Edited to include some of my gripes, if you just want to see the list, scroll to the bottom
Planet maemo: category "feed:08cdcc4bab42749b9dd67183191f9924"
So its that time of year again, we released a great product and instead of being content, we want to make an even greater one next time. It’s scary to think that I leave for the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) next week but as a Canonical employee we are all charged with coming up with great idea’s on how to make our particular field of interest even more awesome than it is now.
I personally have been working on the Ubuntu Netbook Remix flavour of Ubuntu and our ARM based offerings. With my experience, I truly believe that ARM has huge potential to break out of its ultra-embedded space and into the mobile ultra-smart phone or netbook area. All my efforts this coming 6 month cycle will be here.
Nokia has a great example of an ultra-smart phone, the N900. If you gave this device a 7″-10″ screen and a near-full size keyboard it would have rave reviews as an up-and-coming netbook distribution. Android is doing the same albeit in a different manner, coming from a very focused Mobile distribution to maybe something more? Canonical’s approach is another top-down example. We have traditionally targeted the desktop and server environments but as netbooks get cheaper (and hardware not particularly powerful) we all need to evaluate where the support line is drawn. The boundaries have definitely blurred on where the smart phone stops and the netbook begins.
Mer is another example of where some ARM distro’s are going. For me Mer is very interesting; Mer traditionally targets the lower horse-powered hardware which follows even closer to what todays phones have to offer. Not all phone hardware (and netbook hardware) is created equal and maybe the opportunity to offer Hi-Def playback and 3D acceleration on all platforms isn’t possible but I would definitely like to see Mer and other open source distributions on consumer-grade phones.
So, what I’m interested in these next 6 months is not just where I as a Canonical employee can take Ubuntu, but where I, as an ARM developer, generously employed by Canonical, can help the whole ARM eco-system. What would you like to see Canonical improve in the ARM embedded space in the next 6 months? All suggestions welcome.
There was a little uproar in the open source community here in the UK when the BBC covered the Windows 7 launch. It was rightly pointed out that Apple didn’t get any coverage for Snow Leopard and Linux in general never really gets a shout at all so what’s going on?
Well in the interests of fairness one Canonical employee decided to send the reporter a netbook with a copy of Karmic (the next Ubuntu release) on it.
Here is the reporters response.
I think its pretty far off the mark. Comments such as
“But, even after some help from a Canonical advisor who came and installed a few add-ons such as Flash, I struggled to work out how I would organise photos, music and video with this system.”
are a little off the mark. Linux (not just Ubuntu) has a plethora of applications that can manage photos (oh how I love f-spot), music and videos so I’m not sure where the confusion comes from. I attach my USB camera or phone and I get offered the chance to import to f-spot, I open a video file and equally its easy to play it. As for flash, go to a flash based site and you get presented with an option to install not just flash from Adobe but other free alternatives.
Not wanting to get personal, as the reporter Rory Cellan-Jones may not be up-to-date with his market analysis but comments like:
“Risking another pasting from its supporters, I’ll predict that Ubuntu will remain a very niche product – but it’s Google’s Android which could bring open-source to the mass consumer market.”
show a little ignorance. Open source on the cell phone is a little different from the desktop. Android on anything but a cell phone platform is like trying to make a nun get drunk with beer whilst smoking crack (recent small bit of ammo).
The phone war will be fought with Nokia’s Maemo (but not the current generation) and Google, the desktop (which he was testing) will be fought with Google (Chrome OS), Windows 7 and some Linux flavour.
I look forward to an unbiased, educated analysis of the technical market by the main-stream media but I don’t hold my breath.
I’m sat in the wonderfully picturesque Grenoble, France, sipping a beer and gazing at the huge mountains around me (but that’s for another post). I’m also reminiscing about the Maemo Summit 2009 so I thought I would put a few comments down.
I’m not going to harp on about how great the summit was, or how cool Nokia are for giving away 300 loan devices to the attendees (although I know at least one person left theirs in the back of a taxi in Amsterdam :() but instead I’ll just commend Nokia for their efforts with the N900. They have worked tirelessly to get a mainstream, Linux based phone to market that is both hugely configurable and extendable. One could harp on about the seeds of Linux based phones being sown with the likes of the LiMo initiative, Open Moko and more recently, Android, but I know of no other company that has advanced many core Linux components with a huge amount of effort and funding than Nokia.
The current device may not be to everyones taste and may not even be ready for mainstream just yet but I raise my glass to you, well done Nokia!
Registration for the second Maemo Summit, to be held on the 9th, 10th and 11th of October at WesterGasFabriek, Amsterdam is now open. It promises to be a great event just like last year, so go register now!
On a related note, the schedule is filling up but there is still time for you to submit a talk proposal. If you have a cool subject to talk about, either in a lightning session or longer talk format then you should edit the wiki as soon as possible.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Wow, just wow. The fruits of the arm port of Ubuntu are starting to flourish, behold, Ubuntu 9.04 on the Nokia N8x0 tablets.
A little lightheartedness.
I just looked at my Maemo profile today and was greeted with this ...
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.