Openmoko on Design

[Ken Restivo]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 11:38:07AM +0800, John Lee wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 01:47:29AM +0100, Al Johnson wrote:
> > I'll snip most of it to keep the length reasonable.
> 
> same here :)
> 
> > On Tuesday 29 July 2008, William Lai wrote:
> > >
> > > It already is.
> > > We've offered a couple of different solutions to community requests that
> > > were declined by, well, engineering.  One of them was:
> > >
> > > * create a package to be installed through installer adding manual
> > > qwerty button to illume theme.
> > 
> > The only suggestion I remember was that the community fork illume. Is this a 
> > different take on the same suggestion, or a different suggestion? What was 
> > the other option? And what was the objection to providing it as a 
> > configuration option with the default being off, as proposed on this list?
> 
> 
> What we are trying to do:
> 
> provide a OM repository and a community repository.  in this
> particular case, if in the end the illume still shipped without kbd
> button, then the community will very likely provide another version of
> illume called illume-kbd in the community repository.  thus you can
> replace the shipped illume with illume-kbd, and the next upgrade will
> get the new version of illume-kbd instead of illume, so you don't need
> to change it again after upgrade.
> 
> 
> Where we are right at the moment:
> 
> illume is there.
> 
> the community repository is not ready yet but we're working on it.
> 
> the dependency handling of replacing the shipped illume with
> illume-kbd is not ready yet but we're working on it.
> 
> 
> My personal comment on this:
> 
> if the illume is so much more popular then illume-kdb (theoretically
> we can know that from the repository log) or the other way around then
> you bet that fact will be very effective in OM.  ;)
> 

I bought the FreeRunner in order to:

1) Use for remote system administration, via a terminal and onscreen keyboards, via SSH over WiFi and GPRS.
2) Browse the web via WiFi and/or GPRS
3) Read/write email using some kind of IMAP mail app, and send/recieve SMS
4) Make and receive calls via VOIP and GSM
5) Play media (Vorbis, MP3, FLV's, MP4's) and record audio
6) Write a custom touchscreen UI app for a linux-based music synthesizer (connecting to the synth via Bluetooth)
7) Maybe run some simple synth applications on the FR, using the USB host mode to connect it to a MIDI keyboard.

So far, not even the first 5 of those are complete and reliable enough for me to actually use without hassle, and based on what I've read here, I'm estimating about 2 years before they are.

In the meantime, however,  I've realized that I can probably get through the rest of my life happily without *any* of the above features, and I should have waited a few more years before spending so much money.

-ken