On Thursday, December 5, 2013 07:56:39 you wrote: > Several times, I attempted to email from makeplaylive's contact us form > after entering the characters in the box but my email was never sent. > Perhaps there is a bug on your contact us form?
I just checked and it appears to be working well; will have it checked over for problems further tomorrow. > For over a year, I have been a member of Linux on Smal ARM devices > mailing list. I have been waiting for a board using Rhombus-tech's > EOMA68-A20 CPU Card. Congratulations on manufacturing such a board. > Congratulations on making improv board open source hardware. :) > I was surprised with your choice of preinstalling Mer Linux on Improv > board. Neither MakeplayLive's website nor Mer's website adequately > describe Mer linux. Hence, I joined the Mer Linux mailing list to ask > for a description. I am even more disappointed reading their answer. Sorry about the answer there; I’m a bit behind on emails right now, including on the mer list (which I am sub’d to) > By not preinstalling a full linux desktop, you are leaving out a > significant percentage of the population interested in open source > hardware. We are providing a desktop environment: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-U30Vqmc1FMk/Up-EIoKo_yI/AAAAAAAABdA/HDdl9JnjkYI/w1084-h813-no/P1020018.JPG Mer OS is a base system from which one can build the desired target system. It does not define the limits. Moreover, there are two important aspects to the Improv: * you can install other OSes on it, e.g. Debian * there is the open build service at build.merproject.org, and we are happy to include packages that make sense on there .. but you aren’t limited to *us*. others can also join in and add packages too > I am not a programmer. I do not know command line. Even if I did, I do > not want to struggle installing numerous pacakges that are by default > preinstalled in typical linux distros. Furthermore, I would not be able > to checksum afterwards. I need a full graphical linux desktop who's > download can be checksummed. We’re doing one better: it comes pre-installed with a desktop environment. > Who has preinstalled graphical packages > such as package manager, plain text editor, PDF viewer, printer and > scanner drivers, scanner software such as simple scan, Disk Utility, > firewall, etc. I think we need to set appropriate expectations: Improv is a not a desktop replacement. It is a system designed for people who are willing to do a little bit of tinkering and playing around as needed. Complete consumer products will be built on/around this hardware, and Improv is a starting point for that. That said ... Package manager -> yes (we use apper on top of zypper); editor - > kate; PDF viewer -> okular (touch build is there; I need to double check that we also have the desktop UI included); scanning .. that’s honestly something i have *not* tried on an ARM machine. apparently SANE does build and work on ARM (just checked) so that gives me hope for skanlite. disk utilities and firewall GUIs we indeed do not have; there are all the command line tools for them, but no GUIs in the packages. i would question the utility of a firewall GUI *at all* on this kind of device unless you are going to be using it as a router on your network or something similar. this isn’t MS Windows. so the software you expect is mostly there; what isn’t can be filled in. if you are looking for a desktop replacement system, however, Improv may not be the right fit for you. assuming Improv is even moderately successful, we will be introducing devices that do meet those kinds of needs better. -- Aaron J. Seigo
