Around week ago courier brought me Nexus 7 tablet (32GB, wifi only) as kind of upgrade to my Archos G9 80 ‘so called’ Turbo one.

First steps

Charged a bit, booted into Android 4.2 and was greeted by “upgrade to 4.2.2 is possible” soon after wifi connection. But decided to go my way instead ;)

Fetched Clockworkmod touch recovery, CyanogenMod 10.1 nightly image and Google Apps 4.2.2 pack and booted into bootloader. Quick ‘OEM unlock’, flash of new recovery and few minutes later I had CM 10.1 running just like I wanted.

Restored apps from Archos with use of TitaniumBackup and after some configuration I had tablet which responds fast and behaves properly.

Multiuser stuff

As my daughter was main user of Archos I waited for Android 4.2 to get multi user capabilities. Played a bit with them on G9 (with Paranoid Android installation) but 512MB ram and OMAP4430 gave my terrible experience with far too many moments when I wanted to crush tablet into pieces…

So when Mira had come from kindergarten I shown her Nexus 7, made a photo with internal ‘want to be a camera’ thing and gave instructions on how to turn device on and switch to her configuration. She had no problems with understanding it ;)

There are some issues with multiuser stuff. Each user is expected to have Google account, applications are not shared etc. I understand why but in my case it was annoying.

But there is Multi-User App Share app which allows to share applications with different users. So Mira has all her children apps and games available and is not able to spend real money on in-app payments due to lack of Google account (and credit card). I was able to remove them from my configuration as well.

Sharing files is more complicated as so far I did not check is there a shared space for them. So each of us has own music/movies.

Do I miss something?

There are few things which Archos G9 80 has and Nexus does not:

• HDMI output
• microSD slot
• USB Host port

I may miss video output sometimes but had not used it for over half a year now. MicroSD would be nice so I would not have to buy 32GB version. But ~20% of tablet (50$) was sponsored by Tizen ;)

And by USB Host port I mean normal EHCI host port. Not an OTG one present in Nexus 7.

But I do not miss crazy upgrade scheme invented by Archos. Also do not miss I Scream for Sandwitch version of Android they offered. We have XXI century and their upgrade path is from previous millenium.

Complains?

So far I did not find something to complain about. OK, screen could be more square (4:3 Archos, 16:10 Nexus) but it is fine for me. Ask me in few months ;)

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Nexus 7 — upgrade or complain? was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

This year I spent Easter in other way than in past years. Instead of staying with the family I went for demoscene party — Revision 2013 in Saarbrücken.

Please note (RSS readers mostly) that this post will contain many YouTube videos embedded. Please go to my blog to have them properly displayed (I use WordPress + Jetpack plugin to embed them).

Friday

Took us 12 hours to get there (mostly due to waiting on TXL and FRA airports) but we managed to be at party place around 19:00 on Friday. Registered, met friends and went to Kirchberg Hotel to drop bags.

Hotel has two stars but was perfectly fine for such trip as our. Clean bed, good breakfast, quiet place (except church bells at 10:00 on Sunday). All just ~2km from E-Werk where Revision took place.

Back to party, more people to meet, discuss a bit with guys from ARM Ltd about Samsung Chromebook, Cortex-A15, Mali etc. One guy joined with his Chromebook and recognized me when I asked “may I fry your speakers?” :D

Timetable listed one interesting thing: “Curio’s 2012 Essentials” which was ~1 hour long set of PC demos from previous year. It was nice as I was totally out of PC scene so was able to check how it looks.

Taxi to hotel was just 6€ ;D

Saturday

Attended “How to start writing compilers without a Ph.D” seminar as it sounded interesting to me. And it was ;) Video below:

Also had discussion with ARM guys about presenting not only technical demos (like Unreal Engine one) but also to show some demoscene productions. Soon “Beginnings” by Elude started on one of Nexus 10 tablets and was working nice. But coder who wrote it was not so happy about that when we discussed that later… I think that it would be a good thing for ARM Mali team to get some good demoscene groups to write demos for Android platform to amaze people with nice looking productions. ARM even had seminar for OpenGLES 3.0 API:

But Saturday was also full of competitions. Tracked music, oldskool music (read: 8-bit mostly), photo, animation/video, game, ascii/ansi, Amiga intros, PC 4K intros, Oldskool demos (8-bit, Atari STE, Amiga 500)…

There were many entries in compos where productions from long time no see groups/people were presented. For example in oldskool demo we got “RINK A DINK REDUX” from Lemon which was astonishing:

There were also demos for Amstrad CPC, MSX1, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and other platforms. Oldskool music compo had even NES entry ;)

But it was also visible that demoscene is not full of amateurs like it was years ago. Some of videos in animation/video compo had professional level. “Lübeck 24x7x365″ took 50 days of recording but was really nice:

There was a concert in the evening… Ear plugs were not strong enough for me so I spent most of time outside talking with people. Next time need to take some better hearing protectors…

Sunday

As Saturday ended really late for us and competitions were planned for 13:00 we decided to not rush and stay in bed longer :) But at around 10:00 bells in local church started their music compo so we were not able to sleep anymore.

