Thanks deutch1976 for bringing that thread up.

Sorry about the post on the wrong conversation

Managed to finally install Leste again. I do not know what would be the right dd script to put the Leste image on sdcard, cause it is not told in the instructions. Neither there is mentioned to which format you should format the card. I formatted it to ext4 and searched dd instructions from internet and then checked raspbian and pinephone sites which have dd scripts and then just changed the image name and path to sd card. It installed but when booted it did not work. But then I used Linux Mint's usb img writer to put the img to sd card and Leste booted with using uboot menu. (Could be good to tell that have to boot the device with keyboard open to get to the menu).

When I myself checked the location of the sd card before using dd it was sdb1 so I used that without success. When I used the Mint's usb img writer I checked that it used only sdb as the sd card location. Maybe there was my mistake why using dd did not work.

But the experience has been something else than before. Last time I got Leste running it was smooth and fast, Firefox-esr launched, chromium was usable. Now it seems reeal slow and firefox crashes at launch. It is a sqlite3 related problem I think and last time I probably found a fix but can't remember did I download some version from somewhere or what.

Finnish/swedish keyboard layout not working even after reboot, after shutting down I need to remove battery to be able to start the device. Maybe there are fixes to these already.

I have gone through the Leste news posts to find out things, but these are missing:

How to add devel-repo to Leste? Last time I found it somewhere but now I can't find info of it.


There was in Leste news mentioned that I can add debian repositories to my sources list. Maybe I read carelessly but can't remember mentioned which debian version and to which list: sources.list or HAM list? I would like to install netsurf 3.10 and try to get the firefox not to crash.


In the news posts there was mentioned xephyr. I think that solved some problems last time (maybe the top bar covering browsers top bar) but now sudo apt install xephyr says no such package. Maybe it is in the devel-repo and maybe somewhere it is told what it is and how to add it but brains just won't get it.

Synaptic has problems and I hope using xephyr could possiby fix them (menus are totally black). I also do not remember was there a way to use right mouse click somehow.

I would wan't to be able to overclock device and take transitions away and tweak swap settings. I already edited the /etc/sysctl.conf with swappiness but that is all I have been able to do. So is there a way to overclock and disable transitions?

In some early news post there was mentioned performance optimized clutter plus desktop to install. Is this anymore needed?

There are in the news posts now probably outdated info mixed with up to date info about how to use Leste. Would be really good if someone who knows about things could make a Leste starting page which would gather all usefull and up to date information to one page which could be kept updated as Leste develops. Now new users have to do a lot of work to get to be on the right map.



Things to be on that page could have this xephyr stuff, changing passwords and setting users, firewall and security related stuff, repository stuff with info what to check if adding new repositories, some info of different window manager options, keyboard and language related stuff, and then info how to tweak performance (some like smooth, some just fast).

Going through the news posts made me - again - to honor - more - all the developers for their commitment and hard work they have done with Leste. So much to figure out and to solve and try, so much time put on this, and must have been many moments of frustration. So maybe someone who is not so exhausted of developing and is more just a power user of Leste could answer my questions, if someone has time and is willing.

A tip about using sd-cards and dd, firstly, you don't have to format it to anything as writing image with dd copies the image to the physical media, this means the existing format of the card is written over by all the partition information and filesystem format that already exists in the image.

You also always want to write the image to the device and not to any partition, hence always use for example /dev/sdb and not /dev/sdb1

That was the only answer I did not need because managed to get that part solved. Of course good to know for the future, but what I would really wan't to know is the devel repo for leste.

This is an important post and thank you.
After years of turning "dispassionate" about the evolution of mobile OS and devices, I find it a big hassle to read about how to install Maemo Leste. I am really out of it..Sorry.

Still I have the Nokia N900 laying around and would like to install it if it doesn't cost me half a day. I like to use that day to study other things, at least as exciting but that help me and my peers further right here right now.

If I don't have a clue what I am reading on the Maemo Leste install bits, then I don't need Maemo Leste. Such is the proverbial hardcore Linux nerd's way to put it. Sure, we should not bother already busy reverse engineers and developers giving their best to demand better written documentation in this stage.
I 'll just wait till I can get my 100 Euro fully tested and stable license of Maemo Leste knowing that all the funds will go to the B&M Gates fund to vaccinate children in Africa (for example)

On the other hand, if I don't test Maemo Leste I will not honor the developers' effort by spreading the word enthusiastically.

So what about putting your perfected Leste Image up online for download now and then? To share it on a Telegram Channel

Can you give me a link to the instructions you found?

Looks like we could add links to installation to SD here:
https://leste.maemo.org/Getting_Started
Something like

• Update firmware with included script (eg. flash-droid-4-fw.sh)
• Download an image appropriate for your device from http://maedevu.maemo.org/images/
• Insert a microsd card into your computer and find the device with cat /proc/partitions
• xzcat maemo-leste-VERSION.img.xz | sudo dd status=progress bs=1M of=/de v/MICROSDCARD-DEVICE

I use the default keyboard layout. If there are alternatives, I don't know about them.

Leste uses DEVUan not DEBIan. Do not add debian repos. Devuan includes most of the debian packages.
My droid4 maemo-leste specifies repositories in these places:
Don't install xephyr unless you know exactly what it does and why you want to use it.

There is a hack to emulate right mouse click but it's not a priority because maemo-leste applications do not require right mouse click.

What device? The droid4 can be overclocked. I don't know of any way to disable transitions.

What is in the image is the best you can get.

You need to judge the info by the age. Things change.

Basic devuan-linux operation will not be redundantly documented on maemo-leste pages. I'm not aware of alternative keyboard layouts or maemo-leste windowmanagers. There are a few settings that would make sense to make a gui app for, for e.g. to change things like user and root password.

You Droid guy, me N900 guy. But do you have the devel repo enabled? And how do you overclock your droid? I have overclocked N900 only by installing kernel power plus settings for kernel power and then I was able to kernel-config limits 250 900.

I currently only have in hildon-application-manager.list

deb https://maedevu.maemo.org/extras beowulf main contrib non-free

https://maemo-leste.github.io/funding-from-ngi-eu.html