Talk:Distributions

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This page is very useful. Thank you for creating it.

In addition to the categories/features you have listed already, I suggest something about its status/usefulness -- like "Who would use this?" For example, FSO milestone 1 is probably "Developers only".

Also, it might be useful to have something that succinctly describes the expected target state for each distribution. For example, FSO is the "Strategic framework for Openmoko".

I know this is a Wiki and I wouldn't mind doing this myself, but I thought I'd bounce the idea out there first.

-Randy


In addition to the distros already covered, should we add a description of the Qtopia images here? From playing around w/ the images linked on Latest_Images it seems to be pretty functional.

-Sitwon

Consider that done (not by me). MinhHaDuong 13:58, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


I thought the FSO stack dialer application was written in Python. If so the FSO stack does indeed have it :) -Tig

I found here (http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Qtopia) that there's external app to control gps under qtopia (qtgps). I tested it and seems to work. There aren't maps but just infos about lat/long/speed/etc. Should we update the table? Dareus

Contents

What about Mamona?

Should it be added here?

What is it?

Mamona is an alternative Linux distribution for Maemo (read Nokia Internet Tablets). Unless someone already have ported it to run on Neo's, I don't think it should be added here. Tingo 22:35, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Whats about MID/mobilin?

Mobilin is a ubuntu-edition, special for emededd devices. Now, it doesn't support the openmoko, but i think, some applications could be usefull, some ideas could be good.

Look at this: http://moblin.org/

Hope, they support the neo in next time..

Towards a timeline

At some point a timeline will probably be useful. Here are some tools: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:EasyTimeline http://infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/EasyTimeline/Introduction.htm MinhHaDuong 13:45, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Power Management

I suggest that Power management features (support for standby, suspend, management software) should appear in the table. I'm not adding them, as I only know 2007.2, but maybe you could. -- Relet 12:41, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Merging information about 2008.8, 2008.9 and 2008.12

I think we should merge the columns about the different versions of 2008.8 as these are not different distributions. After all, we don't have seperate columns for the FSO milestones either. What do you think about this? --Marko Knöbl 14:15, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Janvlug 13:10, 27 December 2008 (UTC) -- Why is the column name 2008.8 instead of 2008.12? Shouldn't it be better to present the features of the latest release: 2008.12 instead of 2008.8?

Actually there is no big difference between the features of 2008.8 and 2008.12 - at least those features which are listed in the table were the same for all three versions when I merged the columns.
I chose to name it Om 2008.8 because I thought this was the more general name which was sometimes used to describe all the versions of this distribution. Looking through some posts on the mailing list I also saw the term "Om 2008" being used a few times to describe these versions of Om. I think using just "Om 2008" would be most appropriate. Can we settle on using this term? --Marko Knöbl 14:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

2007.2 and hackable:1

I removed the statement that SHR continues using 2007.2s phone stack becuse it doesn't anymore. But maybe one could mention here that hackable:1 uses the same GUI framework (GNOME mobile), so people who liked the GUI should have a look at it.

Distributions and API stacks

We should probably clarify some language for the viewers of this page. For example, it has FSO, Android, etc. down as distributions. It's true that they have reference distributions, but those stacks also run on other distributions.

For example, FSO can run under debian, and SHR can run under gentoo.

Distribution means what it sounds like. It's tools and media for distributing (and in some cases booting and managing) software. (e.g. Gentoo, Openmoko-Angstrom, and Debian) The software that runs on it can be anything that the distribution supports, and in most cases multiple platforms are supported as well, so they're not relegated to just openmoko phones, or even palmtops.

Smartphone API Stack is what you call software that makes it capable of acting as a cell phone, and will also provide services for people to implement smart phone aware application software. Generally this software does not include or specify a distribution. They're pretty much distribution agnostic, and the distributions they ship with are just example reference distributions. Some of them may have the weight of the original developers behind them (Android, in fact, is probably too intertwined with its distribution, and may take a project to get it running under gentoo/debian/angstrom/etc.), but that doesn't mean that we should start confusing the stack and the distribution as if they were one entity.

And finally, Binary Images or Binary Distributions are probably the best terms to use for software such as Om2008.12, which are ready-to-go root filesystem images which represent both a distribution, AND a stack. Obviously they bare mentioning on the Distributions wiki page very prominently, but we should take the time to point out that they don't represent the traditional concept of a linux distribution.

(Also, FSO has another layer on top of its API stack which controls the dialer and such. For example, zhone and paroli, and other API stacks can be modified to work on top of FSO.. so that kinda complicates things :p)

If anyone objects to me editing this page to reflect this, let me know :) I'll give it a while to see if anyone disagrees with me before making any changes.

Also there should probably be a little chart of which distributions support which stacks (Which will change over time as different stacks get packaged under different distros). i.e.:

Freesmartphone.org (FSO) Framework Gnome Mobile Stack Qtopia-X11 Android
Openmoko (Modified Angstrom Linux) NO NO YES NO
Android NO NO NO YES
FSO Reference Distribution (Modified Angstrom Linux) YES NO NO NO
Gentoo YES YES NO NO
SHR NO YES NO NO
Debian YES (debian-fso) YES (Hackable:1) NO NO

... etc etc. only colored up nice like :p

Mercury 19:51, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Add Om 2009 to the table

Shouldn't Om 2009 be in the table? I think I can add it to the table but I was just asking some kind of confirmation... --Tomppeli 11:11, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Om 2009 was developped from the FSO images, which are not released anymore. I think we should replace the coloumn "FSO" in the table with "Om 2009" and update the table accordingly. It would be great if you could do that!--Marko Knöbl 13:43, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, what I said was not entirely correct: FSO images are still released. However according to OpenmokoFramework/Status Update 7 they "are not distributions per se, but rather demonstration images for the middleware release." Therefore I removed the FSO coloumn. --Marko Knöbl 14:43, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
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