OMAP2 tablets have ungone, but you've foiled us again!

Or not.

(See Jaffa's post above)

"N8x0 folks" are always welcome to contribute articles.

Texrat. Thanks for keeping MWN afloat.

I'm going to start contributing shortly.

I can't take any credit. Jaffa and GeneralAntilles do all the work.

I'm sure Texrat would point this out himself, but I'm here, Texrat isn't involved in MWKN directly.

Your current editors are me and GeneralAntilles, with more contributors finding the links which make up the issue. More contributors are definitely desired, and there's probably room for an editor or two more as well.

Oops. Mixed up Twitter and TMO :\

Aimed at you, Andrew. Thanks for your works here. Specifically WMN.

I suppose I'll start at the bottom and contribute - and then work my way up to editing. Da?

Sounds like a perfect plan :-)

Let me know your Twitter ID so I can make sure they get picked up.