Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

After the recent work to clone MCE, more of the major hardware bits are falling into place :)
Main hardware bits remaining are audio, cellular modem, FMTX, GPS and possibly OMAP DSP (I dont know how compatible the DSP in the N900 SoC and the DSP in the Neo900 SoC are)

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

Both are C64+,100% compatible. And the driver is upstreamed (albeit in staging)

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

I would very much like to help out on the Fremantle Porting project, but I just don't know where to jump in. I'm a competent C programmer, I've made a few apps with Hildon widgets, I've got the Maemo 5.0 SDK running on a laptop, but I've never done anything like try to make a replacement library, so I just don't know how to get started on something like this.

I've not seen anything in this thread that indicates how this project is being coordinated. Is anyone assigning tasks? If not, how do you prevent manpower from being wasted by duplication of effort? Has the list of closed-source components that need to be replaced been prioritized?

Are there any tasks remaining that would be suitable for a newbie, or has all the low-hanging fruit been picked, and all remaining tasks are quite challenging?

Has anyone described somewhere the process by which he reverse engineered one of these libraries? Do you start by looking for API documentation, or do you dump the library symbols? Do you disassemble?

I've got time to work on this project, and I'd love to contribute, but the initial learning curve looks pretty steep, even for someone fairly familliar with Linux (I've written device drivers, and ported Linux to a previously unsupported PowerPC VME card) and C. How can I get started?

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

Does anybody have an idea which web browser can be used on the Neo900 or more generally on Fremantle in the future at all?
All the free (as in speech) mobile linux (i.e. non-dalvik) browsers seem to be discontinued and the mobile version of Opera for Meego is proprietary, which doesn't seem like a good default for a system that strives to be free.

Would it be feasible to free some Android browser from the dalvik stuff?
I've just tested almost all browsers available in Debian and none of them seems to be suitable for a mobile device with a 800x480 px display.

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

Hi!
please /join #maemo-ssu on freenode IRC! right now FatPhil, Freemangordon, jonwil, Pali, are the guys most active with FPTF, and coordination entirely happens on IRC (if at all ;-P).
Please join that channel and holler, eventually one of the guys will talk you thru all the initial fog.

@fmg, pali: it maybe would be a good idea to post a mini-howto_get-started-FPTF here, and occasionally give a status report here as well. ;-)

cheers
jOERG

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

I tinkered a bit with several browsers in some x86 virtual machines and came to the following conclusions (so far):

Ubuntu Phone's webbrowser-app [1]:
+ UI works mostly fine on a 800x480 desktop
+ autohiding url bar is easily accessible by dragging it up from the lower screen edge
- uses experimental QML api
- needs multitouch to zoom (pinch to zoom)
- no tabs, no way to open links in new windows, therefore strictly linear browsing
- no support for HTML 5

KDE plasma active's webbrowser [2]:
+ seems to work well on touchscreens (from what I can tell without having one)
- UI needs too much space to be useful on small displays
- depends on patched KDE libs, therefore incompatible with Debian (unless one is willing to replace major parts of Debians KDE)
- huge list of dependencies (when installing only the browser with its depends the list doesn't seem too long, but although the browser runs it only displays a black box instead of websites - installing the whole plasma-active DE fixes this but pulls much more dependencies, maybe 1GB)
- needs multitouch to zoom (pinch to zoom)

Chromium:
+ can be made to act mostly like a mobile browser by adjusting the agent string and enabling "Enable touch events" in about:flags (which enables drag page scrolling).
- url bar and tab bar to small and apparently no way to change that (this is a mayor show stopper on tiny displays)

