Re: Debian running on handhelds (or for terminals)
Dear Wookey, and Dear Colleagues,
2013-08-27 1:29 GMT+02:00 Wookey <wookey@wookware.org>:
> +++ patrick295767 patrick295767 [2013-08-26 12:34 +0200]:
>> Hello,
>> I wonder what's Debian position in regards to installations on Handhelds.
>> Over the years, I have installed/contributed in installing Debian on
>> various handheld machines, including�for instance HP Jornadas (Sarge -
>> archive), Psion Revo, Psion 5mx, ... armel, and finally the best of best
>> the Pandora. (The default OS of the Pandora is Angstrom).
>> As shown, Debian can be readily installed on various platforms / machines,
>> even with a very limited hardware.
>
> This is true, although debian installer and kernel supprt for most of
> these machines has been poor/missing.
>
>> My question is as follows:
>> �- Have we missed something? Publicity?�
>> - How to fix that? A temptative...
>
> One very useful resource is the Wiki.debian.org/DebianOn<machine>
> pages. There are loads of things Debian will install on that do not
> have a page there, and it would enormously help others.
>
> Debian-installer support is another really useful thing. For a long
> time we were hampered by the fact that parted had no support for
> flash-only devices, and D-I depended on parted. These days nearly
> everything has something that looks like a block device and parted has
> got smarter so this is largely no longer a blocker.
>
> Making stuff 'just work' in D-I and kernel support would be a great
> contribution.
>
>> I believe that Debian shall also propose more packages that are suited to
>> terminals, maybe to show that we can run Debian and have also lightweight
>> fast X11 applications. More publicity on lightweight applications? More
>> terminal applications in our repos?
>> OPIE / GPE (in particular GPE added to our repos) are also a point for
>> having Debian for Handelds.
>
> We've had GPE in debian for may years, but not well-maintained. Taking
> care of that would be great if you are interested in it.
>
>> I believed we might lack of publicity on own easily Debian is installable
>> on handhelds.
>> Debian can be installed very light.
>
> This is true but the results are often less than ideal due to missing
> bits of UI. We could really use people doing _actual work_ to make
> this better. I'd hesitate to recommend it to many users without some
> more work to take off some of the rough edges (unless things have
> improved greatly since last time I looked about a year ago).
>
>> And more recently, how manage with ARMs?�
>> [1]http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/news/linus-torvalds-threatens-to-cut-off-arm
>
> This is old news and has been essentially sorted by linaro (and
> others). The new(ish) multi-device support will make our lives as a
> distro much easier as we don't have to build loads of different
> kernels to get reasonable device coverage.
>
>> Another example on publicity, is our webpage (wiki) is out-dated (well it
>> is difficult to keep all up to date).
>> [2]https://wiki.debian.org/DebianOnHandhelds
>
> It a wiki - please update it.
>
Wiki updating is too much time consuming, however I can give tipps on
how to install on many devices, pda,...
html/php is out of current question currently for me.
I can tell how I install debian by email, and one could update the
page directly.
>
>> I would say that Handhelds (and also older computers) are the future way
>> to go for Debian.
>
Maintaining OPIE would be too much work, and I haven't the sufficient
number of hours for such a large project.
> Well, one aspect. Many of us still want to use it on new and
> non-mobile hardware too, but I agree it is underappreciated in this
> area, and it's an increasingly important area.
>
> This stuff is co-ordinated on the debian-mobile list. Please join
> there if you haven't already. We could really use more people doing
> actual work to make things better - much of which isn't actually hard
> (updating wiki pages, flash-kernel and D-I support for more devices,
> updating handheld-relevant packages).
I would be very pleased to help and contribute even more Debian.
>
> Lots of people are 'interested' in this are, but I'm not aware of much
> actual work being done. A bit of action could well generate quite a
> lot more interest.
If you would like, Wookey, I could give you debs for some of the
applications from nframe-os, as a contrib or non-free.
You can check the wide array of applications based on ncurses and
nframe-os. nframe-os is extremely tiny (lightweight), since it
requires only ncurses and almost no libs (just few, e.g.
signal,netbase). It does everything itself (which demanded many years
of dev). There are really a bunch applications and actually very nice
ones. http://ncursespim.scienceontheweb.net/nframe-os.htm
If you are interested, I would like also to maintain xlockmore
(version 5.37). I would like to have a deb for testing/sid (or stable
someday) since in my opinion, xlockmore is far far too heavy.
xlockmore is my favorite.
I know the probs with xlockmore. Sad, because I always like this tiny app.
Best wishes Wookey
Yours sincerely,
Pat'
--
Another Debian User, since many many years, maybe from potato
>
> Wookey
> --
> Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM
> http://wookware.org/
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