Messages

1

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / Linux Firmware 8 Source Location

« on: May 28, 2019, 12:13:48 pm »

I have a multiboot with Sailfish X as the first slot, and then rooted Android. I tried to upgrade to 8.1 by just downloading all the Android images and not overwriting either Sailfish or userdata. I replaced my original scatter file with one generated with the same parameters for the new images. This flashed OK, and the Sailfish partition loaded, but the Android partition wouldn't boot - the planets just rotated. I then upgraded rather than downloaded, and allowed it overwrite all of the partitions. It worked this way, and I simply re-installed all of my data and files.

Many thanks for your input - very much appreciated! But I see, that you are one step further - you see the rotating planets! This is what never comes up on my device, although I reflashed everything (I also used Firmware update instead of Download - and I also tried to flash older versions with my older scatter files). Not booting up means I have no possibility to reset, no TWRP, no linux boot or else. It just seems that my gemini is missing something for the start....
Andreas

In the current multi-boot setup (at least with Sailfish commercial edition) there is an initial small kernel which then boots you into the different boot options each with further boot images depending on how esc or side silver button are pressed. So perhaps it is that first boot image which you are having a problem with. Why not download the images again with a new scatter file and try again?

2

Gemini PDA - Android / Displaylink and Android 8.1

« on: May 28, 2019, 10:56:26 am »

I didn't order one of the video out cables when first purchasing my Gemini, but bought a USB-C to HDMI Displaylink adapter. This worked perfectly with the Gemini when it was on Android 7.1.1 (though I didn't use it much). I've now upgraded to 8.1, and notice that it no longer works.

The two versions of Displaylink app install and run ok - they recognize the adapter being plugged in, but nothing is output to the TV. By default, the Displaylink outputs a 1920x1080 image. The adapter works fine with other Android devices, e.g. my phone running Android Pie.

Does anyone else have experience with this?

I'm also interested to know if somebody has tested Miracast to Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter v2 on Android 8.1. I never got HDMI out working with official cable from Planet Computer, but solved with MS wireless adapter which work fine. Not gonna break this setup with firmware upgrade for now.

Well I have succeeded in using Miracast with a Roku - but not perfect results: the image is automatically rotated into portrait clockwise. I can get it momentarily to rotate into upside down landscape, but not persistently so. Interested to know if there are tweaks one can apply to the Miracast output to deal with this.

3

Gemini PDA - Android / Displaylink and Android 8.1

« on: May 28, 2019, 05:15:43 am »

I didn't order one of the video out cables when first purchasing my Gemini, but bought a USB-C to HDMI Displaylink adapter. This worked perfectly with the Gemini when it was on Android 7.1.1 (though I didn't use it much). I've now upgraded to 8.1, and notice that it no longer works.

The two versions of Displaylink app install and run ok - they recognize the adapter being plugged in, but nothing is output to the TV. By default, the Displaylink outputs a 1920x1080 image. The adapter works fine with other Android devices, e.g. my phone running Android Pie.

Does anyone else have experience with this?

4

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / Linux Firmware 8 Source Location

« on: May 28, 2019, 05:10:47 am »

I messed around a little bit, flashed old and new multiboot, but I did not get it to work. I presume I did something wrong, had to format and then I also flashed with with the latest 8.1 multiboot, everything works fine flashwise, but when I press the ESC it does not start. I get the startup vibration but it does not start. Of course no logo and everytime I press and hold the ESC it just vibrates every 5 seconds, but no recovery comes up.

How could I start from scratch? I have my backup but anyway I want to start new. I also tried the Singleboot (flashed the 8.1 image with the single splatter file) but it did not start either. I was thinking about flashing only debian, but I have the startup problem at first. Since I can flash without problem, I am not thinking that I bricked the device already completely ;-)

Maybe someone of you has the knowledge what is maybe missing and what could be steps I could try? I will try everything - if there is a way out of this, I will report, and maybe others can read this as a "backup" if something goes wrong, and to know what steps are needed. I am not very happy about holding people off flashing with my story, since this is the main advantage of this device (keyboard of course, too .
Cheers, Andro

I have a multiboot with Sailfish X as the first slot, and then rooted Android. I tried to upgrade to 8.1 by just downloading all the Android images and not overwriting either Sailfish or userdata. I replaced my original scatter file with one generated with the same parameters for the new images. This flashed OK, and the Sailfish partition loaded, but the Android partition wouldn't boot - the planets just rotated. I then upgraded rather than downloaded, and allowed it overwrite all of the partitions. It worked this way, and I simply re-installed all of my data and files.

5

Gemini PDA - Linux / Final call for TP3

« on: March 06, 2019, 11:58:57 am »

Cool, thanks, currently thinking of a plan that would involve dd'ing a new boot image to one of your bootX spots, that will look for an MMC card with a stretch.img.gz and a stretch.config.txt file on it. The config would say what space to allocate, and do the resize, copy, etc. Will send you link when we have something to test.