We got music, graphics, wild and of course PC 64K intro, web browser demo/intro, Amiga demo and PC demo competitions that day.

Graphics one was won by “Double Trouble by the Royal Forces” made by forcer & prince. Huge amount of details which was not so visible on big screen as it was on a tunnel’s wall where it was hanging as few square meters photo copy.

Wild compo… Man, that was something great. From productions made for Arduino (with some shields) though ARM Cortex-M3 one to interesting hack by Dexter/Abyss which shown one view on monochrome TV and second on oscilloscope while both were connected to Composite video signal only… See it for yourself (or grab separate entries from scene.org FTP server):

Then DJ set by h0ffman (skipped by me) and clue of party — Amiga and PC demos/intros. Different quality but most of them was really good — both from technical or design view (but not always from both at same time).

But as I am not a coder I looked mostly at design and audio/video part. All those names like ‘ray matching’ etc meant nothing to me so when someone tried to explain why demo which I did not like was so great I just told similar thing ;D

Monday

Wake up, breakfast, pack, pay, go to party place. We did not manage to get there before voting ended so not voted for PC demo compo entries. Greeted those who was still present, discussed a bit and then return trip… This time just ~9 hours but next time (if there will be such) we plan to go there by car. Less time needed.

Random stuff

I liked how party was organized — it was my first such event abroad and many people told me that Revision is the last demoscene party in old style. I really liked it. Saw many different platforms like MSX1, MSX2, C= VIC20, Amstrad CPC or Videoton…

Due to Easter time shops where closed on Sunday/Monday but it was not a problem for me as there was free coffee/tea, beer/water/orange juice was available to buy at low price (2.5€ for 0.5l beer) and there was hot food served all time (like 10:00 – midnight) also not so expensive.

Weather could be better as it was cold but at least there was no snow (which we still have here).

It was also nice to see Kiero at work as he was finishing “Machinist” Amiga demo on his x86-64 laptop with WinUAE running fullscreen. I was surprised that ASUS UL30A is capable to run it fast enough.

Amount of discussions with people is probably uncountable. Chromebook, ARM, Android, Amiga, scene were just subset of topics…

Will I go there next year? Will see…

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Revision 2013 was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

During last few days I played with CyanogenMod 10.1 nightly builds on my Nexus S phone. Then went back to CM 10 as it is more stable. But this also reminded me that I have 2 years old device…

So I did another round of checking what are options. As it will be for next 2 years I want 2GB of RAM, 720p screen and LTE support. And there is very small amount of those :(

1. HTC Butterfly. MicrosD slot, 1080p screen, Japan only so far.

2. LG Nexus 4. Latest Android for few releases granted. But also lack of microSD slot and only 16GB of storage.

3. LG Optimus G. Base of Nexus 4. Not available outside of few operators (mostly US).

4. Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE (GT-9305). MicroSD slot, MHL video output.

5. Samsung Galaxy Note II. MicroSD slot, MHL video output.

Now it is time to complain :)

LG Nexus 4 is available only in some stores (or phone operators) for 450+ € — no Google Play Store like it was with earlier models (I do not call current state as selling). Also no LTE on European frequencies. No 32GB storage model.

Samsung GT-9305 sounds interesting. But… It is Exynos 4412 based. And I read The Saga of a CyanogenMod Exynos4 device maintainer by Andrew Dodd which gives clear message “avoid Exynos4 if you can”. If even Samsung update can break your device then something is going wrong. And so far SGS3 LTE lacks CyanogenMod support which is one of main blockers for me as it shows that there are no custom “ROMs” for it (I do not count images remixed from stock images).

Galaxy Note II is huge and would take some time to get used to it. Has CM support already. But again — Exynos4 ;(

So it looks like I need to wait another few months and check will there be something worth buying. In meantime I will stay with last CM10 release running on my Nexus S.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
I want to update my mobile phone was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

During my stay in Oakland, CA (due to Ubuntu Developer Summit) I decided to attend also Tizen Developers Conference. Not that I have any relations with this platform — just wanted to meet some friends from Maemo times. And I did not had plans for Tuesday evening while Tizen visitors had social event planned in The California Academy of Sciences.

For those which do not know what Tizen is a bit of history. Years ago Nokia made few internet tablet devices (770, n800, n810) and phone (n900) which were running Linux distribution named Maemo. It was loosely based on Debian. In meantime Intel created Moblin which was their distribution for mobile devices. Few years passed and they joined forces and MeeGo was born. Nokia released N9 phone with it, ASUS had netbook running MeeGo and maybe few other devices appeared on market. Then history repeated: MeeGo merged with LiMo and they created Tizen project.

It is hard to tell was conference success or not because I did not attended any sessions there — just opening keynote by Jim Zemlin. On first day I also came for technical showcase and partner demos. But they were squeezed in very small room so it was hard to discuss with people showing their work. Maybe next time organizers will give at least 4m² per demo — this should be a minimum.

But today I got Tizen Developer Platform device and thumbdrive with SDK on it. So decided to play a bit with it. It was not enjoyable experience.