Firefox:
+ can be made pretty much compatible with small touch screens by using the following addons (maybe there are better ones):
# Hide Tabbar (becomes visible by sliding over the region where it should be or pressing a hotkey - camera button?)
# Hide Navigation Bar (becomes visible by pressing a hotkey - camera button?)
# Big Buttons (bigger tool bar buttons - only one size available)
# Grab and Drag (scrolling)
# User Agent Switcher (comes with an "iPhone 3" setting)
# Make Address Bar Font Size Bigger (does what it says, unfortunately it doesn't increase the url bar height and places an icon in the bar that can ot be removed permanently)
# not an addon but setting this in userChrome.css increases the tab bar height so it can be used without a stylus:
- the result still looks crude (might be adressed by better choice of addons)
- when Hide Tabbar and Hide Navigation Bar use the same hotkey they sometimes don't respond to it at the same time
- url bar and tab close buttons still too small


[1] http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/webbrowser-app
[2] http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/pl...ive-webbrowser

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

IMO one option for browser on Neo900 Fremantle is to keep microb and upgrade microb-engine to a newer Gecko version.

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

What about Alopex? http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=89506
I never used it myself, because of the thumb only, but what I heard, it is really god.

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

isn't browser rather an app than an OS component? (OK, arguable on maemo ;-P)
Anyway the purpose of FPTF is to allow apps to run unchanged on new hw-platforms.

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

If that's feasible...

I never heard of it up to now, but according to the thread it seems pretty much dead.

I guess on any smartphone - which despite its other qualities the N(eo)900 still is - the web browser might be one of the most used applications available. And it's one of the most prominent potential security risks.
So not using some ancient browser is a major security concern to the whole platform.

Maybe I got that wrong, but wasn't the purpose of FPTF also to improve Maemo's software situation in general, starting with a recent kernel and eliminating some of the proprietary blobs?
Afaik these are the major hurdles that always made it hard to impossible to keep up with the rest of the GNU/Linux progress.
So if these hurdles could be removed by FPTF then a new browser based on recent technology should more or less come naturally, assuming there is already an existing suitable browser out there.

If this thread is not the right place to discuss this, I understand and will happily join the choir of those requesting a Neo900 sub-forum.

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

FPTF is about 3 things:
Firstly its about cloning those bits of the system that talk to the hardware where possible and finding ways to make the blobs work on the new hardware.(e.g. the recent work to clone MCE will help here as MCE does a lot of hardware interaction)
Secondly its about cloning those things that have limitations and bugs that prevent the software from being all that it can be for the benefit of both N900 and Neo900 users. And thirdly its about kernel work to make things keep functioning correctly even when cloning is not possible (as is likely to be the case with parts of the audio subsystem)

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

with regards to browser, microb patches didn't apply cleanly to FF7/8 (can't remember what i looked into). the changes required were not that bad, some line numbers were a bit off, extra nested if statement, renamed variables. a bit of searching and they could mostly be worked out. some are just patches for branding, others added hildon message boxes, tuning etc. alopex may have already done most of this for a more recent version of engine.

browserd and/or some other components already have replacements. UI is still closed AFAIK so bug fixes there would require a replacement, but as a stop gap it could just be used as is for now, as long as it works with recent api.

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

http://browser.garage.maemo.org/docs/pics/scheme.png - this picture got me thinking (source: http://browser.garage.maemo.org/docs/browser_paper.html ), wouldn't "freeing" the EAL-layer make us able to use basically any browser engine? I see browser-eal, browser-neteal and microb-eal packages in my device... I'll have a look at their features once I finish playing with FF compilation :)

Introduction
 

Hi! I'm a code monkey with experience in programming microcontrollers, adding real-time extensions to the Linux kernel, and most recently RF simulation and modelling in C++ (the day job). I'm also a fair to middling system administrator (run my own email and web server for personal purposes).

I'm really short on free time these days (other extracurricular activities eat most of my time), but I would love to help in any way I can.

I got the info on the IRC channel, but due to being at work, I can't really justify getting on right now; perhaps later tonight.

