I know I’ve been missing lately; I have gotten myself pretty busy between WoW, setting up an HA/LB (High Availability/Load Balancing) web and database server(s) for a client and just time with the family.

If you haven’t seen it before, Ultra Monkey is quite a simple and nice set of tools to manage an HA/LB configuration – and it has several good example configurations to get you started.

If you have read my previous articles you may have seen that I have an N810 internet tablet.  There is a new device out now that is the successor to that, the N900 cell phone.  I have written a small PyQt4 application for the N900 called pyPianobar.  Because this is PyQt4, if you grab the deb and extract it on your Linux Desktop (such as Ubuntu), you can actually use it there too! (You’ll need to install pianobar first)  This gives you Pandora Radio on your desktop, or your N900 :).

I’m currently trying to save up for an N900 so I can do some more tinkering, but also been waiting to see what will come of the new MeeGo (what a horrible name) that spawned as the result of an Intel (Moblin)/Nokia (Maemo) drunken one-night stand.

I’ve setup and been using Moblin on my Acer Aspire One – and it’s not too bad.  It’s childish, but so is everything now days (ever seen an iPhone? Ugh.)  Once I see for sure that the community will get a decent MeeGo port over to the N900 that is likely to be my next phone, even if it is $500+.  Yes, I’m saying it’s worth it :).

I don’t want the next Nokia device because they’ve already said it will be a capacitive touch screen like the Android and iPhone mess and capacitive is just not as accurate as resistive.  I also like using a Stylus when I want to be particular.  As an example, watch this – specifically the very last 30 seconds of the video or so.  It shows a very nice Avatar drawing done with the default Sketch app on the phone.  I just don’t think something like that is possible on capacitive.. and I don’t need multi-touch.

On the WoW front, I’ve written a small addon for Feral Druid’s that uses the Faceroller mod.  It will show a decent kitty rotation for high-DPS making it quite a bit simpler to keep track of everything.  The next update, which hopefully will be soon, will include a minor prediction system and a bear rotation for tanking.

As you can see, I keep myself entertained :).  I never can just “do” something, I have to toy with it – code something for it, tinker with it… eventually break it :D.  I still haven’t gotten the hang of the whole Blogging scene though and as such my blog tends to fall by the way-side.  There’s already so many out there on any given topic that it’s usually just a waste for me to add yet another reference or complaint for XYZ in yet another blog.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the update – check out the N900, WoW and Ultra Monkey someday :).

So I just needed a little time to install software and put out some screenshots for you guys to see what can be done with Mer/Ubuntu on the N810.  I already gave you a few in a previous post.. including Scribus, Gimp, Vuze and FileZilla.  Of those 4 the only one NOT usable was Vuze… this little tablet simply doesn’t have the power for that Java heavy app.  It launches, but takes like 20-30 minutes to do so.

So now lets look at some of the more important pieces of software that everyone will want:

Synaptic – Gotta add software right?

OpenOffice 3.0 – Can’t live without office can we?

This installed without problems today, just ran:
apt-get install openoffice.org
However when I tried right after I installed LXDE in my install post I received several conflicting package errors.  So, I don’t know if something in the repo’s have been fixed, or if I had broken something in my install after I did my LXDE entry.  Let me know if openoffice doesn’t load for you!

Firefox 3.0:

Here is various other applications people may like:

Bluefish (HTML Editor):

Quanta + (Another HTML Editor):

Kino (Video Editing):

DVD::RIP:

GnomeBaker (DVD/CD Burning):

Well I think that’s a good showcase for now.

I want to point out that several software and packages will install and give you no errors but they won’t run.  For example, Thunderbird and xpdf will install but neither will actually run.  Thunderbird segfaults and xpdf gives another error..

So while we do have access to 1000′s of software already ported to the ARM architecture by the ubuntu team.. some of it just can’t run on this weaker hardware.  But it’s my opinion that when using both Maemo and Ubuntu when you need it on the N810 makes this a formiddable device… an (almost) full linux in the palm of your hand.  Sweet!

