David Greaves and Niels Breet announced, in their "Community build system" session at the MeeGo Conference, that the community build system is now live. Similar to the combined maemo.org Extras/Packages & auto-builder, one of the advantages it will give is the ability to have Ubuntu PPA-style personal repositories, replacing Extras-devel and reducing the risks of tracking the development of particular pieces of software.
As MeeGo Conference 2010 attendees filtered into the D4 hotels the weekend before the conference, a number of informal learning and collaboration sessions, called "Early Bird Events," got underway in the Ballroom at Ballsbridge Towers. Sessions included Qt overviews, Qt Creator & QML tutorials, a hands-on Linux Developer tools seminar, hackathons, and UX design discussions, among other topics. Quite a number of the almost one hundred participants had one and a half days of pure development immersion. Expectedly, several people created their own round tables scattered around the hotel. The atmosphere was one of excitement and fun as everyone connected with old friends and talked about new possibilities. It is because of events like this - those that happen 'outside' of the regular conference schedule - that innovations withing the development community happen.
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Normally videos don't make the front page, especially when the topic is covered by number of items. However, in the case of Mohammad Abu-Garbeyyeh's latest video - demonstrating USB hostmode - we've made an exception. Joerg Reisenweber's announcement on maemo-developers is covered in the `Devices' section. Mohammad's video shows him "playing DVDs on the N900 with a modified kernel and a custom mplayer build. [...] (Note: video is playing solely on CPU power, mplayer is not accelerated by the PowerVR, which explains the framedrops)" More information on USB hostmode is later in the issue.
Read moreWith a week to go to the start of the first MeeGo Conference, the community have been organising events (beyond spodding and drinking) for the prior weekend, for those arriving early. Dave Neary is organising a "Maker's Contest" where, instead of building funky Qt applications, teams have to build a pretty, load-bearing bridge out of lollipop sticks: "Each team will get 100 lollipop sticks and a glue gun with one glue stick. No other materials may be used for the bridge. Teams will have 1 hour to make a bridge which should span a 40cm gap." Dave is looking for local logistical assistance (including weights and rope for testing the bridges); so start forming your teams now!
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The latest update to Maemo 5 has been rolling out to N900s around the world. Largely expected to be the final big update from Nokia for the N900, it "adds Ovi Suite support to your N900 and makes it even easier to access and sync files and messages between your device and your desktop. In addition, we’ve added hundreds of tweaks and fixes that will make your N900 run faster and smoother than ever." It also ships with Qt 4.7 (including Qt Mobility), which will be important for developers wanting to deliver applications across MeeGo, Maemo and Symbian. Criticism has been forthcoming for seemingly valid patches from the community being ignored (see bug #7190) and the latest versions of key software like hildon-desktop languishing on gitorious, rather than being shipped in this (almost certainly) final update.
However, the community (mainly in the form of Mohammad Abu-Garbeyyeh) has already stepped up with a "community update" repository which brings in further updates on top of PR1.3. Mohammad is in final testing (having liaised with Niels Breet to get it set up on maemo.org) and should be announcing something this week.
Read moreQuality, time, features. Agile methodologies tell you to pick two because one has to vary in the Real World. MeeGo have chosen the first two and so, their first six monthly release has come out for netbooks, handsets and in-vehicle devices (IVI). Rafe Blandford of All About MeeGo opens his in-depth article; with screenshots from each "UX": "The MeeGo project reached an important milestone today with the release of MeeGo 1.1. It aims to create a solid baseline for both manufacturers and developers to devices and software across a broad range of categories (netbook, handset, and IVI) across both the ARMv7 and Intel Atom chipset architectures. The current MeeGo releases remain mainly of interest to device manufacturers, developers and those wishing to take an early look at MeeGo before it arrives on commercial devices."
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It seems there's been confusion about registering for meego.com vs. registering for the MeeGo Conference. Michael Shaver, one of the maintainers of the meego.com infrastructure, explains: "Many people believe they have signed up, but we have found that they have only registered for an account and have NOT signed up for the conference." The email clearly lays out what you have to do to check. If you want to attend the free conference in November, please check your status by following its instructions. As attendence slots are limited, be sure to check soon.
Read moreSanjeev Visvanatha has revealed that as part of his press pack for the conference next month contains the disappointing - but not altogether surprising - announcement that no product announcements will be made there: "The Media Advisory I received from the Linux Founadtion along with my invitation to Meego Conference next month says that there are no product announcements, just a developer and community conference." With Stephen Elop referring to Nokia's MeeGo device as "a 2011 event", hopes for an N900 replacement before Christmas have been largely dashed.