First ugly part was Tizen SDK “so-called” installer. 823MB shell script… I thought that those times passed long time ago. Anyway tried to run it. All I got was message that 64bits systems are not supported. Good to know that, but my x86-64 systems are able to run x86 binaries without problems. Ok, I made workaround and then got message about missing qemu, rpm, libsdl packages. No, I will not install rpm on my Ubuntu systems.

So I decided to cut that crappy shell script and take a look at tarball. Fast “tail -n+122 tizen-sdk-0423.bin >tizen-sdk.tar.gz” and I was able to extract SDK. Got 26 zip archives.

One of them contains rootfs created from packages based on Debian/Ubuntu packages. Some are from times when dinosaurs ruled the Earth (debianutils 2.17 was released in 2006), some are more fresh (like gcc-4.5 based on version from May 2011). In other words tradition started by Maemo is continued in Tizen and developers are given mix of fresh tools with long time forgotten ones. And Scratchbox 2.

To connect with device there is “sdb” tool. It introduces itself as “Smart Development Bridge” but in past it was named “Samsung Development Bridge” (run ‘strings’ on binary). And it’s father has a name “Android Development Bridge” and has some more options.

Anyway if you want to connect to device then few steps are required:

1. On device go to settings and set USB to ‘USB debugging’ mode. This will switch it into cdc_ether gadget.
2. On host do “sudo ifconfig usb0 192.168.129.1″ to configure networking.
3. Connect to device: “ssh root@192.168.129.3″

And then you can enjoy system which is a mixture of few Debian/Ubuntu versions. And forget about updates — unless you know how to get to 165.213.180.233 and know password of “kb0929.kim” user there (taken from /etc/apt/sources.list file).

Device uses Linux 2.6.36 kernel with unknown patches on top including CMA and Android ones. Quite old one but works. Hope to get newer one from someone.

What I do not like is availability of sources. There is review.tizen.org website with git repositories but I want to vomit when I see commits like “let’s add 2.6.36 kernel in one commit”. Lovely lack of ideas how to help developers.

What I will do with device? Not decided yet. Waiting for instructions how to get into bootloader to boot own kernels. Then who knows… replacing Tizen with Android or Ubuntu?

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Tizen: first impressions was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

During last Linaro Connect I bought myself an Android tablet. After checking what is on market decided to buy Archos 80 G9 Turbo. According to Amazon product page it had to have 1.5GHz OMAP4460 cpu and 1GB of memory. But it did not…

Marketing droids from Archos company should be … and … then … and again … — after that … or … and finally … (put any ways of doing deadly harm into … and repeat any amount of times). Why? There is no such thing as “Archos 80 G9 Turbo” — nevermind that I have one of them on my desk. So far there are at least three models with this name:

• OMAP4430 1.2GHz 512MB ram
• OMAP4460 1.5GHz 512MB ram
• OMAP4460 1.5GHz 1GB ram

You can easily buy first model. Best Buy has it, Adorama has it, J&R has it, Amazon sells it. Second model was expected to land on shelves in December 2011. According to XDA developers forum few of them were even sold as people have them. Last model is listed on Amazon (but first one is what you get) and according to one sources it will be released in March 2012, other says that there will not be such thing. Marketing mess is lightest description which I can write without swearing.

So I got first one. First though was “WTF?!?!!?!?!?!!!” as I got slowest option. Even started returning procedure but as all US shops had only this version I gave up and decided that even with this technical specification it is better tablet then I had before (which was Hannspad SN10T1). Fast cpu, 4:3 screen with 1024×768 resolution, quite good build quality, video output.

Tablet runs Android 3.2 ‘honeycomb’ and does it nicely. Upgrade to 4.0 ‘ice cream sandwich’ was announced to be done in this month. So from software perspective it is done properly. I had some problems with rooting procedure from XDA developers but once you do it in order (and take files from other thread to get 3.2.80 firmware) device will work just fine. Have to admit that system layout on device looks overcomplicated (175MB squashfs as / for example) but it works. Anyway I am waiting for developer firmware (I was told that they will be available ‘soon’ (for any definition of ‘soon’)).

During first days of using I noticed that some applications refuse to work properly on XGA screen, some are resized/rescaled but problems usually are with games or poorly written apps (like Facebook one). But it is visible that keeping Honeycomb under stone (aka ‘closed source’) resulted in many applications not ready to be used on tablets. Even Google+ looks like it does on a phone…

I am slowly moving to use Archos as a morning news device (Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Google Reader) — it is perfect for it. Reading webpages in landscape or portrait modes is pleasure as device is easy to hold and screen is wide enough in any of them (which was my main complain with Hannspad).

Had to order miniHDMI -> HDMI adapter (normal size connector would even fit but it is too big for this form factor) cause they do not add it in a box. When it will arrive I will check how good movies are played after connecting to 42″ plasma capable of 1080p. OMAP4 cpu should decode any video at this resolution without problems but I wonder how device deals with 4:3 internal screen and 16:9 external one. Would be nice to watch Youtube videos fullscreen.

