User:JohnSullivan

From Openmoko

Revision as of 03:40, 19 January 2009 by JohnSullivan (Talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

State of the 'Runner

I'm using a FreeRunner, with Qt-Extended on the flash but mainly using Debian on the microSD. Currently I'm experimenting with SHR as well.

I'm in Boston.

If you have a question or suggestion for me, feel free to leave it on the talk page here or contact me by email and more. I'm also in #openmoko, #openmoko-cdevel, and #openmoko-debian as johnsu01.

Blogging and Writing

I'm blogging a bit about my experiences and hacking on the FreeRunner at http://journal.wjsullivan.net. Posts tagged with "freerunner" are syndicated to http://planet.openmoko.org.

Related articles I've written for the FSF include:

Highlights

Hardware

  • GTA02
  • FrogPad bluetooth keyboard
  • PaperMate PhD Multi pen, which includes a pen and stylus
  • Altec Lansing 2.5mm headphones (which have a mic too, though I don't know if it works)
  • 8GB microSD card

Debian

Uses

I'm currently using it without a SIM with:

  • e17 and Illume
  • TangoGPS
  • Emacs for text editing
  • subversion for pulling in my home directory

Audio

  • gmpc/mpc/mpd/mpdscribble as a scrobbling music player
  • I have gotten a Nokia bluetooth headset to pair, and to make the beep that it should make when calls start and stop, but there is no sound other than hissing.
  • I'm working on getting A2DP going, but haven't had success yet.

Connectivity

  • Tethered via bluetooth to my Nokia E61, which gets it a T-mobile EDGE connection.
  • wifi-radar for connecting to wifi networks
Bluetooth

I'm using bluez 4.27 compiled from source, and bluetooth-gnome 1.8 also compiled from source.

Display

I'm using xserver-xglamo.

E-mail

I'm still figuring out which e-mail client to use, but for right now I am reading and sending e-mail via SquirrelMail.

Games

  • Xboard seems to work for chess.
  • I tried Gnubik, but the software OpenGL is just too slow.
  • Enigma was not playable
  • Nethack works in the terminal :)

Input

  • The illume keyboard is quite usable, especially rotated horizontally. To get it to use the full available space after rotating the screen, go to settings, turn the keyboard off and back on again. Or, just check the "Restore after login" box in the screen rotation settings. Then you don't have to toggle the keyboard.
  • I change the the "small" dictionary (by clicking the upper left corner of the keyboard) -- I find the full dictionary to be too slow.

Reading

This is proving difficult. epdfview reports a .gz pdf file as "encrypted" and asks for a password. I guess it doesn't handle gzipped files. After gunzipping it, I was able to open the file, but as soon as I try to go to the next page with Page Down, it segfaults. Trying to read the same PDF (the Debian Policy Guide) with evince results in an error about not being able to allocate sufficient resources. xpdf crashes as well. Is this PDF just too big?

Web browsing

Iceweasel configuration
  • Set my home page to http://delicious.com/johnsu01/mobile, which will have frequently used bookmarks.
  • Remove the search from the navigation toolbar. (Right-click, customize toolbar, drag the search box to the dialog.)
  • Disable autocompletion in the address bar -- makes typing impossible. I had to do this (and other iceweasel configuration) over X forwarded ssh, because iceweasel config windows keep coming up larger than the screen.
  • Probably need to install Adblock and add a filter to block all of these javascript form field suggesting scripts (like google.com or youtube.com) -- they really slow things down and make typing frustrating.

I tried the delicious extension but it seems to make things too slow. I might try again. The reason I'm using iceweasel instead of midori is because I'm hoping that one of the mouse gesture extensions will be useful.

Performance

Boot time is currently about 3 minutes. Nearly a full minute of that is exim, so I'm going to look for alternatives there. Also, I'm currently starting mpd and mpdscribble at boot, which I will stop by writing a shell script that starts them if they are not already started when I actually open the music player.

Important configuration files

My /etc/modules: 

   snd-soc-neo1973-gta02-wm8753                                                                       
   g_ether                                                                                            
   bluetooth                                                                                          
   bnep                                                                                               
   ohci-hcd                                                                                           
   hci_usb


My .Xresources: 

 UXTerm*font: -bitstream-terminal-bold-r-normal--18-140-100-100-c-110-iso8859-1
 UXTerm*background: black
 UXTerm*foreground: cyan
 XTerm*font: -bitstream-terminal-bold-r-normal--18-140-100-100-c-110-iso8859-1
 XTerm*background: black
 XTerm*foreground: cyan

My .gtkrc-2.0: 

 gtk-font-name = "Sans 6"
 style "scroll"
 {
     GtkScrollbar::slider-width        = 25
 }
 class "*" style "scroll"

(The small font and the large scroll bar are to help cope with dpi issues that xglamo has right now.)

Issues

  • Mailutils segfault
  • Iceweasel windows for configuration are opening to a size larger than my screen, which makes them impossible to use.
  • I'm having a lot of stability problems with Debian/e17 -- it's locked up several times in the last couple of days to the point where I have to remove the battery.
  • wifi-radar randomly deletes the contents of its configuration file and then won't start when the file is empty. (Debian bug filed.)
  • Font dpi issue
  • The screen lock defined in the illume theme file isn't being used. Instead when I lock the screen I get the default e17 password lock.

SHR

Well, the first test did not go well. It looks nice and feels snappy, but it froze up completely within a few minutes of use. I had to remove the battery and reboot. Also, Midori did not show any address bar, and typing C-l did not help. So I was unable to actually enter a web address to browse to.

