Community Updates/2008-12-01

Revision as of 22:17, 4 December 2008

Dear friends,

Good evening/day/afternoon (whatever your TZ is). This is our sixth "community community update". Congratulations to Valério, he won the first 24h-coding prize at Sapo Codebits by turning freerunner in a mouse and gamepad using the accelerometers. Code will be merged with ReMoko. Another month goes by without a 2008.x release, but Openmoko's optimization team invites volunteers to install the latest testing image and report. And we have lots of newer applications.

Applications

• A new Pong game.
• Newrotate 0.5 is out, uses really little CPU now.
• Gtkaddpoi 0.5 : software to add a Point Of Interest to TangoGPS.
• neoqplayer 0.1 : codenamed frog. A media player that conserves CPU cycles.
• First release of TwitterMoko, a twitter client for Openmoko.
• ShortOm 0.2 : an application/shell launcher.
• openmoko-panel-plugin 0.6 : support for fso frameworkd milestone 4.
• Unison works. It is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. It determines all differences between two directory trees and lets the user decide, how to proceed with every differing file.
• OpenMooCow 0.2. Mooes more, runs headless, tickleable.
• AaTerm, an improved openmoko-terminal2.
• Azmodie proposed a solution for right and middle clicking: Use the gnome accessibility tool mousetweaks (.deb).
• Auxlaunch 0.6, a finger-friendly app launcher and window switcher. Bugfixes/integration update.

Distributions

• SHR: a newer snapshot is available.
• ASU: The official 2008.9 image is back online without the questionable audio codecs. This month's 2008.11 is not going to see the light, but here are instructions to install the current 2008.testing build. It has all the goodies from optimization team (read their progress report, previous reports), i.e. about 1 minute boot and Volume control during call... The bug count is decreasing in the latest testing report. See also the previous testing report hardware revision A7 with capacitor was declared good for mess production ;).
• For Android: Walter Chang made a soft keyboard. Rui Castro implemented an OnScreen Keyboard. It was immediately included in Sean's image, to be released at the usual page without mp3 support soon. Koolu posted an update on their release plans: they too are busy dealing with the audio codecs IP issue.
• Following a post on the French wiki, the Distributions page was updated by adding FIVE new distros: Hackable:1, NeoPwn, RunningBear, Poky and PyNeo.

Hardware

• For an armband to hold the Freerunner while exercising, Gilles Casse recommends the UMC-3 from Case Logic.
• Patrick Beck grafted a light on a miniusb - connector, to make an OpenMoko flash light. More lumens the bright white screen one get with the Flashlight script.
• The official fix for buzzing is to add a 100uF capacity here and replace one resistor there. Technical details to be published in an Openmoko rework SOP paper. The company is looking at how to fix *all* devices sold.
• The Calypso GSM firmware moko10 was released, it fixes ticket 666 for those users with 3G SIM cards. A few Indiana Jones types did try and follow the wiki instructions to reflash, most with success, some with hubris (def: excessive pride). For the rest of us, a user-friendly installer is being prepared.

Kernel and bootloaders

Big bad bug of the month prize goes to ticket 1841 white screen of death (WSOD) after resume. This bug shows itself only by cold weather! Nicolas Dufresne found out that the culprit was probably a too tight timing in the JBT driver. Hopefully this will be fixed soon now, and we can all switch to Linux 2.6.28 happily everafter. Developers must read Andy's explanations about kernel branch management.

• Preview upcoming changes to the /sys directory.
• Improvements to the touchscreen, backlight and accelerometer kernel drivers.
• Qi gets lots of GTA03 love, audio back and a memory test ability (called when there are no valid kernels).
• The opkg package manager was patched to cache downloaded files.

Community

• Removed the Wiki tagcloud extension that messed up with page formatting.
• There are many links to nice Ringtones on the wiki, but the page and the whole topic need a good overhaul.
• GnuPhone here we come: Sten Kvamme explains how to make a call from the command line (on FSO).
• For your pleasure, here is the OpenMoko Jokes page. Thanks to the community, keep them coming ;) Coolcat and I are thinking about adding a pic of the week to the homepage, so stay tuned.
• Courtesy of Dale Maggee, here and here are a few funny splash screens. Note that you already trust Dale if you are using neotool to flash your Neo.
• A few brave souls signed up to start a 3D driver for Glamo.