Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Qole,

I am trying now the Mer 0.9 Generic x86 VMWare image under Virtual Box. It's interesting... and it's my first impression of what 'mer' feels and works like on a tablet.

For the heck of it I installed Abiword. And what do you know, it appears to work fine... no crashes or hi-cpu usage (once I turned automatic spell / grammar checking. It interacted with the virtual keyboard ok, ie., no problems or crashes while doing simple ediing of a 20+ page word document.

I wonder if what I saw is indeed what happens with a real tablet flashed with Mer... that would be the next interesting data point. It'd be nice to get some clues as to why Abiword missbehaves so badly in easy-mer.

--denis

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

I'd like to believe you, but I think Abiword has always been better behaved under X86, which is why the developers can't be bothered to fix it. But I think this is a foolish idea on their part, for reasons I've already mentioned...

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Well, got it installed successfully and am glad to have it to play with. I was never one to leave well enough alone. lol

The only odd thing is that the brightness control does not seem to be working. Everything stays at a low level, see-able but very dim.

Any ideas?

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Brightness control? What? I don't understand...

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

The screen stays dim like it's gone to power saving mode just before shutting off. I can open the Brightness/Sound levels control panel from the icon at the top but I get no response from the intensity of the light. It just stays dim.

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

seething: Does this happen after you run something from the Easy Mer image file? OpenOffice?

Or have you figured out a way to boot to the image? :eek:

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

The dim problem exists with Mer when chanrger is plugged.

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4199

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

My project is not about booting. I am using the Mer root filesystem to run applications in Maemo.

If you are booting to Mer, please use the latest Mer image and post in the current Mer thread (Currently Mer 0.9)

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Qole,

With Mer v11 out, is there any incentive to update easy-mer to this new version?

--denis

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Yes, I think there might be. Specifically, the new Mer desktop is quite nice; I think it will make a nice replacement for OS2008.

I'm quite busy right now, but I'm trying to find time to play with the Mer 0.11 release in my chroot.

I'm playing with the "replace Maemo desktop with Mer desktop" thing right now; I'm trying to figure out the details in my spare moments.

I'll post when I have something substantial.

Mer desktop screenshots
 

Some screenshots of the Mer 0.11 desktop running from a chroot (replacing Maemo desktop, but without rebooting):

Running Maemo Tear browser, and using daperl's battery status applet:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3593/...21be4e_o_d.png

Rotated to portrait mode (doesn't display the Mer marquee bar correctly, so you can't get back to landscape)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3407/...6c9707_o_d.png

Mer 0.11 Chroot Replacement Desktop
 

I'm continuing my push to get a working replacement Mer desktop in a Maemo chroot (in the same way I got the replacement LXDE desktop working). To this end, I stole wholesale modded daperl's donated code (see this thread) to give me a battery status applet and a wlan status applet. I got the wlan stuff working by copying and pasting giant portions of using the python-conic tests.

Some notes:

• Yes, I switched the marquee around. Putting the system tray/status bar before the application list makes more sense.
• Audio works by leaving multimediad enabled.
• The nm-applet is useless in the chroot.
• The theme doesn't properly load the first time; the marquee is "flat". I have to open Themes and choose Liberty for the marquee to become 3D.
• I had to unbind the /home/user directory because the Maemo .osso/hildon-desktop directory was wreaking havok on the Mer desktop.
• None of the built-in maemo apps work from the maemo command line, unlike LXDE. So I can't invoke chat, Internet call, or MicroB browser using the "maemo menu".
• The wlan applet can request a connection, however, and that will trigger the Select Connection dialog. So maybe I have to invoke all of these apps via dbus? Ugh. I have no idea how to do this.

Screenshots:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3305/...c554d92c_o.png

Tear again, with my new applets above. The red X beside the white dot means the Internet is not connected (I took some of these screenshots while in the car, being driven through the mountains).