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

misiak, theres may hold some info for you:

tablet-browser-view-test
http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/mae...er/028699.html

browserd
http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/mae...er/028697.html mentions microb-eal as well.

browser-neteal related:
http://maemo.org/community/maemo-dev...k-hildon_guru/

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

Please keep thread clean of APP discussion that's completely unrelated to porting task! THANKS!
/j

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

Looks like I wont be able to devote the time to FPTF that I thought I would be able to. I am moving house to the other side of the country (4000+KMs away) and dont know when I will be in a position to do any N900 work (Neo900 or otherwise). Depending on circumstances, I may also be getting rid of my current Linux box (old Pentium 4) rather than paying the really high costs to move it (which would leave me without an N900 dev system)

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

added some link to good discussion about camera to post#2 http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...10&postcount=2

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

So what is the current state of this project? Can somebody please post an update?

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

Jan 1 02:00:18 Nokia-N900 syslogd 1.5.0#5maemo7+0m5: restart.
Jan 1 02:00:18 Nokia-N900 BME: pre-start
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: Loaded 66471 symbols from 51 modules.
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] Linux version 3.14.0-rc1+ (ivo@ivo-H81M-S2PV) (gcc version 4.7.2 20120701 (prerelease) (Linaro GCC 4.7-2012.07) ) #25 PREEMPT Tue Feb 4 23:02:57 EET 2014
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] CPU: ARMv7 Processor [411fc083] revision 3 (ARMv7), cr=10c53c7d
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] CPU: PIPT / VIPT nonaliasing data cache, VIPT nonaliasing instruction cache
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] Machine: Nokia RX-51 board
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] omapfb: reserved 0x00800000 bytes at 0x8f100000
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] Memory policy: Data cache writeback
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] On node 0 totalpages: 61696
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] free_area_init_node: node 0, pgdat c05d5324, node_mem_map ceefa000
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] Normal zone: 512 pages used for memmap
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] Normal zone: 0 pages reserved
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] Normal zone: 61696 pages, LIFO batch:15
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] CPU: All CPU(s) started in SVC mode.
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] OMAP3430/3530 ES3.1 (l2cache iva sgx neon isp )
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] pcpu-alloc: s0 r0 d32768 u32768 alloc=1*32768
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] pcpu-alloc: [0] 0
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] Built 1 zonelists in Zone order, mobility grouping on. Total pages: 61184
Jan 1 02:00:19 Nokia-N900 kernel: [ 0.000000] Kernel command line: init=/sbin/preinit ubi.mtd=rootfs root=ubi0:rootfs rootfstype=ubifs rootflags=bulk_read,no_chk_data_crc rw mtdoops.mtddev=log console=tty0 console=ttyO2 omapfb_vram=8M omapfb.mode=lcd:848x480-16


Full boot log is here http://pastebin.com/LDa0D4sx

sound and cameras still do not work, vibra and accelerometer do not work too (mce needs some tweaking for the vibra and accelerometer), as is portrait mode, everything else is pretty much ok

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

I'm missing fremantle-specific audio related kernel cmdline parameters

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

Its not needed since PR1.2. These parameters were integrated into rx51 sound driver and already are part of PR1.3 and upstream kernels.

Nokia just forgot to remove these (now useless) params from cmdline.

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

Any news on this? Any testing needed? I have some spare n900s (one fully servicable, one with U/S GSM chip) on which I could try things if needed, (Well, I will be able to in a few weeks once I get back from a trip round Ireland).

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

Well, the ultimative test would be to build fremantle entirely from available sources, and see how far we get.
Then prepare a list of needed blob binaries which the user has to rip out of an existing fremantle image or installation s/he owns, and set up a script to do the copying of those binaries to e.g. a tarball on uSD of a stock fremantle N900, and then another script to extract them form that uSD tarball and integrate them on your test N900 into the FREEmantle build that only has the FOSS stuff :-)

cheers
jOERG

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

hi bro joerg_rw, any progress on porting fremantle to neo900?