Playing games is fun. Fieldrunners finally does not need scrolling, Great Little War Game is also better than on my Nexus S. From “racing” games so far I tried Asphalt6 (available at XDA developers forum), Shine Runner and Reckless Getaway — all run and look cute but accelerometr based steering is not comfortable with tablet size. Also games like Mahjongg or Solitaire are possible (I consider such games unplayable on phone).

Battery life is better than on my Nexus S. Partially because lack of GSM and bigger battery, but I think that due to power management done better.

I will not tell how good it is when it comes to read e-books because I have Kindle for it already.

Back to hardware. There is USB socket for optional 3G stick. Plugged dongle from wireless keyboard/trackball combo there — not recognized due to not be USB 2.0 device. Plugged thumbdrive and got it recognized (first time I got some kernel oops and no access to storage, had to reboot tablet). Did not tried other devices.

There is just one speaker at back of device. Definitelly too small and lonely. Nokia N800 which was released 5 years ago had stereo speakers… So for gaming I strongly suggest headphones.

Ugly thing is that when you push back of case with left hand fingers screen will react to it — looks like something is pushing screen. It does not look professional…

Ending summary: so far I am satisfied. Maybe one day will try one of those crazy builds like Ubuntu ;D

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Bought Archos 80 G9 Turbo tablet was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

During my trip to Linaro Connect 2012q1 I want to buy Android tablet for myself. But this time I decided to spend more time on choosing one to not end with crap like Hannspree Hannspad which I bought half year ago.

Also situation on market changed. There are cheap tablets worth checking but there are also cheap crappy ones. So let me list what I checked so far.

As you see my requirements are more or less simple:

• dual core cpu (arm7)
• 512MB ram (1GB preferred)
• 1024×600 (or higher) resolution
• 7-8″ screen size (I had 10″ and it was too big)
• price below 300USD

During CES many vendors presented new tablets but I think that most of them will be released in Q2 or later. ASUS MeMo 370T looks nice for 250USD but it is not on market.

And I do not want 3G module in tablet — my phone has over 10GB of data limit to use for next months and so far I was not able to consume 1GB per month :)

Have I missed some devices? If yes then please share information in comments. Just remember that I do not want any of those NotionAdam/Viewsonic/Hannspad ones.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Want to buy Android tablet (again) was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

During Linaro Connect Q3.11 I had occasion to play with few Android tablets. Andy Green pointed me to Hannspree Hannspad at Ebuyer UK (as he has one at home) which looked as nice deal so I bought one. It arrived two days later so I was able to play with it during conference.

Tablet was quite fast and nicely responding but… screen was disaster :( Problems with touch screen, very poor angle views made using it very uncomfortable for browsing web or watching videos. Later I found out that there are two versions of Hannspad tablet: 1633 (which I got) and 1653 (with usable, bright display).

I was able to play with Froyo (was installed by default with some crappy tools), Gingerbread (community build of Cyanogenmod) and also with Honeycomb which is what I used for most of time. The fun of hacking Hannspad is that there are no kernel sources released by vendor so most of custom ‘ROMs’ are made for Viewsonic GTablet. Effect is that soft touch buttons does not work, volume buttons are reversed and some other issues exists while device is usable. But thanks to ab73 from SlateDroid forum most of them was solved and even more — Search button was found below Back one :)

Today I sold it. Was it worth buying? Definitely no, but it was good opportunity to check do I need such device. For day to day use rather no, but it was nice tool to browse web from couch or checking social networks. And Freerunners HD were flying ;)

But I plan to buy next tablet one day. Something with more square screen would be nice as I mostly used it in portrait mode to browse web and screen was too narrow for it. Who knows — maybe Amazon Kindle Fire or Barnes & Noble Nook Color 2 (which was expected to be released in September too). 7″ sounds better then 10″ due to size. But for sure nothing less then 1024×600 resolution (1024×768 or 1024×1024 would be perfect).

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
My opinion about Hannspree Hannspad SN10T1 was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

As I did not had a mood to blog during event I decided to write something about after it ended.

First what this Linaro Connect is about… Is it conference or rather an event which has to gather people in one place so they can reach each other easily? From what I saw during last week it is both.

There were several summits which I did not attended so does not have anything to write about them. Inter team meetings during which people were sharing their knowledge about their work and how to use it to improve work of other teams — here the most active were Android and Validation teams (in my opinion). Schedule was full of Android sessions and LAVA was quite often heard word.

For me event started on Sunday as I had taxi at 6:30 in the morning. Then bus, plane and then waiting 2h in terminal 1 of London Heathrow airport waiting for few other guys to appear as we had to share a cab to hotel where I arrived at ~17:00 local time. Yes, my travels sucks.

Went outside with Zygmunt Krynicki to find some place to eat. Found few takeaway only places and small restaurant with India food which was delicious.

Monday started with traditional English breakfast (you know: eggs, bacon, sausages, fried bread, baked beans and mushrooms kind of one) which was quite good and we had it daily. When it comes to food at hotel it was good and someone had great idea serving different cuisine each day.

Starting plenary with informations from each team about what do they plan for this week. Then work, meetings, coding, hacking etc. Attended several meetings like binary toolchain discussion with toolchain working group, Matthias Klose from Ubuntu and several people from ARM Ltd which maintain ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5). Also went for hard float summit with not only Linaro or Ubuntu but also Fedora and Marvell people.

