I finally got around to installing penguinbait's KDE.
Great stuff he did. I'm one of his fans. As you know me by now, I will only use archives when it's the only possibility or if the archive has a small footprint (example busybox eventhough I like conflicts handling for core things). I'm a developer but I like "clean" stuffs, with uninstall/upgrade procedures. That's why I'm using a package manager since years.
I tried to convince penguinbait to package it but from what I understoood he's also an rpm guy, he's also not really interested in it and on other great tasks (which is better for most of us).
If I have the time and the skill, I'll take the task to package KDE (although I've already seen some people on other websites having packaged a lot lot of things).
Personnaly I didn't install it because it's too big and I have no visibility on it. It doesn't mean that I don't understand how it's working, it's just not perfect for prime time. I have the feeling that if it would be packaged, not only "hackers" would use it but everybody.
Off topic: Did you try his xfce? I tried it, a.m.a.z.i.n.g also..
Originally Posted by
In it he has XKB docked in the panel. In some respects XKB actually looks and works better than the hildon keyboard. I was able to use it with rdesktop to log into my Win2k server and finally make use of the server using rdesktop. That was impossible using the rdesktop/hildon keyboard.
I share the opinion, xkb is much better than Hildon keyboard. You can move it where you want and it's also more portable, smaller, etc..
Originally Posted by
Since KDE works so well, and easily fits in the 2GB N810 flash, I'm of the opinion that any Qt development work should focus upon that environment rather than the Maemo/Hildon stuff. A lot of the Maemo stuff is really primitive by comparison to KDE apps, and we can still use the Hildon input stuff.
Once again, I agree, it's a bit primitive compared to the Trolltech giant..
Originally Posted by
It makes much more sense to work toward adapting Qt and KDE to the tablet, using your Qt port for the apps, than to do the opposite. There's already a lot of code that's been done with Familiar and Opie. That stuff is where the Nokia tablet got its start, and the is the place for the ideas from which most of the Maemo code is built upon. Why try to reinvent the wheel (again. . . )
I'll have to look at these projects. I didn't really look at other projects, I had just fun seeing nice qt widgets on this tiny device. Then I realized that it has a great potential. And then I also wondered like you why things got re-invented. Maybe license problems at the time, stability and some qapps really need their UI to be rearranged for being usable on the device. Maybe they simply wanted to keep control on their device. Well, it's Nokia after all..
Originally Posted by
KDE runs fine on the tablet and has all the advantages of a windowing environment that Matchbox doesn't have. The existing hildon/Maemo/Gnome apps mostly work, too. All we need to do is to adapt and merge together XKB and the hildon keyboard, and to standardize a right-click method (any suggestions on that would be welcome. I'm thinking use the 3 top resize buttons for a 3 or 4 button mouse,( ie. tap=left, tap+fullscreen=center, etc. ) )!
That's what I wanted to do: that the hildon keyboard would popup when the focus would go on a textedit or whatever. Suggestions are very welcome yes
Originally Posted by
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Nokia and the Maemo developers seem to have a decidedly anti-Trolltech attitude. In the Wiki somewhere they even refer to the (outdated and blatantly false) myth that Qt is closed-source proprietary software! (Time for a bug report on that, but now I can't find the page) I'm actually surprised they let you post Qt on the Maemo site. . .
I didn't post on maemo website. I would have liked to but the qt4 name was taken and saying "coming soon" for several weeks..... Mine was packaged much before with details on how to do it. Ah well, another subject.
Now that I've been let down by Nokia (what an organisation for a so big company..) with unusable repositories for days, I've decided to not post anything. Also more and more I see that core applications are closed-source. I'm not able to feel if they have real reason (due to competitors willing to steal things) or if this just their will to rule the world but until now, I won't post anything on maemo. Somebody else can do it, it's not that hard anyway.
Originally Posted by
The other problems with Maemo are the frequent code breaks, and the fact that it's based on Debian (specifically Debian testing/unstable). I don't want to deal with code breaks and buggy and obsolete libraries.
Even Debian testing/unstable is very old stuff with lots of obsolete code. As an example of how obsolete the Maemo stuff is:
they are using 2.6.18 thru 2.6.21 kernel, while the current is 2.6.23. Glibc in OS 2007 is libc-2.3.6.so, while the current is 2.7. When they introduced Maemo to the public they taked about getting Linux "straight form the source." Instead they get it straight from the dust heap. . .
Frequent code breaks, I can't comment, I don't know.
Beeheeeheeppp
Now I have to strongly disagree (wouldn't be funny otherwise haha)
The fact that it's based on the debian is exactly why I bought the stuff (for 400 euros..). Yes, I'm a debian user. I have so many reasons it would take a entire thread to explain. I'm also frequently helping people on other forums. I've gone into long discussions with some saying that Debian is broken/for sissies/cannot compile/..., everytime I realized the people in front of me had no clue what debian was because they simply didn't understand how it works or they were repeating what others were saying.
I'm using debian testing on my x86 machine.
