Ubuntu Mobile on any Nokia Devices?
 

Will it work?

I'm not gonna lie, Maemo is godawful. Its just plain bad. Whereas I use Ubuntu on my PC frequently, and would love to have a little mobile Ubuntu to take places with me. I heard Ubuntu Mobile was gonna be based on Maemo, which makes me sad kinda, But wouldn't that mean that there will be full support for The N800 and others?

Re: Ubuntu Mobile on any Nokia Devices?
 

No. Ubuntu Mobile is developed for Intel MIDs. MIDs use a x86 based SoC. Nokia uses the ARM architecture.

Re: Ubuntu Mobile on any Nokia Devices?
 

Damn. I guess I'll wait for OS08. If thats not better, I'll just sell mine and get an Eee.

Re: Ubuntu Mobile on any Nokia Devices?
 

What exactly is godawful with Hildon/Maemo?

I think you're confusing Ubuntu with Ubuntu Mobile; and the Ubuntu Desktop Experience with the Ubuntu Mobile Desktop Experience - which are for most parts completely different.

Ubuntu Mobile is based around Hildon and that means it'd pretty much be the same as Hildon in terms of the way its used. And having now been able to use KDE and Hildon on the same Tablet device I can clearly see why Nokia have designed things the way they have.


Maybe you're not sure what you want in a portable device?

Re: Ubuntu Mobile on any Nokia Devices?
 

Alternatives:

http://www.pokylinux.org/ (N800 support is in alpha)
http://dev.openbossa.org/trac/mamona (also quite alpha)

Just saying.


OT:
I rather expect I'll have an Eee once the Meroms come out --- since it runs Windows XP (in theory), I can get probably get it on my corporate network (which means corporate subsidy, yay!)

Re: Ubuntu Mobile on any Nokia Devices?
 

I am also eagerly waiting for the announcement of Eee PC's release date. I can run the full-fledged GNU/Linux distributions on it! If only it had expandable memory storage(but I can use USB HDs).

Re: Ubuntu Mobile on any Nokia Devices?
 

The Eee has an SDHC slot so, provided you sell your first-born, you can get another 16 -- and even 32 -- GB on it.

Re: Ubuntu Mobile on any Nokia Devices?
 

by the time the eee comes to the US, the SDHC prices should be more like 'arm and a leg' expensive....

Re: Ubuntu Mobile on any Nokia Devices?
 

Oh I know what I want. I came in thinking that it was LINUX. And that it would run LINUX Apps. Whereas so far I can get a handful of apps and thats it. I suppose I was just expecting more from it.

Re: Ubuntu Mobile on any Nokia Devices?
 

Well, it is Linux. It does run Linux apps.

The problem is that we're using an architecture that's not well supported yet (ARMEL instead of ARM: IT2005 would take packages from most anything :)), a windowing system / UI convention that's currently only on these devices, and finally, older libraries than present on the other ARMEL distributions.

OS2008, and the increasing popularity of Hildon, ought to resolve most of that.

Re: Ubuntu Mobile on any Nokia Devices?
 

I came from the opposite direction. I had bought a Zaurus SL-C1000 in 2005. It's perfectly capable of running a full Debian distribution. What I found out was that it's really a pain to try and use applications targetted at the desktop with a device like the Zaurus or N800.
1) Many apps assume you have at least an 800x600 screen and *just don't fit*. This ends with all sorts of dragging the window around the screen trying to make it fit.
2) Almost all apps will display at least their buttons too small and usually their text too small. UI designers still basically assume that displays will have a DPI between 80 and 120 or so. The Zaurus C1000 is about 200 even and the N800 is upwards of 220 (!).
3) Linux developers have a bad habit of assuming you have some type of pointing device that has at least 2 buttons, resulting in all sorts of "creative" workarounds.
4) Desktop apps are just not targetted at devices with such small amounts of memory and CPU.

The end result of this is that I can run almost any Linux app I want on my Zaurus, but only a few of them are usable on the go. I never even found a web browser or music player I was really satisfied with. When I got my N800 I was overjoyed to find apps that were lightweight and easy to use with a stylus and possible to use with fingers or thumbs. Hopefully with the 2008OS it will become much easier to get apps "ported" with a minimum of effort.

Also, you should really look into trying the builds of XFCE or KDE floating around the forums. If you're interested in using "normal" Linux apps they may be exactly what you're looking for.