Reference

Retrieved from "http://wiki.openmoko.org/index.php?title=User:JohnSullivan&oldid=63925"
Personal tools

State of the 'Runner

I'm using a FreeRunner, with Qt-Extended on the flash but mainly using Debian on the microSD. Currently I'm experimenting with SHR as well.

I'm in Boston.

If you have a question or suggestion for me, feel free to leave it on the talk page here or contact me by email and more. I'm also in #openmoko, #openmoko-cdevel, and #openmoko-debian as johnsu01.

Blogging and Writing

I'm blogging a bit about my experiences and hacking on the FreeRunner at http://journal.wjsullivan.net. Posts tagged with "freerunner" are syndicated to http://planet.openmoko.org.

Related articles I've written for the FSF include:

Highlights

Hardware

  • GTA02
  • FrogPad bluetooth keyboard
  • PaperMate PhD Multi pen, which includes a pen and stylus
  • Altec Lansing 2.5mm headphones (which have a mic too, though I don't know if it works)
  • 8GB microSD card

Debian

Uses

I'm currently using it without a SIM with:

  • e17 and Illume
  • TangoGPS
  • Emacs for text editing
  • subversion for pulling in my home directory

Audio

  • gmpc/mpc/mpd/mpdscribble as a scrobbling music player
  • I have gotten a Nokia bluetooth headset to pair, and to make the beep that it should make when calls start and stop, but there is no sound other than hissing.
  • I'm working on getting A2DP going, but haven't had success yet.

Connectivity

  • Tethered via bluetooth to my Nokia E61, which gets it a T-mobile EDGE connection.
  • wifi-radar for connecting to wifi networks
Bluetooth

I'm using bluez 4.27 compiled from source, and bluetooth-gnome 1.8 also compiled from source.

Display

I'm using xserver-xglamo.

E-mail

I'm still figuring out which e-mail client to use, but for right now I am reading and sending e-mail via SquirrelMail.

Games

  • Xboard seems to work for chess.
  • I tried Gnubik, but the software OpenGL is just too slow.
  • Enigma was not playable
  • Nethack works in the terminal :)

Input

  • The illume keyboard is quite usable, especially rotated horizontally. To get it to use the full available space after rotating the screen, go to settings, turn the keyboard off and back on again. Or, just check the "Restore after login" box in the screen rotation settings. Then you don't have to toggle the keyboard.
  • I change the the "small" dictionary (by clicking the upper left corner of the keyboard) -- I find the full dictionary to be too slow.

Reading

This is proving difficult. epdfview reports a .gz pdf file as "encrypted" and asks for a password. I guess it doesn't handle gzipped files. After gunzipping it, I was able to open the file, but as soon as I try to go to the next page with Page Down, it segfaults. Trying to read the same PDF (the Debian Policy Guide) with evince results in an error about not being able to allocate sufficient resources. xpdf crashes as well. Is this PDF just too big?

Web browsing

Iceweasel configuration
  • Set my home page to http://delicious.com/johnsu01/mobile, which will have frequently used bookmarks.
  • Remove the search from the navigation toolbar. (Right-click, customize toolbar, drag the search box to the dialog.)
  • Disable autocompletion in the address bar -- makes typing impossible. I had to do this (and other iceweasel configuration) over X forwarded ssh, because iceweasel config windows keep coming up larger than the screen.
  • Probably need to install Adblock and add a filter to block all of these javascript form field suggesting scripts (like google.com or youtube.com) -- they really slow things down and make typing frustrating.

I tried the delicious extension but it seems to make things too slow. I might try again. The reason I'm using iceweasel instead of midori is because I'm hoping that one of the mouse gesture extensions will be useful.

Performance

Boot time is currently about 3 minutes. Nearly a full minute of that is exim, so I'm going to look for alternatives there. Also, I'm currently starting mpd and mpdscribble at boot, which I will stop by writing a shell script that starts them if they are not already started when I actually open the music player.

Important configuration files

My /etc/modules: 

   snd-soc-neo1973-gta02-wm8753                                                                       
   g_ether                                                                                            
   bluetooth                                                                                          
   bnep                                                                                               
   ohci-hcd                                                                                           
   hci_usb


My .Xresources: 

 UXTerm*font: -bitstream-terminal-bold-r-normal--18-140-100-100-c-110-iso8859-1
 UXTerm*background: black
 UXTerm*foreground: cyan
 XTerm*font: -bitstream-terminal-bold-r-normal--18-140-100-100-c-110-iso8859-1
 XTerm*background: black
 XTerm*foreground: cyan

My .gtkrc-2.0: 

 gtk-font-name = "Sans 6"
 style "scroll"
 {
     GtkScrollbar::slider-width        = 25
 }
 class "*" style "scroll"

(The small font and the large scroll bar are to help cope with dpi issues that xglamo has right now.)

Issues

  • Mailutils segfault
  • Iceweasel windows for configuration are opening to a size larger than my screen, which makes them impossible to use.
  • I'm having a lot of stability problems with Debian/e17 -- it's locked up several times in the last couple of days to the point where I have to remove the battery.
  • wifi-radar randomly deletes the contents of its configuration file and then won't start when the file is empty. (Debian bug filed.)
  • Font dpi issue
  • The screen lock defined in the illume theme file isn't being used. Instead when I lock the screen I get the default e17 password lock.

SHR

Well, the first test did not go well. It looks nice and feels snappy, but it froze up completely within a few minutes of use. I had to remove the battery and reboot. Also, Midori did not show any address bar, and typing C-l did not help. So I was unable to actually enter a web address to browse to.

Reference