Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

Hi Guy,

I ordered a n810 yesterday. I am surfing some blogs and forums to find whats best for my coming Nokia n810. I have found out that many geeks are trying to run Ubuntu or Android on n810. Why do we need Ubuntu/Android on Maemo enabled n810? Are Ubuntu/Android better OS than Maemo?

Thanks.
SK

Re: Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

You don't need those. It's really just about seeing if the stuff can be made to run on the tablet.

Maemo will do you just fine, so long as you have reasonable expectations.

Re: Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

IMHO because we can. Maemo is taylored to the tablet, Android is for a cell or VOIP phone, and Ubuntu is perhaps more than the tablet can handle. Learn the tablet with Maemo before trying other things.

Re: Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

Got it. Does the tablet comes with OS cd (or can be downloaded from net), in case you messed up your tablet. Can you format your tablet and install other OS just like your PC?

Thanks,
SK

Re: Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

You can reflash the OS from a downloadable image. No CD is provided. At one time OS upgrades were maual by flashing. The current version will do that under the control of the Application Manager while connected to the Internet.

Re: Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

Thank you. I am a noob. Sorry!! what does that reflashing means?

Thanks,
SK.

Re: Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

It's basically reformatting the device and reinstalling the OS.

Re: Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

Ok!! Thank you.

Re: Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

In this case flashing refers taking control from the running OS to totally erase the syetm before replacing it. A running OS can't easily rewite itself.

Re: Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

There are many reasons to use Ubuntu or Android. Android is in really good state and some people want to use it. It has pretty good webkit browser for example.

Ubuntu with full gnome desktop is way too heavy for day-to-day use on tablet, but it provides huge bunch or useful apps. And Gnome can be replaced by LXDE or other lightweight desktop-environment.

If you are interested in using other operating systems along maemo i suggest Mer.
Mer is using Ubuntu Jaunty as a thin base combined with the open-source elements of Maemo.

So, with mer you can use most of the maemo-stuff and most of the Ubuntu stuff at the same time. But it's on early stage, so it's best to just stay with maemo for now.

Anyway i _really_ think all these operating systems are NOT just because people wanna see if they can be run on tablets. no, that isn't true. Some people might think they make tablets powerful, and not just small embedded devices. ;)

Re: Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

I understand your point. The thing i am concerned about is that does hardware permit all this. A heavy OS on low powered processor will only irritate you. But i would like to try Ubuntu, if it provides major improvements.

Thanks.

Re: Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

The desktop environment provided with Maemo (and Mer) is called "Hildon," and it is, in my humble opinion, one of the best Linux environments for the tablets' form factor. Some people like LXDE, which stands for "Lightweight X Desktop Environment", and some people use XFCE. But the Gnome desktop you see on Ubuntu PCs isn't going to be much fun on a tablet.

Ubuntu or Debian can give you applications that you can't get from the Maemo repositories, such as OpenJava, Gimp or OpenOffice.

If you want to see what it is like to run an alternative OS on your system, check out the Easy Debian package. You can run Debian alongside Maemo and you can even run a secondary LXDE desktop on top of the Maemo desktop... You don't have to reflash or dual-boot or anything to try it out, either. The main problem is that there isn't a whole lot of space in the image file for adding extra software...

Re: Maemo or Ubuntu or Android
 

Thanks for the information. Thats a lot of information for me. I will try it.