Pandora Maemo Platform On Pandora?

[alfatreze]

I was doing some UI research, and while on it I came across nokia's linux open-source platform, maemo. So I was wondering what the feasibility of porting this platform to Pandora would be.

http://maemo.org/intro/

It would be a nice possibility to run this in pandora, just drop in an SD with it and go, or dual boot.

I'm not sure about the licensining it has, as I have not found it on my quick peek.

EDIT: Could a mod move this to Developer's Corner please. Don't know how I could post it in the wrong section , probably still too much asleep.
EDIT2: Thkx

 

[Prompt]

I was doing some UI research, and while on it I came across nokia's linux open-source platform, maemo. So I was wondering what the feasibility of porting this platform to Pandora would be.

http://maemo.org/intro/

It would be a nice possibility to run this in pandora, just drop in an SD with it and go, or dual boot.

I'm not sure about the licensining it has, as I have not found it on my quick peek.

EDIT: Could a mod move this to Developer's Corner please. Don't know how I could post it in the wrong section , probably still too much asleep.
EDIT2: Thkx




I believe if it is run on linux and it is compiled with GCC there is no problem porting your GUI to pandora.

 

[alfatreze]

I believe if it is run on linux and it is compiled with GCC there is no problem porting your GUI to pandora.

It's not my GUI, it's nokia's open-source platform. The one that run's on nokia's internet tablets (770, n800, n810). And according to the description, linux embedded devices aswell.

They have the sources available, and it's been deployed on ARM based devices, so the way I see it there would be a good chance for it to be able to be ported with some ease, or even use some parts of the platform for the Pandora OS, depending on licensing.

 

[Prompt]

yep! nokia open-source GUI.

Nokia has other open-source GUI for mobile now , QTopia. Under GPL license or private version. But "maybe" maemo performance is better because apprearance a light weight GUI.

I think it's more interesting QTopia for this porpouse.

Prompt.

 

[sindbad]

But "maybe" maemo performance is better because apprearance a light weight GUI.

I don't know how it stands in the embedded world, but on the desktop Qt4 if way faster than anything else, especially GTK (what maemo uses).

 

[blachner]

As far as I know, Ubuntu Mobile will also use parts of Maemo. More information about it here:

Ubuntu Mobile
Wiki Ubuntu Mobile

It is targeted to MIDs, but maybe it can be useful at the OpenPandora too.

 

[alfatreze]

Nokia has other open-source GUI for mobile now , QTopia. Under GPL license or private version.

Isn't Qtopia from Trolltech? Or did nokia aquired them...

It really doesn't matter much to me, I like what I've seen from maemo, as with Qtopia mehh.

Either way I'm starting my concept development for a UI for Pandora that is adjusted to this specific platform and with it's userbase in mind. If anyone will want to actually implement it (wixh I'd love) and under what platform, really doesn't bother me. Tough I'd like to play with maemo on pandora, as a user not as a dev.

 

[ldesnogu]

Isn't Qtopia from Trolltech? Or did nokia aquired them...

Yes to both.

 

[Prompt]

But "maybe" maemo performance is better because apprearance a light weight GUI.

I don't know how it stands in the embedded world, but on the desktop Qt4 if way faster than anything else, especially GTK (what maemo uses).


I don't know the performance of QTopia or QT4 in embedded devices. But if QTopia is specific product for mobile and embedded systems I think the performance is better than QT4, or to have any configuration without default QT4 widgets effects and more basic interface. I don't know if QTopia is a totally different implementation of QT4. Maybe only change GUI library.

Link: http://trolltech.com/products/qtopia/qtopia_platform

 

[Ravnos]

I've been saying this for a while now. Maemo is fucking great and it should be under serious consideration for the Pandora UI. I don't know if QTopia is "faster", but I haven't noticed any problems with Maemo's speed on my N800 and it's a slower machine than the Pandora is.

