Mer for Nokia 770, N800, N810, N810W, X86, Beagleboard, Pocket Loox 720, version 0.11

Information about Mer can be found at http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer and everything you need to know about the release on http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer/Releases/0.11. It also has a list of known issues so please read them through first before installing.

We have also put up some general installation information and those with clone-to-SD Maemo will find this good to read through.

There will be a Maemo/Mozilla hackfest in Copenhagen (Mozilla Maemo Danish Weekend), Saturday-Sunday 30-31 May 2009 (with party Friday 29 May), where Mer is one of the focus areas as well. As it is a hackfest the focus will be more on coding than on presentations. If you are able to show up and you are willing to help out with Mer, you're more than encouraged to do so Focus of the Mer part will be bringing Mer to 1.0 (day-to-day usable on N8x0s).

Highlights of this release:
* New UI based on wazd's ideas from his blog
* Maemo-launcher (the GTK booster, etc) actually works now, reducing RAM usage and making Mer more usable on 770 and faster everywhere.
* Removed docpurge temporarily (no more apt-get dist-upgrade messups)
* N810 keymap now works correctly (yes, now it does)
* Special 'Mer' kernels for N8x0 with goodies: OTG device whitelisting, add pH5's patch to change opmode on the fly, fanoush's patch to remove "menelaus: Setting voltage..." messages in dmesg, fanoush's patch which correctly gives device nodes for mmcs on N810, rndispatch, jott's rotation and a quickie patch of mine to remove "EAC mode..." messages from dmesg (RNDIS means USBnet on your XP), also usable in Maemo
* Drag lock - keep your home screen applets in place
* Much needed installer bugfixes
* Maemo extras disabled so we focus on the Mer part for a bit.

Next release is 27 April 2009 (0.12). Mer is still a work in progress and as such you should not expect too much of it (note long list of known issues). We are in dire need of hands, both coders, architects/designers, testers, or anyone passionate about mobile development, so if you think you can contribute, you're more than welcome to join us in this community effort.

If you would like to participate, read through http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer/People and http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer/Sprints and see if there's anything you can help out with. We're on #mer on FreeNode, IRC, if you'd like to hang out and discuss.

Thanks to the following people (if anyone is not included who should have been, consider yourself thanked who have helped making this release & sprint a reality: wazd, zenvoid, johnx, lbt, Meizirkki, qwerty12, ScriptRipper, neatojones, b-man, VDVsx, nikolajhendel, x29a, GeneralAntilles, Jaffa, crashanddie, r2d2rogers, goshawk, timeless, AndrewFBlack, m-c, zakkm, pundiramit, FRZ

Obligatory screenshots:

Mer.... 0.11 Woo Hoo!

Is apt-get dist-upgrade a recommended way to upgrade Mer (specifically, this version?).

I did, and man, hildon desktop was messed up! I could barely get to the Terminal to type reboot.

Thanks.

Yes, we don't plan to break hildon-desktop layout anymore (I hope.)

I've been downloading the various Mers (ok, just 0.9 and now 0.11), and find a bit of wonkiness under VirtualBox -- e.g. web browser is still a little wierd on the input side, the fact that the virtual keyboard pops up whenever I type into anything. I do note that a lot of `lib' style files look like they're trying to be created on bootup, but fail (primarily to VirtualBox presenting the vmdk as a read-only image).

Am I missing stuff by using VirtualBox; should I be sacrificing a new MMC card to the Gods of Mer?

[Whoops, sorry - the VirtualBox is on a Fedora9; I've got a N810... If it all makes any difference]

Feel so good that still have people care about 770 users, when Nokia and Canola team don't anymore.
Great job!!!

Hehe, well, the community have people who care about 770s, and so they've donated, contributed and tested, and hence we have 770 support.

Yeah, - I hope to replace Midori with Tear for next release (any better suggestions?). HIM popping up is simply so we can test that HIM works (we are still in development). We hope to get some saner detection later - the input methods you see in Maemo are not open source, besides the framework, so.

Probably an artefact of how I make the VMDKs.

No, VirtualBox experience is very similar to tablet one - except tablet one has rescue menu and advanced backlight.

Hildon-input-method can be disabled.

There is something like "/usr/bin/hildon-input-method &" at the end of the "/usr/bin/start-hildon" script, just remove that line.

How about splitting the start-hildon into pieces like nokia did? (/etc/osso-af-init).
Then there could be separate files for each part of the hildon. For example, if there's a separate file for matchbox-window-manager startup, movable dialogs could be set without the risk of messing up anything else.

I just installed Mer 0.11 on my good ol' 770 following the installation guide : it works !
The only thing I'm wondering is : is the swap on by default ?
because as soon as I try to launch any application (xterm, network config), it looks like the desktop crash and I only have the background image ...
Any hint ?

Thanks for this amazing work.
Fred