V slightly off topic: I don't know if you have seen this, but on the talk.maemo.org website there are instructions for running an xwayland image in a chroot on Sailfish. The relevant scripts are instructions are all stored on github at https://github.com/elros34/sailfish_ubu_chroot?files=1

This loads a xfce4 ubuntu image which works with the Gemini. The current script copies over the keyboard definition from Sailfish - and this works partially with the Gemini but has the same problems that running KDE with the old Debian TP2 image had - various keys are dead; and also the Fn key is not recognized.

Do you think there would be a way of linking Debian TP3 so one can use it as an image within Sailfish under xwayland, but with a working keyboard unlike the current XFCE4?

6

Gemini PDA - Sailfish OS / UK Keyboard in Sailfish 3

« on: March 04, 2019, 10:53:48 am »

It may not be just you. I have a UK keyboard (hardware layout), and selected as such in setting up Sailfish 3.0.1.13 (beta community edition), and when I booted it for the first time a few days ago it gave me the option of choosing a UK English keyboard, which I did. I still find that the key layout is different from the gemini printed keys. So for @ I have to type shift-2, rather than fn-J. Other characters are also in odd positions, including apostrophe ('), pipe and tilde (~). It is irritating, so I'm also keen to learn if someone has a fix for this.

I'm also missing the ability to edit something in OpenOffice. I can't understand why that functionality should be missing in a machine so obviously intended for work!

I worked out a kludge solution myself after checking with together.jolla.com and getting no useful response.

The keyboard definition for the hardware keyboard is stored at /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/planet_vndr/gemini.

I would back this file up before editing.

Keyboard mappings are defined first for the gb layout, and then for others as a modification for the gb layout. So, for US keyboard it defines 'include gb' and then specifies specific key mapping modifications below.

So, I simply commented out all of the modifications under the us definition and rebooted. Keyboard now operates as printed as a UK one.

I think this is such a simple mistake that between last May and now, Jolla and Planet ought to have come up with a fix. At a certain level, it is a problem with the Sailfish OS, since it seems just to define English with no recognition of the differences among en_GB and en_US or en_HK, which are standard part of Linux. On the other hand, this is Planet's device and they have been advertising the availability of Sailfish.

7

Gemini PDA - Sailfish OS / UK Keyboard in Sailfish 3

« on: March 03, 2019, 11:57:27 am »

I have the new Sailfish X edition installed - which works quite slickly, though I miss both Aliendalvik and editing functions in Sailfish Office (which seem to be available in the underlying Calligra port but are just not available in the UI).

One irritation I have which I suspect is just my own stupidity is that I cannot select a UK layout hardware keyboard. Selecting EN on the language option in Settings assumes a US keyboard - ';' is where '@' is on the keyboard and '@' is where '"' is on the keyboard which matches a US layout.

When one checks the definition files under /usr/share/X11 these list en_GB as well as en_US with the different codings. But the normals ways of setting LANG in locale don't work with this version of Sailfish.

Does anyone happen to know how to make the device use a UK keyboard?

Many thanks.

8

Gemini PDA - Sailfish OS / Sailfish on Gemini tips, tricks, and solutions to common problems

« on: January 11, 2019, 04:51:22 am »

Hi, I wrote a short 'howto' how I did the update from community version 3.0.0.8 to the new 3.0.1.11 EA Jolla version.

wiki on tjc for sfos on geminipda

Thanks for doing this - it is incredibly helpful.

I had updated my Gemini to 3.0.1.11 without altering the adaptation-community and adaptation-community-common repos. The device worked, but the fix for screen orientation wasn't turning up. I tried again, and the result was all of the necessary HAL libraries for accessing fast charging etc were lost.

Once I followed your instructions everything updated exactly as it should.

This version of Sailfish is much closer to what the Gemini needs; and will presumably be even more polished by the time they release Sailfish X for the Gemini.

The most obvious thing missing is productivity software. I'm keen to have some software which allows document manipulation. There is now a working port of Calligra 3.1 integrated with Sailfish-Office (you can find it on Mer build repositories). However, I can't get it to expose any menus which allow editing.

9

Gemini PDA - Sailfish OS / USB Audio in Sailfish

« on: December 01, 2018, 01:31:08 pm »

[quote name='klampfenfreak' date='Dec 1 2018, 12:35 PM' post='290847']
Strange, after that changes fingerterm could not rotate into landscape-inverted, anymore.  
Zoom H4n USB audio did not work at all, trying to play or record audio thru it.

Did you install alsa-utils?

what does lsusb show when you run it?

What about aplay -l and aplay -L?

also you could try playing a test file from the command line using aplay and specifying the alsa device explicitly to see if anything can be routed to your dac.