 

[___]

I think Maemo provides a very nice interface. It just looks very polished. I see no reason not to try porting this. We will have different types of consumers after all: People who want functionality and productivity and on the other side people who just want a good looking system out of the box. Maemo seems to meet both criteria. Speed might be an issue but let's be realistic: We are not going to run any kind of desktop-like environment on the pandora. Who is going to be multitasking with like 10 windows open at the same time on a 4.3 inch screen? I don't know about the disadvantages of gtk+ over qt4 but this seems the most logical source of slowness to me... please correct me if I am wrong though.

BTW: I am pretty psyched to see what the pandora devs are going to come up with for their own interface... anybody know what kind of plans they have for that?

 

[Svartalf]

I think Maemo provides a very nice interface. It just looks very polished. I see no reason not to try porting this. We will have different types of consumers after all: People who want functionality and productivity and on the other side people who just want a good looking system out of the box. Maemo seems to meet both criteria. Speed might be an issue but let's be realistic: We are not going to run any kind of desktop-like environment on the pandora. Who is going to be multitasking with like 10 windows open at the same time on a 4.3 inch screen? I don't know about the disadvantages of gtk+ over qt4 but this seems the most logical source of slowness to me... please correct me if I am wrong though.

The only disadvantages is that you're doing C as opposed to C++ coding for the large part. Maemo is capable and can be configured up to have whatever nifty shell UI you'd like on it. If you use Maemo as the base for this, you could leverage all the N800 OS2007/OS2008 applications as our apps base for all the non-game stuff.

Most of the speed issues is in what Nokia has done with their system image more than the UI environment. Maemo switches between windows pretty fast- it's when it does some housekeeping and swap management to the SD card that there's an occasional pause in responsiveness.

Qtopia won't be "faster", but it will be "smaller" until you flesh out the apps framework a little more- at that point, it's more a push than anything else (Why did Nokia buy Trolltech? Because you can trim down Qtopia to smaller phone profiles than you can Maemo/Hildon...). One could conceivably use OPIE for the baseline (open source Qt derivative for palmtop machines...), but I've found it to be clumsy compared to GPE or Hildon. Now, part of that is personal preference. Some of it, though, is that Qtopia/OPIE is geared for a different class of devices and a different set of thinking than the others. I'm not quite sure which would be better for the Pandora.

 

[randomhack]

I was doing some UI research, and while on it I came across nokia's linux open-source platform, maemo. So I was wondering what the feasibility of porting this platform to Pandora would be.

http://maemo.org/intro/

It would be a nice possibility to run this in pandora, just drop in an SD with it and go, or dual boot.

I'm not sure about the licensining it has, as I have not found it on my quick peek.

EDIT: Could a mod move this to Developer's Corner please. Don't know how I could post it in the wrong section , probably still too much asleep.
EDIT2: Thkx


Maemo is essentially Hildon. I have no idea why there are two names. Hildon sits on top of GTK much like GNOME sits on top of GTK on desktops. Hildon is now officially becoming a GNOME project and Nokia has sent much of the code upstream to GNOME. Given that it was developed running on N8x0, an OMAP2 device with exactly the same screen resolution as Pandora, I think it should be easy to "port" Hildon onto Pandora and should run well on the Pandora.

 

[Svartalf]

Maemo is essentially Hildon. I have no idea why there are two names.

Maemo's the applications framework, including any non UI libraries, etc. Hildon's just the UI. At least that's my recollection of things when they first started all of this.

 

[chad78]

As the proud (and happy!) owner of a Nokia N800 running the latest version of Maemo (Tablet OS2008) I would love to see this ported to the Pandora. There are a lot of very useful apps and fun games. In fact, a lot of emulators are already on the NSeries Tablets.

 

[pupnik]

As the proud (and happy!) owner of a Nokia N800 running the latest version of Maemo (Tablet OS2008) I would love to see this ported to the Pandora. There are a lot of very useful apps and fun games. In fact, a lot of emulators are already on the NSeries Tablets.

