Maemo Or Android?

[RekTide]

There are active projects to port both Maemo and Android to beagleboard. Both OS's provide a standardized development platform for developing applications on, lending to a consistent look and feel, and providing a toolkit oriented towards mobile small screen interfaces.

There are a number of other mobile OS projects out there as well. Moblin is notable, but it requires amongst other things GLX_EXT_pixmap_to_texture for its compositing window management, and PowerVR's shoddy excuse for drivers do not support this (even on GMA500). In other words, Moblin support is not very likely. Also, moblins developers tools are still primitive: it uses Clutter for drawing, but beyond that I'm not sure how much common infrastructure it has.

If you could run one and develop for one of these existing OS's on your Pandora, which would it be?

 

[danielliu88888]

this doesn't belong in the developer's corner unless you are actually working on them.

 

[lulzfish]

Yes, this should be in General Discussion.

But if I could have any OS on my Pandora, I wouldn't get any of these weird cell phone OSes that have popped up recently.
I want..

*takes off sunglasses dramatically*

GoboLinux.
I don't see a point to Maemo or Android. Maybe they're good, but I haven't tried either of them, and they seem like they're too new for me to care.
GoboLinux is also sort of new, because it lacks developers.

 

[dingens]

Yes, this should be in General Discussion.

But if I could have any OS on my Pandora, I wouldn't get any of these weird cell phone OSes that have popped up recently.
I want..

Maemo is no cell phone OS. It's just a finger friendly handheld OS. Very efficient and guaranteed to fly on Pandora.

 

[RekTide]

Yes, this should be in General Discussion.

Yes probably. I guess the main perspective I'd be interested in is which people would rather program for. I'll see if I can edit the OP in that direction.

QUOTE
I don't see a point to Maemo or Android. Maybe they're good, but I haven't tried either of them, and they seem like they're too new for me to care.


Maemo just had its 4th birthday a couple weeks ago. It has a colossal amount of software developed for it.

Both of these platforms are targeted towards mobile development: the toolkits provide standardized & consistent ways for numerous programs to coexist on a small screen space, and to let programs notify users about events. Surely all this can be done via GTK, but each application is inconsistently stylized.

QUOTE
GoboLinux is also sort of new, because it lacks developers.


GoboLinux has been around for at least 5 years now.

 

[Tor]

Couldn't vote, got 'internal gpx32 server error' or something. Anyway, I would have voted Maemo except that what I really would vote is Mer. Android is more of a phone OS, generally, so Maemo (or better, Mer) is the better choice.

 

[lulzfish]

I'm bad at wording things, I mean GoboLinux is developmentally new because development is so slow on it. By which I mean it's out of date, and they haven't released a KDE 4 version yet.

The thing with Maemo and similar OSes is, I don't want to program FOR that setup. I'd like something where a program that uses, say, Qt, can be compiled to either Pandora or desktop Linux without any source code change.
Because I'm lazy, and bad at these things.

Can Maemo run a "desktop-style" application directly?

 

[musicalwoods]

The thing with Maemo and similar OSes is, I don't want to program FOR that setup. I'd like something where a program that uses, say, Qt, can be compiled to either Pandora or desktop Linux without any source code change.
Because I'm lazy, and bad at these things.

Can Maemo run a "desktop-style" application directly?

I wonder the same thing. I'm all for better finger-friendly GUIs, but I don't want to be limited to a certain set of programs, especially if it means no Pandora-specific games on that OS (rebooting for games is an absolute pain).

Moblin seems more like a fancy frontend that will allow regular linux applications to run. I know that Linpus has pulled it into their OS, and I think Moblin is shooting for other distros to do that as well.

I would probably boot into Android or Maemo to play around with the OS, but I'd rather see development like Ubuntu is doing in 9.10, allowing Android apps to run in their distro.

 

[marshal]

Maemo is pretty cool (I have a nokia IT), however I am also interested in Android. If Android has anywhere near the success that it is rumored to become (plenty of Android powered phone to come !) it would be very nice to be able to run App developed for android. Don't really care if it's the whole os of just running the app though a compatibility layer. Having the whole os running on the hardware or a VM would be cool though.

 

[trats20050]

What about Palm WebOs ?
Question -now that the root image for Palm WebOs is out, would it be easier to boot it on the Pandora ?

 

[Tor]

Can Maemo run a "desktop-style" application directly?

Yes, to some extent. It depends on the application. If you just recompile, say, a gtk2 application, it will run more or less OK, but with limitations.
1) It could be useless if it really really needs a bigger screen than 800x480 (or a bit less actually, due to 2. below)
2) It won't run full-screen
3) Interacting with the application menus/pull-downs can be a bit limited
4) And some more behind-the-scene stuff, like what happens when it's iconized w.r.t. idling and such.
But the application can still be quite OK and useful though, after just that simple recompile.

What typically happens when someone finds an already existing, interesting application is that they first just build it and tells people about it, then someone (or the same person) starts 'hildonizing' it if they find it interesting· That is, replace some of the standard gtk calls with the Hildon version. And optimize it for the screen size, etc. That's when you start getting a Maemo-optimized application.

 

[borgqueenx]

i want Angstrom ^^

 

[WhiteBat]

i want Ångström ^^

fixed.

 

[sebt3]

Debian for the win

 

[fiveseven]

<sarcasm>
Windows 7!
<\sarcasm>
Don't flame me. Please.

I'll probably just stick to Angstrom. Chances are I won't need anything else.

 

[WizardStan]

The security team for my employer has just announced that Android may become a viable smart phone alternative: ie, they're preparing to OK it for office synching of email, contacts, calendar, etc...
If that happens, I'll most likely have an Android install in order to take advantage and oh $deity I just realized I'm planning on doing something outside the office for the purpose of making my office work more productive.

 

[emil10001]

I have an n800 and a G1.

I would guess that most, if not all, of the maemo software could be brought over to the pandora with little to no effort (maybe we just need a few libs?). Perhaps we'll be able to pull the flash-player over from the n900? Android, on the other hand, is quite a different setup, we would need to be running android apps inside an android environment. There's plenty of neat stuff floating around in the Market (and outside of it), but most of it takes advantage of the G1 hardware (cell radio, accelerometers, camera, etc), so, it's actual use might be fairly limited.

At this point though, I don't really care, I pretty much just want this thing for games, and possibly for a few other light computing tasks, music, web, photos, video. So, if they get ported, and work, cool, if not, I'm sure that I won't be bored with the pandora.

 

[darkborn]

Here are few more candidates: ACCESS Linux, Hiker; even Inferno.

 

[OrR]

What about Palm WebOs ?
Question -now that the root image for Palm WebOs is out, would it be easier to boot it on the Pandora ?

The source has also been released. I'd love to try it on my Pandora.

 

[axenzoku]

Aren't Maemo and Angstrom (sorry I don't have those keys to do the accents on the A and o) closely related? There is a new release of Maemo coming out soon which is based on the same hardware as Pandora... Here's a big question I have: I know you kinda want the whole library of applications that come along with the other OS,

but why not just design a user interface for Angstrom that looks modern, easy on the eyes (big icons and text) and finger friendly for the touch screen? The current setup is fine, but the fonts and cheap drop shadows, and the cheap icons with no alpha transparency... As well as menu navigation, should be able to easily use the D-Pad and game buttons to get around (or just touch the screen) somewhat like a media center layout... But that would just be the layout and all the filesystem and functionality would still be there, except you would just navigate through the menus and folders in an easier way for a small screen..