Messages

1

Off Topic forum / I Don't Get It, No Body Posts But Ussually About 20 Users Online?

« on: August 24, 2011, 08:04:17 am »

I also pop in very occasionally to see if anything is new. I still have the zaurus, but it is currently collecting dust. Trying to figure out what to do with it. I've installed most of the distros on it at one time or another. I could try OpenBSD, or go back to Debian. A server might be interesting. Maybe many of us don't have a lot of fresh ideas and we are waiting for someone to come up with one, so we can blow of the dust and rekindle some of the past excitement.

2

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Status Of Pdaxrom

« on: September 20, 2010, 08:59:03 pm »

Would something like Angstrom/Openembedded be a decent place to start? Angstrom has made its way into Always Innovating products and the Pandora. I think what it needs are some folks to figure out how to build updated software that may not be included -- that and a friendly atmosphere. I would be willing to try and learn the openembedded tools to help.

I was just thinking about my Zaurus 3100 the other day and reminiscing about the keyboard, which is thus far the best of any of my handheld devices:Zaurus, Umid M1, Nokia N810, Nokia N900 (sold).

3

General Discussion / Umid M1

« on: September 08, 2009, 12:01:25 pm »

Since I went ahead and purchased a black UMID from dynamism, I'll provide an initial answer to my own question.

Build is plastic, but fit and finish seem excellent. Some have complained about the angle of the screen in its further position and that the black one doesn't seem to improve much over the white one. Not having a white one I can't compare, but it seems acceptable for my use. Fits reasonably well in my pockets. With the leather case, it is a bit bulkier.

So far I've installed: mediawiki running locally, openoffice, vlc, mplayer, jedit, quasar media player (thanks katastrophe), kde pimpi, fbreader, truecrypt, easytag, homebank (gtk program I discovered from the Nokia). These are all cross-platform programs. I haven't installed ubuntu yet. I found some instructions that list all the drivers needed -- so it is on my list. This means I have to reacquaint myself with windows at the moment.
[blockquote]Edit: I found directions for installing Ubuntu and associated drivers here, but have not yet had a chance to try them out: http://designer.dlinkddns.com/blog/?p=257[/blockquote]
Did a quick test of vlc and mplayer without trying to tweak. A sample video I encoded with handbrake with the film setting defaults (which uses h.264) struggles a little bit, but could be watchable. When I get some time, I need to watch and see if it is acceptable. [blockquote]
Edit: It appears that using the right codecs even highdef h.264 should be possible on the UMID at least in windows: http://forum.pocketables.net/showthread.php?t=4066 [/blockquote]
It is not instant on, but not too bad. My requirement was something that fit in my pocket and could be used to access my work stuff over citrix. This works well for that need.

4

New products and alternatives / Nokia New Tablet-phone-etc... : N900

« on: September 01, 2009, 03:52:43 pm »

Hi,

May be, it is somewhere in the forum, but the new N900 nokia tablet will be out soon.

Specification details : http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/specifications/

Seems to be "perfect" as phone+zaurus...

There is some discussion on the N900 in the Zaurus is dead ... long live the zaurus thread starting at post #10,
https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=26751

5

General Discussion / Umid M1

« on: August 21, 2009, 08:34:17 pm »

Any comments from UMID owners on how they like it and how close it could be to the elusive Zaurus replacement? Or a in-your-pocket mobile computer?

From other forums it looks like ArchiMark sold his and teh.sean has two, but is selling his backup.

6

New products and alternatives / Always Innovating Touchbook

« on: August 21, 2009, 08:30:32 pm »

UMPC Portal is reporting that some new owners of the TouchBook are having some issues with build quality:
http://www.umpcportal.com/2009/08/touchboo...-quality-issues

7

C1000/3x00 Hardware / Sharpc3100 Or Nokia N810?

« on: August 06, 2009, 06:23:35 pm »

I agree that nothing beats the C3100 keyboard. The N810 keyboard does pale by comparison. The single mini-SD card slot is also a limitation on the N810. Mini-SD effectively means micro-SD with adapter. I have a 16 GB microSDHC card in mine. There is also a third party accessory which thickens the N810 but allows the use of full SD cards.

Another Nokia option if one doesn't care for a keyboard is the N800 which has dual SD card slots.

A couple other hardware features I think haven't been mentioned:

N810 - internal slow acquiring GPS, light sensor for changing screen brightness levels, host USB but I think unpowered or severely underpowered

N800 - internal FM radio

C3100 - Better host USB support with limited power


Another consideration, if one wants a full featured micro-workstation the Zaurus has more options. If you don't mind using software mostly written or optimized for the device the Nokia does well.