Past couple of days have been quite busy for me and I haven’t had time to get any further with the N810 or work on any other projects.  I’ll definitely have something up by this weekend.  See some software below.

Just to hold you over, here is a shot of the N810 running scribus – A Desktop Publishing software.

The Gimp:

FileZilla:

Azureus/Vuze:

So, There you have some apps that are installed and running.  Be warned though, just because they run – doesn’t mean they are very useful :).  (400mhz CPU and 128mb RAM).

So, when I last left you I said that I would show you what this thing can do and load a fully functional LXDE desktop from the Ubuntu packages.

You can do this from either inside Maemo, chrooted into your Mer partition, or, if you are still staring at the pretty blue Mer desktop from my last entry.. you can do all this right from the terminal in there.

Note: The commands I use will not include the word “sudo”, and all must be run as root unless otherwise specified.  So “su -” up and lets get started.

First thing we want to do is make sure that our local cache is updated with the repositories, and then install LXDE.

apt-get update
apt-get --no-install-recommends install lxde libgtkstylus onboard


Note:  If you don’t use –no-install-recommends you will get GDM and several other packages installed.  If you are running an N810, this is actually not that bad, and you can reboot immediately.  You will get to a normal Ubuntu login screen!!  But it’ll force you to change your newly created password.

If you don’t want to deal with GDM, or you have an N800, continue on.

We now need to tell our users account to launch LXDE when it runs startx. So as the user you created run the following:

echo "exec startlxde" >> ~/.xinitrc

Now you should be able to reboot and voila!

Note:  N800 users, before you reboot you will need to install a virtual keyboard of some kind.  There is xvkbd, but it does not show as a menu item in LXDE so you can’t launch it.  When I find a decent one that will allow you to nav to it I will update this post.

Note 2:  Found on OSK that N800 users could use, called Onboard, thanks to andrewfblack at itT.  He also has some files to assist in getting it to launch properly and to fix N810 users keyboards.

And now we have a working LXDE!  Of course, it’s not much just to have a functional LXDE environment, so we need some software!

Unfortunately, I’m out of time for now.. I will be back tomorrow showing any software I am able to get loaded from Ubuntu’s repo’s!  This may or may not be difficult, since I am aware of some conflicts with normal Gnome apps and the Mer packages.  We’ll see!

NOTE: Mer 0.7 is very outdated. To keep up with the newer versions you can follow it at talk.maemo.org.

So, I have had the Nokia N810 for quite some time now and I’ve been thoroughly impressed with this little device.  When the Deblet project came around, introducing a FULL debian based OS on this little device I was all over it.  I setup my own repository and even configured KDE4 and Enlightenment for it.

With a bootable debian this device surpassed anything you could want for a pocket device.  It’s like having a full computer that fits in your pocket – SSH, Remote Desktop, Software Compiling, games, chatting, and even a full Firefox 3.  But considering this device is only a 400mhz ARM processor, and only 128MB ram for memory – the expectations of what this can do is like trying to remember what your PC could do 10-13 years ago.

During the deblet craze, and when it finally got bootable and installable, the people making the project shifted to this new and “improved” OS that they are trying to build for the tablet – Mer.  Mer is basically taking the OS that is on the N810 (codename: Maemo) and making it a truly Ubuntu based system with all the bells and whistles you get from the default Maemo.  Full Ubuntu, with ease of use for a Tablet.  It is actually sort of heading off the next  version to be released on the next tablet, codename: Fremantle. BEAUTIFUL IDEA.  Or so we hope.. this project is very alpha, and is still undergoing major reforms, but lets see what I can do with this.

Being that everything related to this tablet is typically found at iTT.. I’ll pull up the thread about Mer 0.7.  There isn’t much in the way of installation how-to’s but we’ll see how I do.  Since I have an N810 I’ll follow his link for this installer.
Note here that I will not be doing the Easy method, nor will I be using this installer to partition or format my card (if possible).  I have already formatted my card the way I wanted.  If you don’t know how to do that, I suggest you select the “Simple” method and erase all your data on an SD card.