10

Gemini PDA - Sailfish OS / USB Audio in Sailfish

« on: July 01, 2018, 02:20:16 pm »

I've been playing around with the most recent Community Build of Sailfish for the Gemini and thought I'd post a guide to using a USB DAC with the Gemini in Sailfish - the instructions for this I gleaned from a Google search of the IRC archives for sailfish OS adaptations.

The original Jolla 1 did not have USB OTG, so the UI interface was never developed for using peripherals; but with the community versions there have now been many devices which work with Sailfish and have USB OTG.

The Gemini recognizes USB audio DACs on insertion (or at least it does with an Audioquest Dragon Fly), but it won't play any music from any app to it.

To do that you need to do three things:

1. You need to block udev recognising the internal sound system (this won't affect the use of the internal speaker; but if you don't do this, running a udev detect with the new device attached will lead to a reboot):
Add a new file to /etc/udev/rules.d which blacklists the internal sound system before any pulseaudio rules are run: e.g.
89-pulseaudio-usb.rules with the content
ATTRS{id}=="mtsndcard", ENV{PULSE_IGNORE}="1"

2. You need to get pulseaudio to connect with the alsa definitions for usb audio devices; to do this, you only need to
rename usbaudio.conf.disabled to usbaudio.conf in /etc/pulse/xpolicy.conf.d;

3. Last, you need pulseaudio to register that the usb DAC is available in the system. As far as I can see, this needs to be done manually at the moment:
After restarting your Gemini in Sailfish, you need to open thumbterm and run (as user, not as root) 'pactrl load-module module-udev-detect'
On IRC it was suggested simply adding the load-module line to default.pa in /etc/pulse - but the module load is already there, and doesn't seem to react to external devices even after udev rules have been modified, so I found I needed to run this command manually. Didn't matter whether the DAC was already connected or not.

4. You can check this has worked by running as user pacmd list-sinks - there should now be an additional one at the end (i.e. a fifth device) with the details of your DAC.

5. At this stage, media players will output through your USB Audio device - but sound will be capped to 48Hz sample rate; to allow sample rates up to the highest your DAC will allow, edit daemon.conf in /etc/pulse to enable the entry alternate-sample-rate, by default this is set as 48000. For the Audioquest, you should set it to 96000.

6. You might find it useful to install alsa-utils and usbutils from https://build.merproject.org to check that things are being recognized by the kernel when first attached, and that alsa knows this is a soundcard.

7. Must be said that the sound is still somewhat glitchy - as it can be also in Android. However the tweaks in USBAudio Pro in Android enable one to get a perfect and excellent sound out of the Gemini; that uses its own driver, and unfortunately there is no equivalent in Sailfish, and the alsa standard driver is not of the same quality.

11

Gemini PDA - Linux / Compile kernel inside gemini : Is it possible ?

« on: June 24, 2018, 05:30:11 am »

I think it was because aarch64-linux-gnu gcc will not run on arm64  plattaform.
Is there a way to compile inside gemini ?
I need linux headers to compile video4linux.
Maybe the camera will work with video4linux.
Maybe there is kernel with files to compile directly inside the gemini ( Makefile and a  full tree of files ).

Thank you all[/quote]

I'm keen on compiling the kernel headers so I can install the displaylink driver for HDMI out. Following the instructions, I've managed to compile the kernel on the Gemini PDA, but all the scripts I've tried for generating the debian package for the kernel headers fail. Does anyone have a suggestion how one can do that?

12

Gemini PDA - Linux / Anybody here familiar with LXQt?

« on: May 21, 2018, 06:00:54 am »

Having used the LXQt environment on my Gemini for several days, I must say it is maddening.

KDE Plasma would be a much, much better DE for the default. It has left mouse button controls on every item, such as task bars. It has options to force large icons and font sizes in applications. It has the very keyboard friendly KRunner keyboard search and launch system.

On all of these points, the LXQt experience is much worse. KDE also doesn't have an annoying taskbar that tries to give you a preview and thereby blocks you from clicking task icons to switch between them.

I would just switch to Plasma but unfortunately, the keys don't work properly in it

I would be happy to help prepare a default KDE setup for the community with proper interface element sizing, matched GTK and Qt themes, and a Gemini wallpaper and provide support for it if the keys could be made to work within KDE. As it is, several keys do nothing within KDE and several other operating environments.

Not sure how well KDE Plasma would run on our lil' Gemini's....

That's probably why a lighter DE was selected in LXQt......

But let us know how it works, if you manage to get it running OK....

Mark

I've used both LXQT and plasma on a Cubox-i which is a four core 32 bit arm system. The key thing is for kwin to have opengl acceleration, which I assume it does here. Plasma is a bit sluggish with respect to LXQT but not terribly so, and the additional power of the x25/x27 over the Freescale would probably mask the difference.