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3416/...4b5db78b_o.png

mYTube open. It works fine, including audio. In this screenshot, audio is muted to keep from annoying my wife, who was driving, and from waking up my daughter, who was sleeping. But it does work. Promise.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3591/...4445a5bc_o.png

When you are disconnected from the Internet, clicking on the wlan applet icon displays this dialogue.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3573/...b87f3c8a_o.png

When you press the connect button, the wlan will either connect automatically, or, if you were in Flight Mode (like I was) or there are no saved APs nearby, you'll get the familiar Select Connection list.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3539/...3136ba16_o.png

Finally, I am connected. The "signal strength" obtained from connection statistics is a giant, meaningless number. I got 100% by holding my tablet beside my inlaws' AP, but when I'm at home, the signal strength seems to be a somewhat different number. Whatever. It is close enough. Note that my applet icon displays the correct number of "bars" for the signal strength (in this case, 4/5).

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Here are the current files for the batt-stat and wlan-stat applets. The batt-stat applet needs the battery-status package. The wlan-stat applet needs the python-conic package. They will work in any system tray that is at least 40 pixels high. You need to click on the icons and choose the "Quit" button before returning to Maemo or messing around with your theme in Mer, otherwise weird things happen. They are meant to be run in Maemo, to display in the chroot desktop.

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Looks nice :)

Do you do this from standard mer chroot setup? (eg, the one descriped in http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer/Documentat...n_.28chroot.29) or are you running this from your earlier easy-ubuntu/mer image?

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Grimmer: I am using Easy Debian, a Mer 0.11 rootfs in a partition, and modified scripts from my Easy Debian LXDE As Replacement Desktop project.

My chroot is more complex than the simple chroot that is set up as part of the Mer install process.

I'll post more details about what I did to get this to work when I'm happier with the results.

I'll probably make some installable .deb files so everyone can do it. That's usually what I do ;)

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Making some progress:

The status bar icon menu with the Maemo apps you can run (with Ubuntu PCManFM running in the background):
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3376/...4b9309a9_o.png

The little info balloon that shows when you select an application from the status bar menu (do you like the wallpaper? ;) ):
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3387/...702dc1a5_o.png

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Just a note, my hosted files are going away on the evening of Tuesday, April 28th, due to the shutdown of my host, maemobox.org.

Get them now, or not at all!

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

qole: i spent 20 min trying to figure out how to PM you here, and finally gave up and sent a message to your flickr account.

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

:) You click on my name, and choose "send a private message to qole".

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

:/
when using the PM link, it shows this:

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

You need a certain number of posts to send PM's. It may be like 15 or 50. Something like that.

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Looks like I've got the hosting thing solved. More details soon! Thanks all!

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

to qole.
Hi. May be I lost something, but i'd read all posts, and even after your blog i can't EasyMer to run. I got big bz2 and gtar it, then set it to SD. Install your updated chroots. From menu i can start only OOO3 and Debian Chroot, that's all. From debian chroot "debbie: command not found". I would like to try OpenJDK6, webbrowsers and Mer interface. Would be great to see improved "how to start".

i did not find interface views, but got running Midori and OJDK without "debbie" word from chroot, just "midori" and just "javaws" (i needed to run JWS program).

It strange, but on EasyDebian JavaWebStart was more fast than on EasyMer. But on EasyDebian my required application from Oanda won't login, because of fault proxy and rest support in Netx, and with EasyMer it start, login and trying show account details... then nothing happens, it won't load the rest as charts, tables etc.

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

you use "debbie" from your OS2008 Maemo prompt, not from the chroot.

You may have problems running apps now, because you've been running them as root. This tends to mess up your permissions.

If you are at the root chroot prompt, you need to run "su user -" to get a user prompt, or "su user -c mycommand" to run an app as user.

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

i tried Mer's openoffice3 and found it much, much slower than easy debian's install of openoffice 2.4. would a 2.4 install speed things up, or are there things at work in mer that makes Openoffice so slow?

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

I have repackaged the Mer 0.13 release as Easy Mer 013-1. I have installed Open JDK and Flash, I have pointed /bin/sh to bash, I have set up the image's startup script to unbind the /home/user dir and bind /home/user/MyDocs instead (to keep the Mer desktop config files separate from the Maemo ones), and I've added a few other things that are required for my "Easy" images to work.