And strangely, I'm running kernel 2.6.24-rc5 from Debian repository and libc 2.7. All packaged
Don't tickle me on Debian without 1 real argument, pleaaase.
Everybody has the choice. Choice is power. My friends are using slackware and fedora (or ubuntu but that's nothing really). I am able to do everything they do.
Enough for distro war.
2.6.21 obsolete? Hummmmm... some people (err I mean hostages) run XP or wince 5.0 you know
Come on!! It's 8 month old.
Libc is a bit outdated maybe but there are maybe reasons? (no clue at all here)
Originally Posted by
The ideal solution would be to update everything as much as possible using current source from the package developers or from a more current distro like Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Fedora/Gentoo. It would be quite a bit of work, but a lot of it has been done already and much of the rest is simple compilation. Just like Ubuntu/Kubuntu there should be Maemo / (K)aemo That might even spur Nokia to put a little more effort into Maemo and update it a bit. . .
Ubuntu/kubuntu/fedora/gentoo
While I have respect for these distro, they don't bring anything more than debian does.
Does these even work (I mean, really work) on arm processors?
How many package do you find in fedora? Currently I have 30168 available packages in one click.
You are wasting your time. I can understand that you are an rpm fan and you're not keen on reinventing the wheel with switching to debian. But it's like this.. this device runs Debian..
Things which are not outdated in debian are for a reason. Either not stable, or license problem,.. Please go to _all_ debian repositories, look at version numbers and come back to admit your error.
Although as I said I agree with your rant against nokia, I think there has been one step done. My old device was running palmOS (wow that's very very primitive). Now my device is running Linux and we have fun here and there porting softwares.
I have the feeling Nokia is doing the minimum with these devices. There seems to be some highly competent developers but with handcuffs.
To be fair, thanks to Nokia's team for that but there's still a lot to do.
@gnexus:
I find your ideas in general very interesting. Maybe going the KDE way could actually work out very well. However, I have to arrest you on what you say about Debian - what's in Debian testing/unstable is far (very far) from obsolete, Debian unstable in particular is probably the most bleeding edge distro you can find, although it's always possible to find the odd exception packages (as with every distro). It's not even particularly "unstable" either - it gets more testing than many other "stable" distros.
However, be that as it may, this is not reflected in whatever is included in Maemo. OS2007 used an old libc, old gtk, etc. etc. This was presumably mainly because the gtk version was a branched version for Hildon. The situation is improving with OS2008 which is getting closer to the mainline. In any case, this can in no way be blamed on the choice of Debian as baseline for the Nokia tablets. As far as I'm concerned this choice was indeed one of the major reasons for me jumping on the bandwagon.
But my ISP is a bit clumsy.. you'll have to try several times until you manage (multiple wget would be the last solution) At least I do have problems from germany, maybe you don't.. 5.3 Megs is a bit too much for this webserver..
Amarok for KDE4 isn't yet ready for primetime, and the kde3 version runs on qt3. I'm having troubles compiling a working KDE4 build... I always seem to have qemu hang while compiling. When I ctrl-c and restart the make, it seems to skip the offending file, which means that it doesn't get included in the installation. Are you also having this problem?
All we need to do is to adapt and merge together XKB and the hildon keyboard, and to standardize a right-click method (any suggestions on that would be welcome. I'm thinking use the 3 top resize buttons for a 3 or 4 button mouse,( ie. tap=left, tap+fullscreen=center, etc. ) )!
. . .
i was thinking about using the 'D-pad' to generate the mouse button events ie the pad in the middle is the button 2 (the middle mouse button), and the right direction mapped to the right button. the up and down could be used to simulate a scroll wheel with the left direction button used as a chord of buttons 1 &3.
. . .
The other problems with Maemo are the frequent code breaks, and the fact that it's based on Debian (specifically Debian testing/unstable). I don't want to deal with code breaks and buggy and obsolete libraries.
. . .
I am a very long time Linux user (since 94) and pretty long time fan of Debian. I find that running testing is a little behind some of the other distros but 10 times more stable. For me the choice of Debian (or actually Ubuntu from what I understand) was a very good one. Where I have a major problem at the moment is the rather wild and woolly state of the repositories for the nokia IT's. Someone needs to establish and maintain repositories that mirror the Debian ones. os2007 as stable, os2008 as testing and sardine as unstable. I just got my n800 and am appalled at the state of the software repositories. Not the software in them but that when people in this forum post a copy of their sources.list it is huge and lists multiple sources some of which have almost but not entirely identical revisions of libraries. this does not promote security or stability.
I get the feeling this is nokia's fault. They put out a (damned good) device and encouraged people to develop for it but did not do a good job of managing the overall software situation. The concept of the maemo garage as a kind of sourceforge is cool but implementation is weak.
Sorry for the rant but for the moment I just see this as the burning issue.
I do love the KDE port of penguinbait.
now, I just have to figure out how to compile a project from kdevelop in scratchbox.
That might even spur Nokia to put a little more effort into Maemo and update it a bit. . .