But work is not the only thing we did. There were activities for evenings too.

On Monday we went outside for karting. First we were equipped with proper suit, shoes, helmet and then went for safety instructions.

Racing was fun. Each team were split into two sub teams (as there were two tracks) with 4 people in each. That gave 15 minutes per person, but as one of us decided to not drive second one we had 20 minutes on it.

Was it fun? O yes, it was. Especially outside track where speed was higher and engine more powerful but as steering was tough my right wrist reminded me that RSI problem which I had few years ago (this time pain vanished during night but got back at closing party). Our team took 6th place in total.

Tuesday and Wednesday evenings were “reserved” for team meals. First day we went to Browns and Punter was next one. Food in both was tasty and came in big amounts.

But food was not the only way to spend evening. On Wednesday we went punting on a river in Cambridge. Our punter was presenting us with informations about colleges and bridges we were passing by — things like who created them, when, why etc. Some people took photos but so far I did not traced whom to contact to get a copy.

Thursday we had a dinner in King’s College. Dinning hall looked nice with all those portraits and food was good. Had a nice talk with ST-Ericsson people about their cheap developer board Snowball which I complained about in other post. We got to the point that the CPU on board was created for mobile devices use (that’s why no usb host functionality) and that all those industrial connectors are present because it is more board for prototyping new devices.

Friday was last day. We did some hacking, packed equipment of our room and prepared for closing plenary. At the end we had small party with some activities and food. I left it early — was tired and wanted to discuss with Zygmunt a bit (normally we chat often during company events but this time we got separate rooms).

Return trip was a copy… taxi, plane, bus, taxi. Went home around 22:00 and gave inflated sword (from closing party) to my daughter — she liked it ;)

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Linaro Connect Q3.11 was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

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Last week there was Ubuntu platform sprint in Dublin, Ireland. I was there as one of invited Linaro guys (we got own room). What for we went there?

Work. Simple word but so much content in it. Sprints like this one allow to cooperate with other developers and this time I spent some time with Ubuntu ARM, Foundations and Kernel teams. But most of time I spent with Linaro guys as we had release of 11.06 to do.

My part was building cross toolchains for Ubuntu — including few already released ones. So I pushed several updates to ‘oneiric’, ‘natty’, ‘maverick’ and ‘lucid’ versions:

• binutils 2.21.52.20110606-1ubuntu1
• gcc 4.4.6-3ubuntu1
• gcc 4.5.3-1ubuntu2
• gcc 4.6.0-14ubuntu1
• eglibc 2.13-6ubuntu2
• linux 3.0-1.2

If you are running 11.10 ‘oneiric’ then all you need is just apt-get install g++-arm-linux-gnueabi and will get cross compiler. For “armhf” compatible one apt-get install g++-arm-linux-gnueabihf needs to be used. For those which run older releases there is Linaro toolchain backport PPA where packages are available for “amd64″ and “i386″ architectures.

Other part of my work was related with Star rating system which we plan to use to show status of boards supported by Linaro. I did some tests with PandaBoard connected to two monitors at same time and reported several bugs. Situation is nice but many things still need work.

At one moment I was creating “lucid” chroot on my “oneiric” system to be able to compile toolchain. And then I got a problem which ended in bug 802985 which needs fixing in all supported releases… Also debootstrap needs to be expanded to handle multiple suites at one time — otherwise there will be no way to populate chroots with older releases on any machine running 3.x kernels.

But work is not the only thing which we spent time on. Evenings were usually in pubs or similar places.

On Monday I went to hotel bar, grabbed a beer and started discussing with some random people. At one moment (when we were talking about OpenZaurus) one of them asked who I am and then went and bought me beer — he was Zaurus user whom I helped in past ;) So never know who you can meet…

As I have few friends in Dublin area I contacted them and on Wednesday evening I went with one of them to Club Chonradh na Gaeilge Irish pub where speaking English is nearly forbidden (but we were using Polish so no problems :). There was one bard singing Irish songs. Nice place, nice event.

Thursday was team dinner — went to Rustic Stone. Nice place, awesome food:

Friday was a day when many of us started packing and some even left earlier to catch flights. As Wookey asked me week before sprint to take my N900 with me we made a deal and I got some Euros and he got phone with all accessories. So guys — now really no more Maemo support from me (not that I did anything in this area since move to Nexus S).

On Friday also other part of visit started for me — my wife Ania arrived and we went to our family to spend nice weekend in Ireland.

We drove to Howth, spent some time looking at area from highest(?) mountain:

Then beach in Portmarnock where my wife started collecting sea shells… Quickly we got lot of them but I managed to put them in luggage somehow ;)

Evening was funny as we had to meet with one of my old friends. The “problem” was that we never met in real life yet and I forgot how does he looks. When I told that to wife and rest of group they were really surprised that such thing can happen ;D But we found each other and went to the Church Bar which is made from old St. Mary’s Church of Ireland which is one of the earliest examples of a galleried church in Dublin. Built at the beginning of the 18th century and renovated in 21st century. Nice place to visit in Dublin.

