Which Distro?

[Dirk Bergstrom]

Vijay Vaidyanathan wrote:
> I'm trying to make a decision on whether to drop in a new distribution to
> replace the 2007.2 that came preinstalled on my FR.

Me too.

> Is there an "official" distribution that is blessed and "supported" by
> "OpenMoko - The Company" and is most future-proof.

AFAIK, the answer is "Not yet, but many people are working very hard to 
get to a better answer."

> 1. Why has OpenMoko (The Company) chosen not to support one definitive
> distribution as its official one? I'd like to understand the logic behind
> it. What are end-users (i.e. those who will surely have no desire to flash a
> new distro) expected to be eventually using?

There has been a lot of (sometimes bitter) discussion about this.

> 2. Which distro are you currently using?

I'm using whatever came on the phone.  I did 'opkg update && opkg 
upgrade' the day after I got the phone.  I've made a few changes based 
on the wiki, or stuff I read in emails.  The one that made the biggest 
difference was installing the matchbox keyboard, as built by Arne.  I 
don't really plan on doing a whole lot more for the next couple weeks.

 > and why?

Several reasons:

*) I expect that something better will be along shortly.  I think having 
real hardware in people's hands constitutes a critical mass, and we'll 
start seeing a clear(er) direction.

*) I'm completely swamped with work right now, and then I'm going to be 
traveling for ten days (including going to OSCON).  I might have some 
time to play with the phone while I'm away, but not much.

*) I'm hoping that the FSO framework will make some good progress.  That 
seems (to me) like the right way to go.  I can wrap my head around a 
dbus based world, and more importantly, I can code to it in python.

*) I'm waiting for some of the dust to settle in the GTK / Enlightenment 
/ Qt fracas.  I only want to learn one UI toolkit.

*) I'm a high-level guy, and embedded stuff is way out of my comfort 
zone, so there's not much I can *do* right now anyways.  The major stuff 
I want to do is dependent on things like cron/scheduling and a working 
browser (with adjustable font sizes, bookmarks, and the ability to read 
local files).

--
Dirk