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

I'm not an active member of the FPTF developers group. Seems I recall freemangordon agreeing on doing the above-mentioned complete build based on the new kernel and all our available FOSS sources. But I think it's better to ask the developers directly rather than me.

cheers
jOERG

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

sound , cameras, vibra and accelerometer are working now(new mce)?
any updates freemangordon?

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

Right now it doesn't make much of a sense to play with upstream kernel and fremantle, as upstream is in a process of transition to DT based boot and most of the stuff is broken - see http://elinux.org/N900/Changelog for what is expected to happen in the near future. However, I did some experiments with 3.15-rc5 while testing Sebastian's ssi patches and was able to successfully compile and load SGX driver with DT boot.

As soon as most of the pending stuff is merged (i.e. 3.16 is out) I will continue with porting.

Cssu
 

hello everyone,

Is the goal of this project to port maemo 5 to the neo900?
does that mean you won't get any fancy cssu features? that would
be disappointing.

Re: Cssu
 

In short, yes. Or better said - porting/fixing Maemo to work with upstream kernel.

Why is that? Actually it is stock Maemo5 + CSSU + HW adaptation that will be called Freemantle, IIUC

Cssu
 

I mean to say that the latest cssu stable is called maemo6. by saying
maemo 5, you are implying that you are porting the stock maemo. I find that confusing.

Also, does porting mean that the new version will be able to run any n900 package? What about packet injection support, or packages that enable/disable/mess with interfaces?

Re: Cssu
 

freemangordon is one of CSSU maintainers, I suppose he knows what he's working on :)

I've never seen CSSU refered to as "Maemo 6". Maemo 6 is rather Harmattan, marketed by Nokia as MeeGo and released on Nokia N9.

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

NeoFremantle is meant to be Application Binary Interface (ABI) and Application Programming Interface (API) compatible to stock fremantle, as much as possible. This means all drivers (injection)*) and updates/patches (CSSU) and apps (maemo-extras packages) should work flawlessly on NeoFremantle.

*) the drivers of course depend on the hw used, so those are most prone to change, but usually for the better rather than the worse, that's what Neo900 hw design is striving for. E.G. "packet injection" is a key capability requirement for Neo900's WLAN.
cheers
jOERG

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

thank you for the information. I hope the neo900 will become available soon :)

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

posted by using microb, under:
EDIT(from my desktop :) ) :

The upstream linux-next has only SGX, component_version and bootreason drivers added on top. For some reason with uSD card insterted, /opt mounting fails.Also, sound and cameras does not work (but that is to be expected), as are a couple of other devices. For some reason PM/idle still does not work, maybe some changes are not pulled in linux-next, will investigate. Lots of work to be done still, but we're getting closer. Many many thanks to Sebastian Reichel(sre) for his job on upstreaming and porting to DT of N900 drivers

BTW It might be a placebo, but the device seems very snappy.

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

it does benefit from remaining 2.6.x and all 3.x kernel fixes and optimisations and the "clean up" of arm stuff they did a while back, so speed may be better.

with the modem, i know meego had some drivers for n900 and n9, either on meego or ofono mailing list. will the new drivers work with ofono for those working with arch/debian/freEmantle or is it specific to maemo.

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

Could be, but I am still not fully convinced it is not a placebo :) . However, it is too early to judge now a couple of devices does not work.

https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/5/10/167

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

Yeah, still not in linux-next http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-omap/msg107745.html

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

i must of missed that when checking the other day. thanks.

Re: the Fremantle Porting Task Force, or "how to run maemo on Neo900"
 

We can try porting maemo on a device that has some of n900 hw
Samsung i8320 aka Vodafone 360 H1 , LiMo os(Linux Mobile) renamed to tizen after intel and samsung work on it
Cyanogen mod 7.2 based on android 2.3.7 already ported and all functions working !
Phone os and drivers are all open source and in github
What do you think guys ?!