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In a post touching on a number of topics in the N900, Maemo and MeeGo arena; Harri Hakulinen summarises:
* The state of the MeeGo project on N900
* The improvements in dual boot support coming in PR 1.3 (shortly)
* The announcement of Carsten Munk's new role as maintainer for N900 adaptation
* An overview of MeeGo 1.2 plans
Some choice quotes: "MeeGo is an open source project and if you choose to install the MeeGo image to your N900 device, you do it completely at your own risk. If you are not confident that you know what you are doing with it and why, please don't use it at all. Especially now, if you start playing with call software under development, you need to watch after your phone bill, as well. [...] On the Maemo side, there have been interesting, supporting developments going on, as well. The PR 1.3 update is quite close now, and with that you can easily dual boot between Maemo and Meego on your N900. There is also a possibility of developing applications supporting both operating systems, based on Qt and Qt Mobility APIs on the Maemo side. It means that you can develop once in PC with Qt Creator, and test your applications on both Maemo and MeeGo, directly on your N900 device!" This blog post was greeted with hysterics from the "blogosphere" and sections of talk.maemo.org. It does NOT signify that Nokia have changed their mind about commercial support for MeeGo (or, more accurately, MeeGo-Harmattan) nor that MeeGo is finished, end-user ready or will ship with PR1.3. It means that developers will be able to reboot between MeeGo and Maemo, without having to have a PC nearby to temporarily flash the MeeGo kernel.
Read moreAri Jaaksi, former vice president of MeeGo Devices at Nokia, has - it seems - been hired by HP to work on WebOS. According to All Things Digital: "Sources close to the company tell me that Jaaksi has been hired on as senior vice president of webOS at Hewlett-Packard’s Palm division. He’s to start in November, after relocating to the Bay Area, and when he does, he’ll lead Palm’s webOS engineering team." Hopefully there was nothing coming up in Nokia/MeeGo which pushed him out; his hiring adds further credibility to the platform that was recently acquired by HP to differentiate themselves from the other Android-toting manufacturers.
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Ari Jaaksi can be considered one of the fathers of Maemo (and hence MeeGo). As the vice president of Maemo Software, Maemo Devices and MeeGo Devices at Nokia; his enthusiasm for mobile Linux was palpable; and though no Steve Jobs, he did a fantastic job of talking to press, developers and enthusiasts at events like Nokia World, OSiM World, Maemo Summit and more.
However, he's handed in his resignation at Nokia for "personal reasons". All we can do is wish him luck in his future endeavours, thank him for his work bringing us this platform and hope that Nokia's MeeGo teams will get someone as open, personable and committed as Ari to fill his shoes. Many news articles are reporting: "Jaaksi's exit won't affect Nokia's coming MeeGo device launches or its strategy for further development of the platform, [spokesperson] Huovinen said, adding that the company is looking for candidates to fill his position."
Read moreChuong Nguyen, of PocketNow, asked some common questions of the Nokia folk at the telecommunication industry's CTIA event last week: "I did my best to push, prod, and shake out the gossip of MeeGo's release date from Nokia's representatives in San Francisco over the last few days at CTIA, especially in light of rumors of a delay until 2011 given my MeeGo's other parent Intel. Nokia's reps on hand continue to say what they've said in the past--that we'll see an announcement from the Finnish smartphone maker--who's committed now to MeeGo and Symbian^3--by the end of the year. Now, whether that will mean just an announcement or an actual shipping product at that time is still unclear, but the good news remains that Nokia intends to keep us in the loop on MeeGo development efforts." With no sign of the Harmattan platform SDK yet, and with constant changes to the Qt and MeeGo Touch frameworks, your editor's hopes for people getting their hands on the Harmattan device before the end of the year are dimming.
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In a surprising turn of events, the next major release of MeeGo (1.1, which is due this month), may not ship with an email client; a terminal to access the underlying OS or the ability to run any third party Qt applications. A number of bug reports in these critical pieces of software, and a bug in a common part of the UI, have been commented that they are "not targetted for 1.1". Carsten Munk, a member of the MeeGo ARM adaptation team, says on bug #7881: "Frankly, it's a marketing disaster waiting to happen. MeeGo Handset UX will be a joke if we can 'only' run MTF applications and not Qt apps in MeeGo 1.1 Handset UX - ruining the goal of multiple verticals with a common API to write against." It's worth bearing in mind that this is MeeGo 1.1, which should not be confused with Nokia's "MeeGo 1.0 N", aka Harmattan, aka Maemo 6. This is also due in the final quarter of this year (although with a much less firm release date), but apparently does not suffer from this bug and, almost certainly(!), will ship with an email client and support for third party applications.
