-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Well done, by me too!
It helped me a lot to follow what happen to Community! Thank you Minh Ha Duong wrote: > Hello everybody, > > welcome to the unofficial Openmoko Community newsletter, October 4th to 19th > issue. The two big news are the launch of opkg.org, an application directory, > and Openmoko engineering team focusing back to the basics on Improving user > experience. > > http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Community_Updates/October_19th%2C_2008#Applications > > Contents > > * 1 Images > * 2 Applications > * 3 Good fixes and discussed issues > * 4 Community > * 5 Outside Openmoko > > Images > > Things were rather quiet on the distribution front. Rasterman's October 11th > images (source) were put online. This is not really a distribution, but > rather a demonstration that illume runs well and is so beautiful, for others > distros to grab. We also saw daily SHR image builds online, no release yet > but available for testing. And Qi, the next bootloader, recently got resume > support.Testing shows that it is much faster than uboot indeed, but no > release yet either. > > Applications > > Everybody applauded when Tobias announced http://opkg.org , an online > directory of applications (think Freshmeat, Tucows...). The database is > community-driven, everybody can register and index applications. In the flow > of community developped utilities, I noticed: > > * the initial release of OpenMooCow, a nice, funny and useless bovine > noise simulator. > * Optimizations on Rotate. This is an interesting example of competition > and cooperation (community development, if you prefer), because there are > many versions being developed in parallel, with ideas jumping across all the > time. > * The Gestures GSoC project developper managed to convince his academic > instructors to let him code on the FreeRunner for his degree. Future > developments coming at http://AccelSense.org > * Auxlaunch is a very simple, finger-friendly application launcher and > window switcher for the Freerunner. It appears when the "AUX" button is > pressed. > > With respect to porting other applications to our favorite platform, I read > that Intel's made powertop actually runs on the FreeRunner. This is an very > handy utility that allows to measure and therefore optimize power usage. > Also: > > * FBReader an e-book reader programme now available for Debian and 2008.8 > * Sander ported Pingus the free lemmings clone, for OE based > distributions > (it was already available on Debian). > * In addition to minimo, openmoko-browser2, and midori, we saw a bunch of > light and fast web browsers announced on the mailing list: Fennec), Dillo > (ipk), NetSurf and links2. That makes about seven, working more or less well. > Choice, choice, choice... > * The same is happening for music players: pythm, openmoko-mediaplayer2, > qtopia media player, deforaOS-player, qmmp, sonata, quasar. Thomas's K. also > started a mediaplayer. So far I think that your best friend is mplayer from > the command line interface (and on 2008.8, I think that mplayer is directly > connected to OSS, so installing OSS compatibility packages probably help. And > removing pulseaudio also saves tons of CPU cycles) > > Good fixes and discussed issues > > Many good news: > > * There is a fix for ticket 2038 about Qtopia USSD requests, so that > dialing "*123" or "#4" should work soon. > * There is a fix for ticket 1024, the GSM keeps reregistering bug, a.k.a. > bouncing Calypso issue. The workaround is to prevent the modem from entering > deep sleep, and it has been commited to the QTopia images already. > * Powersaving patches landed in stable-2.6.26 on October 8th. Note to > application developpers: the best way to blank the screen to conserve power > is the fbdev-ioctl method. I think that xset s 5 should do it. Thanks to the > Harald and the Swisscom research project ! > * OM announced two hires: Ray Chao, to work full-time in Taipei on the > infrastructure, and Christopher Hall, a very experienced software engineer. > * Infrastructure-wise, unstable development of OM is moving back to OE. > > Too many bugs remain, see Test reports for example. Most of the grief heard > these days was about Digital Audio Playing and Wifi. I would like to make an > unrequested announcement for the sake of the good vertical communication: > Kernels currently has the APM power management interface is still compiled > in. This has been deprecated for years and is doomed to go away. Hopefully > apm -s will still work for suspend, but userspace applications that still use > the deprecated apm interface SHOULD take action, preferably sooner than > later. > > Community > > * Openmoko's engineers reunited for a 3 weeks workshop in Taipei. They > decided to focus back on the basics, that is to leave the Installer, > Locations, Diversity and Settings applications alone for a while. This > decision was very positively received by everybody. John Lee is assembling > the engineering task force at OpenMoko for that. He started by initiating a > thread to hear about what the community expects most urgently. As a result, > his priorities are posted in the Improving user experience wiki page. > * Compared to last month, the planet has really taken off. Several > prolific authors are now regularly posting long, detailed analysis. > * Risto wrote a wrap-up of the "Lost community" thread. Gratuitous praise > to him: when someone makes a request on the mailing list, it is indeed a mark > of good netizenship to summarize the answers on one's blog/wiki like he did. > These discussions led to more discussions about what would be the job > description of a community manager and decisions on lowering barriers to > participation (i.e. access to write priviledges in code repositories) > happened. > * I did not see much innovations about cool hardware mods (feel free to > add to this wiki page !), but an interesting stylus alternative was > documented. It uses a guitar pick attached to the pouch lanyard. > * More user groups meetings everywhere in the world. > > Outside Openmoko > > * Linux 2.6.27 released. > * Pulseaudio released version 0.9.13 with experimental support for > Bluetooth devices. > > Friendly yours, > Minh > > _______________________________________________ > Openmoko community mailing list > community@lists.openmoko.org > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFI/DY/SIAU/I6SkT0RAg+GAJ9YugLStfKPvq9koMzx3H34doHqoQCeJZ/q o8Ix86BjmxnkPQadGVpdf1o= =WftR -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community