[Community Updates] 2011-09-01 issue is out

[Timo Jyrinki]

Newest Free Your Phone / Openmoko community update now available at
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Community_Updates/2011-09-01 and plain
text version below. Note that I've given the update a new name to
reflect the broadening of the "Openmoko community" that has happened a
long time ago already. CC:ing meego-handset for general same interests
and since I'm also a MeeGo CE user, even though I understand this is
still very much a newsletter with Openmoko legacy.

This issue was brought to you by:
* TimoJyrinki
* Hns
* Papa-piet

( as usual, you can help out with the next issue at
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Community_Updates/Draft_2011-10-01
issue will be published in a beginning of a month when there is some
content and someone publishes it )

----

Period 2011-05-01 to 2011-08-31


Welcome to the 2011-09-01 edition of the Free Your Phone / Openmoko
Community Updates. We are a loosely bound group of people originating
from the developers and users of the pioneering Neo1973 and Neo
FreeRunner products from Openmoko Inc. Nowadays most efforts are
around free software distributions for a range of mobile phones,
including the original Neo products. There are also several spin-off
companies inspired by the Openmoko Inc's work.


*** Hardware ***

-  Video of the Freerunner_Navigation_Board_v3 production posted @
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngyhKr3yTO8
    -  Navigation board available from eg.
http://www.handheld-linux.com/ and http://www.pulster.de/

-  GTA04 has now several early adopter boards with UMTS and OMAP3
hardware functional. Stay tuned for this motherboard update to
original Neo phones.
    -  Latest GTA04 status update and a call for kernel drivers help:
http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/gta04-owner/2011-August/000230.html

-  For those that haven't followed up FreeSmartphone.Org proceedings
on other than Openmoko phones: Palm Pre has seen several updates to
the FSO installer script
(http://git.freesmartphone.org/?p=utilities.git;a=tree;f=palmpre), and
all in all there is some level of support to eight smartphones at the
moment (http://git.freesmartphone.org/?p=cornucopia.git;a=tree;f=fsogsmd/conf)


*** Distributions ***

Distributions lists releases and other significant updates in
distributions that have some support for the Openmoko devices.


	Debian GNU/Linux

Debian is a universal operating system used on many embedded devices,
servers and home computers. Using Debian on the FreeRunner gives
access to the huge army of software packaged in the Debian
repositories, already compiled for the Neo's ARM(v4) processor.
Moreover, one can build one's own source files for programs without
having to learn the OpenEmbedded way. For an existing Debian/Ubuntu
user, choosing Debian for Neo FreeRunner makes phone a very familiar,
trustworthy and flexible place to hack in.

General news:

-   Debian is again installable with the install.sh script, thanks to
a new kernel and some testing. See
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianOnFreeRunner for more details
-   FreeSmartphone.Org's FSO2 is making it into Debian finally, thanks
to fabulous work by Rico Rommel and others. Most of it is already in:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-fso-maint/2011-August/004321.html
- as of this writing, also libfsosystem, fso-usaged and fso-gsmd have
gone in
-   FSO2 also means, like mentioned in the hardware section, a start
of support for many new phones like Palm Pre, Nokia N900, Nexus One
and others that have at least some support in FSO daemons
-   A new 2.6.34 kernel was released into the pkg-fso repository,
required by all Neo FreeRunner users that have upgraded to Debian
unstable's newest udev version. It includes the
wire_up_sys_accept4.patch.
-   Enlightenment 17 (E17) has seen several updates, but the Python
bindings still lag behind and the needed versions are only available
in the experimental repository
-   omhacks 0.15 uploaded, most noticeable change: Fix error handling
of om_sysfs_readfile
-   Other relevant package updates include new upstream snapshots of
zhone and intone, even though both are relatively little developed
compared to their competitors in the phone UI and music player fields

Codename: 'sid'
Homepage: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianOnFreeRunner
	


Other distributions:

-   Latest SHR testing release for Neo FreeRunner is called 2011.1rc4
from 20110513, and not in the usual shr-testing location:
http://build.shr-project.org/shr-testing2011.1/images/om-gta02/

-   Latest stable QtMoko release is v35 from April:
http://qtmoko.sourceforge.net/

-   Latest MeeGo CE release for Nokia N900 is the "Summer Release"
1.7.2011: http://wiki.meego.com/ARM/N900


*** Applications ***

New Applications

	Aurora 0.1

Aurora is an UI for FSO2 middleware that tries to replace
Zhone/Zhone2. It is currently primarily offered as SHR distribution
based images for Palm Pre series of phones

Homepage: http://wiki.freesmartphone.org/index.php/Aurora
Package: aurora

Application Updates

	FoxtrotGPS 1.0.1

FoxtrotGPS is a tangoGPS fork adding multiple improvements

-   Hungarian, Spanish and French translations completed
-   Bug fixes to tile downloading
-   gpsd 2.96 support
-   more bug fixes

Homepage: http://www.foxtrotgps.org/
Package: foxtrotgps-1.0.1.tar.gz
Tested on: Debian


*** General News ***

Most important and change making mails on the mailing lists, blogs
etc.. Coolest hacks, screenshots, themes etc..

-   Tiago Vaz blogged about his VoIP setup in Neo FreeRunner:
http://tiagovaz.org/posts/VoIP_in_Neo_Freerunner_with_Qtmoko_and_Linphone/

-   Timo Jyrinki blogged about free software smartphone distributions
overall, MeeGo and FSO middlewares:
http://losca.blogspot.com/2011/08/meego-ce-and-freesmartphoneorg.html


*** Event News ***

    2011-11-11-13 FSCONS - one track is "Development for Embedded
Systems". Last year there was a presentation about Neo FreeRunner's
history.

    2011-12-02-04 Open Hard- and Software Workshop(german) | Time and
place of the third OHSW have been fixed.