Dave Neary announced the official results from the Community Council elections on Thursday: "The Maemo Community Council elections closed last night, and the results are in! Congratulations to the incoming council members." The winners are:
* Attila Csipa (achipa)
* Andrew Flegg (Jaffa)
* Andrea Grandi (andy80)
* Tim Samoff (timsamoff)
* Kathy Smith (revdkathy)
At the time of writing the new Council has yet to select a chair. However, the Council homepage has been updated.
The full results, including how the votes were transferred using the "Single Transferrable Vote" system, is available from the link within Dave's email.
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Sanjeev Visvanatha asked each of the ten candidates standing in the current election a set of questions, touching on motivation; MeeGo; priorities and community support efforts for Maemo: "The format of the Q&A is 5 questions, selected by me. A few of the questions intentionally attempt to illicit discussion surrounding our future - one in which Nokia's involvement could conceivably diminish. I am not sure if that will happen, but I thought I would push those boundaries to see what the candidates thought. As you will see after reading the Q&A, there are mixed feelings on this topic." With the election closing on Wednesday night (at 23:59 UTC), there isn't much time to decide if you haven't already voted. As each of the respondents notes, this is going to be a term which is at least as important as the current one.
Read moreThe day before Nokia World, Anssi Vanjoki resigned. He'll be working his six month notice period, and still gave an empassioned keynote at the London event. AllAboutMeeGo continues with the thought we've all had: "Coming just days after the appointment of Stephen Elop as the new CEO of Nokia, it seems very likely that Vanjoki was one of the internal candidates passed over for the job, consequently he has decided to move on."
Read moreFollowing the departure of two executives, Nokia have found someone to lead their UX & Services teams; focussing on MeeGo. Engadget said, "Nokia has managed to scoop up Peter Skillman from the wreckage of the HP/Palm merger. One of the many senior VPs to leave Palm upon its assimilation into the HP empire, Peter spent 11 years with his previous employer and was in charge of the design team that produced the deliciously curvaceous Palm Pre. Now at Nokia, he'll be heading up the user experience and services division for MeeGo, which means that if you weren't excited for the platform already, you've now got a very good reason to be."
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Apologies for this cut-down issue of MWKN. There are two reasons:
1) Twitter's authentication changes caught us whilst we weren't prepared. The appropriate scripts for news gathering and publishing need updating to use "OAuth".
2) One of your editors is currently enjoying the delights of LegoLand. Next week's issue will contain everything that should have been published here.
Read moreNominations for the next Maemo Community council will be accepted until 23:59 on Wednesday, 8th September. Nominate yourself, or someone else, soon if you'd like to help steer the transition of the Maemo community to MeeGo. Dave Neary says: "So far, only one person has nominated themselves. We typically get a number of nominations on the last day, but I would encourage people to announce early to avoid the rush. As a tiny extra incentive, I plan to list the candidates in order of their nomination on the voting page this year." The next 6 months will, perhaps, be the most important in determining the future of both maemo.org and MeeGo. maemo.org will need to figure out where it fits in the picture that MeeGo, MeeGo-Harmattan, and Maemo's legacy position as a community-supported platform. The next council will be in a unique position to help smooth this transition and influence the direction of both the Maemo Community and MeeGo moving forward.
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It's been talked about for a while, but Lucas Maneos took the ball and ran with it: there's now a community-owned software update repository for users of N8x0s. Announcing this milestone, Lucas said, "the first "stable" community SSU is now available in the maemo.org repository. Many thanks to all the testers who made this possible :-) [...] Now that this is out it frees up -testing for more experimental work. If anyone wants to contribute in any way, please ping me. Ways to participate include: adopt a package, evaluate and apply existing patches to it; discover patches or other improvements that can be applied; for the extra brave, follow the community-testing repository and report any issues found; maintain and improve the wiki pages." With Mohammad Abu-Garbeyyeh's equivalent for Maemo 5 gaining traction, the possibility of a roadmap of improvements and bug fixes for non-MeeGo devices seems entirely possible. However, both SSU efforts are primarily packaging and logistical tasks; only bug fixes and improvements developed by the community can be shipped.
Read moreHaving returned from holiday, and not being given much time by your editor, Dave Neary - who acts as maemo.org's returning officer - has officially opened the nominations for the Q3 Maemo Community Council election: "To nominate yourself or someone else for the council, please email the maemo-community mailing list with a clear email header (something like" With over 500 eligible candidates, this could be the most varied and important election. Things are clearer about the relationship of the Maemo and MeeGo communities, but the migration paths for maemo.org users, contributors and developers is not yet completely clear.
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