Linux UK - Maemo

Qt and Nokia, the bigger plan?

jamiebennett — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:43:49 +0000

So, it has been announced that Nokia is to adopt Qt as its preferred toolkit for the next-but-one iteration of the Maemo platform, Harmattan. This has stirred up a little developer concern as GTK and C developers contemplate switching to Qt and C++ but is this really warranted? and what are Nokia's reasons for the switch? Well, it seems that Nokia has no other choice if it wants to continue to compete in a very different world from the one it has dominated for the past several years and here's why.

Call for Content, a Reminder

jamiebennett — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:26:04 +0000

The 2009 Maemo Summit call for content has been open now for a few weeks and we have been receiving some good suggestions but we need more!

Currently Dave Neary, Valério Valério and myself have been going over the submissions, ironing out the details and approving (mostly) the talks but the schedule still has plenty room for more. If you have a suggestion for a cool talk, a lightning session or would like to speak but need help, then make yourself heard now!

Make a suggestion with your subject being pitched to either Users, App Developers, or Platform Developers. It doesn't have to be a full 25 minute talk, it can also be a 5 minute Lightning session.

So what are you waiting for?

Where will a new Maemo device fit in today?

jamiebennett — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:59:07 +0000

All the talk (and sometimes ranting) about Nokia's so called next tablet got me thinking about the state of the potential market for a device like this today.

First lets go on a trip down memory lane.

History

Nokia released their first Internet Tablet towards the end of 2005. It was announced at the LinuxWorld Summit earlier that year and was a curious device. Not quite a phone and not quite a laptop, the 770 came before the current wave of netbooks had begun descending upon us and was met with some resistance. Many complained about its apparent slowness, but looking beyond this one could see that it had potential.

The N800 came next at the beginning of 2007 to a better reception. A faster processor, more memory and greater expandability meant that the adoption rate was much higher for this device. An improved N810 came later that year which added a keyboard and GPS but by this time other devices had joined or were about to join the party.

oFono - The future of Maemo and a few predictions

jamiebennett — Sun, 17 May 2009 21:20:50 +0000

A few days ago Intel and Nokia announced that they are collaborating on an initiative to develop what seems to be an open source telephony platform named oFono. This raises a lot of questions, Why are Nokia helping to develop another open platform when they have Maemo and the newly opened Symbian OS to contend with? Why are Intel interested in anything in the open source world outside of Moblin and their netbook strategy? And in the face of the ever expanding world of Android, what does this mean for Maemo?

Well, the future isn't exactly clear but it could mean a boost for Maemo. Exactly why is clouded in mystery somewhat.

Ubuntu running on the Nokia N8x0 tablets

jamiebennett — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:16:18 +0000

Wow, just wow. The fruits of the arm port of Ubuntu are starting to flourish, behold, Ubuntu 9.04 on the Nokia N8x0 tablets.

Questionable Karma?

jamiebennett — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:00:33 +0000

A little lightheartedness.

I just looked at my Maemo profile today and was greeted with this ...

OMAP 3 Maemo Power Management

jamiebennett — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:36:58 +0000

There is a good, but short, article about the state of power management on the next generation Maemo devices at lwn.net (subscription required or free but you have to wait until Thursday).

In the article, Nokia's Peter De Schrijver talks about the 4 modes of power management that will be available in the next platform, "on", "inactive", "retention" and "off". These modes will govern how the device draws power and careful optimizations will ultimately dictate how long the battery life of these new devices will last.

Fremantle pre-alpha 2 SDK released

jamiebennett — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:12:22 +0000

The second version of the Fremantle alpha SDK has just been released, see the announcement and go get it now.

Qt goes LGPL

jamiebennett — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:21:03 +0000

So Nokia today have announced that they are to add the LGPL license to Qt. What does this mean for Qt and specifically Maemo? Well ...

Ubuntu comes to Maemo

jamiebennett — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:36:53 +0000

So, its kind of official, Ubuntu is coming to Maemo.

Today, Canonical announced that they are to officially create a ARMv7 version of their most popular software product, Ubuntu Linux, but what does that mean?