On Sunday we went into Wiclow county. Upper Lake at Glendalough then Glenmacnass Waterfall and few stops during trip to watch landscapes:

Monday was different — we went to Dublin for normal sight-seeing. You know: buildings, churches, castle…

Then packed bags and went to airport. The good part of Aer Lingus is that there were no problems with checking-in two bags on my ticket (but queue to just drop bags was insanely long). 2h flight, then another 2h in a bus and we finally arrived home. This part of conferences trip I like most — arrival at destination (as in Europe trips can take even 9h for me).

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Dublin: Ubuntu sprint and more was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

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This week I am in Budapest, Hungary attending Ubuntu Developer Summit for 11.10 ‘oneiric’ release discussions. But this is not only Ubuntu — there is huge amount of Linaro people discussing what to do next cycle.

Sunday

Travel, travel, travel… Usual way — bus from home to Berlin airport (SXF this time) where I met with Henning ‘woglinde’ Heinold to donate my old Linksys WRT54 which I got donated few years ago to be able to use my Zauruses wireless. Router had to be in use on OpenEmbedded stand at LinuxTag, Berlin — go there and visit them at booth 7.2b 112.

Again flight was with Easyjet. It is cheap airline but with speedy boarding it is good enough to go with. Bad side is that it lands at old terminal 1 in Budapest so I had to go to hotel by my own.

Evening was Canonical only meeting where there was a presentation of some things which will go into 11.10 Ubuntu release (nearly same to next day keynote). After food, discussions and finally sleep ;D

Monday

Sessions started — I attended few:

• Ubuntu LEB documentation
• cross toolchain user stories — my own session where most of time Micheal Hope was telling us about requests which Toolchain WG got
• user stories for nano image
• DMB regular meeting — I became Ubuntu developer during it!

During evening was ‘Meet & Greet’ social event sponsored by Openstack and Freescale. Nice way to catch with people. Especially when you meet old friends which you never met in person ;D I met Marek Szyprowski which whom I was writing to Polish Amiga paper magazine named ‘eXec’ (but website with similar name does not have nothing in common now). We talked for quite long time about misc things. Also met some other folks, refreshed faces memory etc.

Tuesday

Sessions:

• cross toolchain user stories (again) — we discussed notes from previous day, decided on some details and created work items so I can start working on it
• Ubuntu LEB documentation (also again)
• Linaro Ubuntu LEB process for 11.11
• GDB as cross debugger

As you see LEB was topic of a day. And it was not everything — next day was another session.

Evening was taken by The Linaro Technical Showcase sponsored by IBM. What was there? Many interesting things:

• Arnd Bergmann was talking why class4 SD card can be much better then class10 one
• Freescale Landing Team was presenting i.mx53 Quick Start boards
• Ash Charles from Gumstix was presenting their new miniboards with DM37xx cpus and few carrier boards
• Pawe? Moll from ARM was presenting Cortex A15 running from two biggest FPGA chips. It had just 11MHz clock but it was enough to show Doom game running on connected monitor.
• Oxlab guys shown their work on Android and how you can hibernate BeagleBoard
• ST-Ericsson guys presented Snowball boards — we had a talk on some hardware details
• Konstantinos Margaritis shown what kind of difference can be between armel and armhf ports on same hardware
• Angus Ainslie presented Samsung developer board and we had interesting discussion about it

I do not remember all presentations — those ones interested me most. ARM one was amazing — huge FPGAs which were able to emulate A15, A5, A9 just by booting with different MicroSD card… And it is not related only to CPU emulation cause there were two expansion slots on mainboard so FPGAs can became graphics card with Mali core flashed into. Second board was ‘simple’ A9 with Mali and some OpenGL(ES) demo was running there.

And again — new faces to join with names. Talked with Ash Charles about discussions in past when I helped Gumstix developers with OpenEmbedded, Angus Ainslie from ST-Ericsson was working for Openmoko at time when we had cooperation and so on…

Wednesday

Woke up early… What to do after 6:10? Go swimming! So I went to Royal SPA and spent some time in swimming pool and sauna so day started nicely.

Sessions:

• automated cross-buildd system/service
• Ubuntu LEB Star Rating documentation — my session again on how we want to rate level of support of member boards
• ARM Linus interface 3 — attended just to check how kernel developers are discussing how to improve arch/arm/ situation

Met Mark Brown with whom I was working in OpenEmbedded project and after lunch I went to do some sight seeing with Pawe? Moll. Budapest is nice city and I have to came back here one day.

Team dinner somewhere in the city was quite good. We had a fun going back to hotel when ~half of us used phones to navigate though city ;D

Thursday

Sessions:

• arm and other archs certification program — Canonical has certification program of machines which came with Ubuntu pre-installed. I have to check at their tools.
• ALIP mini-distro and build system user/developer stories — interesting discussion
• cross-toolchains for the ARM hard-float ABI — will have to provide them for Ubuntu and other but it is doable
• next steps with multiarch in Ubuntu — where do we go and how

Evening was sight seeing with local guides. We saw parlament building, chain bridge, castle area and ended in interesting pub.