The Nokia also offers QT4 with bindings for their gui and python-qt. The Nokia does reasonably well as a media player (audio and video that has been transcoded).

8

C1000/3x00 Hardware / Sharpc3100 Or Nokia N810?

« on: August 06, 2009, 05:50:11 pm »

N810 or Zaurus, depends on what you want to do. However, I would say for most folks a N810 would probably be the way to go. A fairly active community at maemo.org, nokia is still committed (although quiet about their next device). Nokia still looks at what closed pieces they can open source.

Bluetooth and wifi are very well integrated and work. The N810 is supposed to be an "internet tablet" so good selection of apps are web enabled. The web works wonderfully for a small handheld.

Way ahead for os with community development of mer (ubuntu thin layer).

A convenient way to run debian in a change root environment from within maemo.

Unless you are the type of person who would say "you can have my zaurus when you pry it from my cold dead hands," I'd say take a look at the Nokia N810 or wait until later this year when their next device comes out or the fabled Open Pandora device decides to ship a year + late.

9

Mer / Mer - A New Ubuntu-based Distro Derived From Maemo!

« on: July 24, 2009, 11:46:14 pm »

One idea would if we could take up a collection to donate the main mer developer with an actual zaurus to test on. He got a moses-smartq-5 and promptly set out to get mer running on it as well as a smartq-7. I would donate some funds if someone wanted to organize.

The folks on talk.maemo.org seem to think that mer is the future of the community-built maemo for the older nokia tablets once Nokia abandons them. As it stands now, the ui on mer is still a bit unstable on the N810 (one reason I am now trying fluxbox per Capn_Fish's instructions).

It was reported the end of May 2009 that Ubuntu MID would start to transition to mer, so it looks like mer will have some broad support. Mer is also currently being targeted for several devices including the openmoke freerunner.

What might be cool is if zubuntu were to be eventually built on top of mer. That way mer would provide the ubuntu layer as well as their ui to play with and zubuntu could add the zaurus customizations and a window manager and tweaks more suited to the zaurus.

10

Mer / Fluxbox Install How-to

« on: July 24, 2009, 11:35:22 pm »

EDIT: It should be /etc/alternatives/x-session-manager

That did the trick. It boots into fluxbox now. Thanks. One more quick question, before I go off to familiarize myself with fluxbox:

How would I set it up so that the network manager starts up with the system and docks on the toolbar? I can run nm-applet works from the command line which seems to work fine, but it might be more convenient to have it automatically show up.

Edit: Capn_Fish I see you added your write-up to the maemo mer wiki.  

11

Mer / Fluxbox Install How-to

« on: July 24, 2009, 08:48:47 am »

Everything seemed to work on mer 0.15 and an N810, except for:

Code: [Select]

sudo rm /etc/default/x-session-manager
sudo cp /usr/bin/startfluxbox /etc/default/x-session-manager
There was no x-session-manager in /etc/default . So the N810 will still boot into hildon.

There was a start-hildon but putting the contents of starfluxbox in that file doesn't work.

12

Mer / Fluxbox Install How-to

« on: July 23, 2009, 10:38:41 am »

 Thanks! I'll try this out later today and let you know how it goes.

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fluxbox 1.0.0 Ipk Released

« on: July 23, 2009, 09:52:00 am »

Yeah, I've been using Fluxbox on my N810, and right/middle clicking is a breeze.

Off Topic: Capn_Fish, would you mind giving a walk-through of how you installed and use fluxbox on the N810? The base Mer window manager kind of ruins the non-hildonized app experience. If you decide to post, feel free to move it to the oesf maemo forum.

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fluxbox 1.0.0 Ipk Released

« on: July 23, 2009, 09:35:47 am »

I have also been looking for forums on the N810

You will find that http://talk.maemo.org is a fairly active forum.

15

New products and alternatives / Qi Ben Nanonote (fall 2009)

« on: July 21, 2009, 04:42:41 pm »

http://www.qi-hardware.com/products/ben-nanonote/

From some of the people who worked OpenMoko comes a venture to make copyleft handheld hardware.

Technical Specifications for initial version:

    * 336 MHz MIPS-compatible CPU
    * display: 3.0” color TFT
    * resolution: 320 x 240, 16.7M color
    * dimension (mm): 99 x 75 x 17.5 (lid closed)
    * weight: 126 g (incl. battery)
    * DRAM: 32MB Synchronous DRAM
    * headphone jack (3.5 mm)
    * SDHC microSD
    * 850mAh Li-ion battery
    * 2GB NAND flash memory
    * mini-USB: USB 2.0 High-Speed Device
    * speaker and microphone