I built and 'maintain' a lot of the emulators for Maemo/ITOS, I will be giving a talk at Linuxtag Berlin on Thursday, May 29 regarding emulators on the platform. If anyone from gp2x-land is planning to attend, I'd enjoy meeting you,

If I can get a good camera+projector, I'd like to do a demo comparing speed of stock linux emulators to gp2x-ported emulators.

Maemo Terminology:
Hildon: The UI offshoot from GTK
Maemo: The development platform for Nokia internet tablets
ITOS (Internet Tablet OS): The actual operating system.

Maemo/ITOS is an excellent candidate for a full-featured OS on Pandora. The 'xomap' X-server should be particularly interesting (based on Kdrive). Lead developer of this was Daniel Stone from X.org. Afaik this work is open-source. Adapting this to use Pandora hardware might be non-trivial (adapting to framebuffer controller, implementation Xv, SHM, XRandR etc).

There have been pictures released of ITOS running on OMAP3430 dev boards, but I don't know who made them.

Some components of ITOS are not open source (for e.g. the wlan firmware, some kernel modules, some gstreamer dsp stuff etc).

There is a project for a completely open-source version of maemo here:

http://dev.openbossa.org/trac/mamona/

I think integrating a stylus-centric, usable, non-vaporware handheld OS into Pandora is a very important component of the 'second stage' of the product life-cycle. Pandora's hardwae (and hence, emulation) capabilities will be challenged by Sony/Nintendo in the near future, and when that happens it will be important for Pandora to already be flexing its open-source muscles to show that it's 'not just a toy'. In this regard, ITOS deserves serious attention.

Cheers,

 

[chad78]

I built and 'maintain' a lot of the emulators for Maemo/ITOS, I will be giving a talk at Linuxtag Berlin on Thursday, May 29 regarding emulators on the platform. If anyone from gp2x-land is planning to attend, I'd enjoy meeting you,

I'd love to go - but hopping the pond isn't something I get to do that often. (read: ever)

QUOTE

Maemo/ITOS is an excellent candidate for a full-featured OS on Pandora. The 'xomap' X-server should be particularly interesting (based on Kdrive). Lead developer of this was Daniel Stone from X.org. Afaik this work is open-source. Adapting this to use Pandora hardware might be non-trivial (adapting to framebuffer controller, implementation Xv, SHM, XRandR etc).



Non-trival - but possible, yes?

QUOTE

There is a project for a completely open-source version of maemo here:

http://dev.openbossa.org/trac/mamona/



That's great! Thanks for the link!

QUOTE

I think integrating a stylus-centric, usable, non-vaporware handheld OS into Pandora is a very important component of the 'second stage' of the product life-cycle. Pandora's hardwae (and hence, emulation) capabilities will be challenged by Sony/Nintendo in the near future, and when that happens it will be important for Pandora to already be flexing its open-source muscles to show that it's 'not just a toy'. In this regard, ITOS deserves serious attention.



Absolutely. I really hope we can get the ball rolling on Maemo for Pandora. Glad to see a Maemo dev on this forum!

 

[prak]

I will be definitly interested in getting maemo working. Second thing i will be interested is clutter. I would endore you to visit their blog... they do really impressive stuff. Port seems to be doable, the main dependecies are gobject and OpenGL ES.

 

[Svartalf]

I will be definitly interested in getting maemo working. Second thing i will be interested is clutter. I would endore you to visit their blog... they do really impressive stuff. Port seems to be doable, the main dependecies are gobject and OpenGL ES.



I'd forgotten about that one. This is from one of the groups responsible for the amazing things going on with Maemo/ITOS. I think I remember this being very nice but it's only a vague recollection of the whole thing. But OpenedHand does a lot of very amazing things all the same.

 

[Megamixman]

Maemo is a nice base. There is also Nokia's Handheld Mojo group working on getting Ubuntu Mobile to run on the N810. My speculation is that Nokia wants to move to Ubuntu mobile, which has a reall nice touch based UI.