Friday

Ending day and nearly no sessions today:

• port to the ARM hard-float ABI — Ubuntu armhf someone?
• Linaro Review of LDS week
• easier access to -dbgsym packages

Some of people already packed and left, rest will go to have fun at UDS party.

Summary

It was my third UDS and I feel that it was best one. I had two blueprints to handle and both had great discussions which ended in many notes and work items. There was lot of people both from Ubuntu community and Linaro teams. I met many developers, some old friends, went to so many sessions that it took me most of time (I do not remember is list in post is complete).

It was nice to see amount of ARM netbooks at people hands — mostly Genesi Smartbooks but also several Toshiba AC100 ones. I think that it shows that times are changing and who knows… maybe at next event I will not use my ASUS UL30A laptop.

And this is another UDS with some added hardware. This time it is Pandaboard A1 which can replace my EA1 at my work for Linaro. Probably will keep both running one to another but one (EA1) with Ubuntu and second (A1) will be used for misc tests.

Now it is a time to drop laptop in hotel room and go for party!!!

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
UDS-O was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

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1. Ubuntu/Linaro Platform Sprint in Prague
2. Trips in 2011
3. UDS-N: Monday

When I bought Nexus S in January I was using stock Android for few weeks. But somewhere around FOSDEM I moved to nightly builds of Cyanogenmod which is alternative “distribution” of Android done in more open way.

Why moved? New features, out of box support for Polish language, no problems with getting root access for applications, big community behind project were main reasons. And more… I have now custom kernel (Netarchy 1.3.0.2), DPI changed to 210 (from original 240) with use of Font Changer and normal font replaced by Ubuntu one (also done in Font Changer).

I was updating my phone from one nightly build to another. From one RC to other and today moved to final version. Upgrading usually went fine, but each time I had to reinstall custom kernel or change back to 210 DPI but that’s how it works. I will probably check other alternative builds one day but today I am satisfied with Cyanogenmod7.

But as this is final version then maybe I will find some time and (after discussions with our Android magicians) will do build of it with Linaro cross compiler — who knows, maybe will give few more percent of speed extra?

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Cyanogenmod7 released was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

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1. Going to Android
2. Month with Nexus S
3. Released sources of my Protracker module player

During Linaro/Ubuntu platform rally in Dallas I went to Best Buy and bought Nexus S as a phone which has to replace Nokia N900 which I used for over year. It was first time when I paid full price for such device — previously I took phones from operators or had some kind of discount (like DDP one for N900 year ago).

Switching from Nokia N900 to Nexus S was not easy task. First I lost calendar entries when tried to sync contacts to Google account using Mail for Exchange functionality of Maemo. Good that I had a backup… Copying of data from internal storage from one device to another was easy — microUSB cables are good to have thing. And then I took SIM card from N900, put it into Nexus and so far did not took it out yet.

Then came Market — after installing AppBrain application I had all applications, which I selected before or had on N900/Nitroid, installed properly. Then installed some more and removed some, added others etc. Common routine when you change operating system — finding which application suits best.

For Twitter I checked few and now I have official one and Plume installed. First one only to have contacts synced and do all tweeting in second one. For Facebook I use their default app — so far did not found replacement. Best situation was with e-mail client — installed K-9 Mail and added all my IMAP accounts into it. Now my phone tells me when do I have to check for new messages before my desktop one will notice ;D

Basically when it comes to applications Android shines (especially compared to Maemo). So far I found many programs for things which I did not had on N900: TV programme, public transportation guide, ATM finder and so on. And games! Dungeon Defenders, Gun bros and several others… Angry Birds has more levelpacks then Maemo version (but I never was a fan of that game anyway). Lot of things to choose from. Not to mention that installing of software is not so painful as it was on N900. You can use online Market, AppBrain and probably there are some other ways. Ok, I will probably miss APT but so far I am fine with what Android does. The most impressing thing is that during package installation device is not slowing down — it just adds one more entry to notification bar.

Notifications… I like how it is done. One place for icons on status bar which expands to whole screen list of what is going on. Nice stuff. Especially after installing some extra apps which will add there switches, weather informations etc.

Desktop looks different and has lot more customizations possible then hildon-desktop gave. And user can use other launcher then default one (I use ADW Launcher). Then just put widgets, icons, contacts, live wallpapers etc and you will be done. Business calendar which I use now can not be compared to Maemo parody of calendar (this is with most of apps anyway).

Do I miss some applications from Maemo? Yes, I do. Nokia did good job on Contacts and integration of IM/VoIP/Skype accounts. Under Android I did not yet found out how to get it in best possible way. So I have to run separate IM client (IM+ for now), Skype is also external (but contacts are synced into addressbook) and did not yet setup SIP accounts (but this is integrated). Good thing is that after first week of use I was able to use SkypeOut for calling my family in Poland.

But let’s get to hardware. Nexus S is light and small compared to N900. I like it’s look and feel. Screen works nicely for me everywhere. Before buying I was not sure how will I adapt to capacitive touchscreen after 8 years of using resistive ones but there was nothing to adapt to — it just works. Bigger problem is other direction — I need to press my TomTom harder now ;D Other issues? Lack of any kind of LED is a bit annoying. But NoLED helps a bit with it. Also WiFi reception looks worse then N900 had. But this one I need to check one day.