I am having some difficulties getting the sapwood server to start when the chroot is opened, but I'll try to get that fixed for 013-2. In any case, it isn't terribly important for this release's main purpose; the Mer desktop as Maemo desktop replacement.

There are some (serious) problems with the desktop replacement project too, especially the fact that any Maemo app that requires maemo-invoker will not run under Mer. This means most third party (ie extras repository) apps will run, but most of the official Maemo apps (ie MicroB etc), won't run.

Here are the two big files for downloading. The .deb to actually switch desktops (and give you a maemo menu, battery status + wlan applet) is coming soon.

easy-mer-013-1-img.tar.bz2 (Easy Mer in an image file)
easy-mer-013-1.tar.bz2 (the raw file system for partition users)

Please be patient while I get the .deb made.

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Thank you Qole for your hard work.
Very much appreciated !

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

I think "Easy Mer" sounds funny. :) Chrooting feels now a lot more compicated, when Mer is allready so easy to boot.

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

meizirkki: what do you suggest instead? I'm setting up a system that will let the user start up the Mer desktop (while still having access to many of the Maemo apps) without having to create a partition or a bootmenu. Install the .deb, download and extract the image file, and you're ready to go. Don't like Mer? Uninstall the .deb, delete the image file, and you're back to stock Maemo. Any better names for the project?

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Thanks qole, great job :)
Now, just a silly question: do Easy Mer work like Easy Debian (so we get to use Ooo3 directly in maemo if we want to) or it is a full desktop replacement that runs over maemo?

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

thanks qole can't wait to install it today

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Great work! I really wanted to get Mer going in my tablet, but it is still too rough on the edges to use it every day. Your Easy Mer is perfect for me, right now! Thanks!

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

It is like Easy Debian and the LXDE as a replacement desktop projects combined. You can use applications from Easy Mer (like Midori or OpenOffice or other Ubuntu apps) in Maemo, or you can fire up the Mer desktop and replace the Maemo desktop entirely. I'm not going to do the Mer-on-Maemo thing, there's too much conflict between the Hildon desktops and it isn't a huge deal to switch between them.

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Great job adding all this extra versatility for those of us not savvy enough to go hacking around properly.

One question though, I'm currently using Ooo3 through Easy-Debian, is it any faster through Easy-Mer? I plan to convert to Mer when it gets to version 1 but until then are there any benefits to it over Easy-Debian?

Thanks,

Rich

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Ok, sorry for the dumb question, but with all the marvelous possibilities I read about here I got confused :D
Thanks again ;)

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

Qole you're my hero !!!

I will try it asap !
(hoping Ooo isn't as slow as on the last easy debian version) ...

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

totololo: No, Ooo3 seems to be the same speed in all my versions. Slow to start, fine once running.

I don't have Ooo3 installed in this image, by the way. If you want to try out the Mer/Ubuntu version of Ooo3, you can try the images I posted in the first post.

Just about got the .deb ready.

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

I will try it asap !

Re: Prerelease: Easy Ubuntu / Mer
 

OK, folks, the easy-mer deb is available for install from my repository.

Catalogue Name: Qole
Web address: http://qole.org/repository
Distribution: maemo
Components: main

This deb will install the necessary scripts to download the image, switch to the Mer desktop, and run the battery, wifi, and maemo-menu taskbar applets.

Your /home/user/.chroot file will get pushed aside to .chroot.old.mer and the new Easy Mer file will replace it. Edit the .chroot file as necessary if you aren't using the image file (you're using a partition instead).

Please report bugs. I'm especially interested to know if I forgot python dependencies for the little status bar applets.

If you can, use the included installer to get the image file, so I know if that's working, too.

Re: Prerelease: Easy Mer
 

Fixed your repository, installed easy-mer.

Ran Easy Mer from extras (didn't notice the image installer at first). Loaded wifi, bat, and menu no problem. It did push my other status bar icons off the screen. I already have some python stuff installed, so no complaints here.

Noticed the image installer, running now. Logged out, quit Mer from status bar menu. It did leave the wifi and battery icons on the status bar, menu icon is gone.

Should it "remove" the wifi and battery status bar apps as well? Will it mess it up if I manually uncheck them?

To be continued......