Re: Poll - What Smartphone do you use?
On 2011-05-23 3:04 PM, green wrote:
> Scott Ferguson wrote at 2011-05-23 08:28 -0500:
>> Camaleón wrote:
>>> And IMO, too useless/time consuming also. I want a phone not a game
>>> console :-)
>>
>> A computer with hardware I can't access is a computer I don't want.
>
> Right. Someone gave me a blackberry with GPS hardware... great, but apps
> can't use the GPS because of some stupid Verizon policy thing (although the
> phone is no longer on Verizon). So really some of these phones have issues
> even without trying to use FOSS on them.
>
>> When teh Smartphone is a portable computer with an *open GSM stack* I'll
>> be interested. Until then it's a "dumbphone" with a low-end processor
>> sharing the battery.
>
> And the difference is "game console" versus actual *productivity*. Oh, the
> things I could do with a phone if I could run Debian on it...!
I have a pair of Nokia N900s. Run Maemo 5 (Fremantle), which is based on
Debian. It also has (though I don't use), a package called "Easy
Debian", which basically lets you run normal ARM Debian in a chroot.
I love it to bits. Sadly, has a fair few closed components (both UI and
deep in the cellular stack), and the next project version (Maemo 6 -
Harmatten) is going to be the last Debian-based version, as the original
plan was to merge Nolia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin into MeeGo, a
combined project that adopted the Fedora-based Moblin's base system over
Maemo's Debian-based one. :( I'm sure on this mailing list we all
appreciate Apt over RPM ;)
Anyway. Nokia's not been the best at supporting platform, but if you can
get a cheap old N900 it's a great platform for mobile OSS dev, and has a
great community over at talk.maemo.org. I suspect the device running
Maemo 6 will be even better from the OSS point of view, as more of the
stack is being opened as part of the migration to MeeGo. Very slowly though.
- Jamie
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