I visited the Poky site, where I read that the OS should probably work on the N810. What is the worst thing that could happen if I tried it? (Note, I'm a newbie to Linux, and not a programmer).
Would having Poky on my device wipe everything out that's already on there? Would my map app work under Poky? Would Poky open up the possibility of much more software (office, chess, etc.)?
BTW, I have just ordered a book on Linux. Perhaps I won't be as ignorant in future posts
Poky is a completely different OS than Maemo is, so no Maemo-compatible software will run under Poky. If you are going to flash Poky, you will lose everything on the device.
Even though I haven't tried Poky, I am pretty sure this is the truth. If anyone tries Poky, will they do a little review on it maybe?
I tried a few months ago. WiFi didn;t work, neither power management did. This, of course is normal, az Nokia enforces proprietary drivers for them.
There is no 3rd party software compatible with it except some generic stuff. The desktop environment is pretty minimalistic. It is more proof of concept than something useful.
Would having Poky on my device wipe everything out that's already on there? Would my map app work under Poky? Would Poky open up the possibility of much more software (office, chess, etc.)?
Yes you will lose the apps you currently have and it won't work with maemo apps. But otoh you will open up the possibility of installing lots of new apps. As the differences between GTK+ and Maemo are small, you could refactor your map app to just be a GTK+ app (assuming you don't use any of the Maemo-specific libs).
I'd consider CPU speed a major hurdle for declaring the n8x0 a "serious computer". Software like OpenOffice would struggle at best, even with a more robust OS.
@jmancine: There should be a public Abiword release "real soon now" and Gnumeric is already out. Sometimes it's not the processors that need to get faster, it's the code that needs to get smaller...