Overall I am satisfied about this change. I have phone which has latest version of popular operating system, have access to application market where there is a problem which app to install instead of “there is no application for this”. For some time I will have system updates provided by Google, then will switch to alternative firmware and will have current software.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Month with Nexus S was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

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1. Going to Android
2. Played a bit with Maemo 5 SDK
3. Calling on Maemo?

Over two years ago I was thinking about next cellphone and wrote that it would be something with Windows Mobile. There were comments that I should go for Android which was not on a market yet. In first week of 2009 I switched to Nokia E66 running Symbian. There were apps for this device (I even bought one: ProfiMail) and community existed with lot of tricks, hints, suggestions.

In October I got Nokia N900 discount offer and I decided to take it. Device arrived month later and I got hooked. Finally device which I can use daily for my network activity without having to carry additional cellphone (like it was with Nokia 770 and N810 tablets). Maemo community existed already and I was a part of it. As there were developers already equipped with N900s there was a constant flow of new applications, themes, tweaks and hints. Platform was living. Nokia provided few system updates, some of them even gave some nice new features.

But at same time it was known that amount of love for Nokia N900 at headquarters is near zero. MeeGo was announced just few months after device release so it was known that there will be very limited support level and that some things will never be done (like Ovi Maps with voice navigation).

So I started slowly to look at market to know which way to go for next cellphone. Windows Mobile 6.x was out of question as this is platform which gets out of market now. Windows Phone 7 is fresh, strictly controlled so I do not want to go there — let it first get some devices, applications etc. Symbian? no way — been there already. Ok, Nokia N8 looks nice but it is still Symbian. MeeGo is not yet market ready when it comes to phones and even when mystic N9 will be released then it will not be pure MeeGo but rather some kind of mix of open components from MeeGo + huge set of closed sourced applications written by Nokia. And who knows how long it will be supported…

So I looked into Android. Installed NITDroid on N900 to play with FroYo and it looks and behaves quite good. There are lot of communities (usually around families of devices), custom system images are something normal for popular devices (so if vendor does not support upgrades to newer OS versions then community usually do). Also lot of friends already use Android powered devices (cellphones, tablets etc) so there are lot of hints from them what to choose when it comes to hardware or software.

Which cellphone to choose? I have few candidates:

• Nexus S – brand new device, Google supported so should get few OS releases, runs latest Android
• Nexus One – nearly year on market, also Google supported, runs Android 2.2, newest version “should be out in few weeks”
• HTC Desire – nearly same as Nexus One but this time as official HTC device. Android 2.2, should get at least 2.3 version from HTC
• HTC Desire HD – hardware similar to previous one but bigger screen
• HTC Desire Z – Desire + hardware QWERTY keyboard
• Samsung Galaxy S – Android 2.1 but 2.3 is promised

Which to buy? Nexus S looks good and I will be in US in January…

And this will be my 4th cellphone running Linux…

UPDATE: added Samsung Galaxy S because vendor promised Android 2.3 — but it depends when it will be available.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Going to Android was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

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1. Is this the end of Maemo5?
2. MeeGo">Maemo -> MeeGo
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Some time ago I stopped following Maemo news. For me N900 became “just a phone” which I used for calls, checking email in crappy Modest, browsing web from time to time and to read Twitter (if any application for it works) or Facebook (by web browser cause there are no apps for it).

But recently I got one tweet which pointed me to “State of Maemo” post. For me it looks like Nokia decided to finally abandon sinking ship and leave Nokia N900 users alone. Qt will probably get some updates to show that they care about cross platform support. How many MeeGo Qt apps will work on Maemo5? No one knows probably but one thing is sure — they will have to be recompiled because Harmattan will be hard-float (confirmed by Nokia developer during UDS-N). But for rest community will have to care about.

OK, there was told that there are “ideas about opening various pieces of Maemo source code that are still closed” but what it will be? No one knows. I would like to get Calendar opened but when it will happen I will probably do not have N900 anymore…

And today I read total “please ignore our ,but ignored by us, platform” message:

Last week we spoke with Nokia. We were actively discouraged from developing for Maemo any further. There are lots of things we love about Maemo, including an awesome user community so we’re disappointed to see it EOL’d. It’s frustrating to have put so much effort into an app only to see the platform it’s on be terminated. Whether we reappear on MeeGo — the successor to Maemo — depends in part on Nokia. In the mean time, our conversation with Nokia has led us to deprioritize the update we were working on, though no final decision has been made yet as to whether or not it’ll ship. I’ll keep you posted.

Somebody wants to buy my N900? I am going to move to Android because this looks like a platform where OS vendor care at least on some of devices by providing system upgrades. And there are communities which provide updates for abandoned devices. And no, I do not plan to buy device running MeeGo — enough money spent on Nokia devices.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Is this the end of Maemo5? was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

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Related posts:

1. Going to Android
2. MeeGo">Maemo -> MeeGo
3. System updates repository for Maemo5?