MeeGo

Here is a heads-up to anyone who uses the formerly WRT based Twitter client, TwimGo, on their N900. The author Tommi Laukkanen (@tlaukkanen), as moved development of his comprehensive Twitter application to the Qt QML framework. This means that we ... [More] can hope to see it released for MeeGo and even perhaps Symbian^3. This is yet another great example of what can be achieved with the Qt framework. As seen in the video below (click through from front page), the 3D-like transitions are smooth and fast on the N900, with no discernible penalty for the overhead of Qt.The significance of this switch is the potential portability, now that it has been rewritten Qt QML. Which is of course, the key benefit to using Qt frameworks. For N900 users, there are some instructions to follow: Note 1. Uninstall old version before installing new version Note 2. Make sure that you have Qt Web Runtime on your Nokia N900 before downloading TwimGo. You can install Qt WRT by using Application Manager software on your N900. Furthermore, the Qt WRT libraries need to be installed from the Extras-Devel repository on the N900 (reference). David Gilson for All About Meego, 18th January 2011 [Less]

I'd like to draw your attention to blog post by a MeeGo community manager Jarkko Moilanen (aka kyb3R). This is a great story of how someone with an interest in the Hacker culture, and a background in attending Ubuntu LUGs went on to be responsible ... [More] for building the "MeeGo Network Fi", the Finnish community for MeeGo development. In the post he explains how events unfolded for him to be in his current position, and the things that worked well, and not so well. I would rate this as a must read for anyone aspiring to form their own regional MeeGo group.Here are some choice quotes from the post. I was spending - as I usually do - my time on multiple IRC channels such as #ubuntu-fi-tiimit, #hackerspaces, #vapaakoodi, #linkku and #5w. One person I got to know in LUG meeting (or was it in one of the local hackerspace meetings) told me that MeeGo community is building local networks around the world. So I started to work as a community manager. What next? What the heck am I supposed to do? What is a community manager? What MeeGo is exactly? Where do I begin? My mind was full of questions. To my relief, I soon found out that no-one knows exactly what a community manager does. So I decided to observe what Quim and Dawn were doing and read what ever I could find bout it. That is a task still under work. Next it was time to get familiar with the MeeGo and the community around it. So I joined the discussion lists and IRC channel. For some time I just lurked there, without doing nothing else but reading what the heck was going on. I also had already started to put all my ideas and information about our efforts to wiki.meego.com pages (http://wiki.meego.com/Local_MeeGo_Networks/MeeGo_Network_Finland).I believed (and still do) in open discussion and this is after all open source project. This is something that some of the participants in MeeGo project do not seem to know or understand. Some prefer to stay hidden and trade behind the curtains (eg email agreements and such). Once we (at Tampere) got things  on paper (or more precisely a slide show), I visited Helsinki MeeGo Network meetup in December and presented the idea of MeeGo Summit FI, which by the way was not the first name of the summit. It used to be ‘Meegolandia Open’. The name was not “liked” by Linux Foundation or some of the global community members. Some members thought that it was a great name. Anyway, it violated the MeeGo trademark. So, we negotiated with LF and other people involved about the name issue and found a mutually agreeable name. Long story short: don’t mess with trademarks. Or if you do, keep your voice down. Others (even among MeeGo community) do not seem to be so obedient as us. In my opinion, our community is an example how a single off-topic line in non-MeeGo IRC channel can produce a regional MeeGo community (which has about 200 members) in a few months. A community which is ready to organize a regional Summit in the spring, is building teams, having conversations on mailing lists and irc channel and hold more or less regular meetups IRL! We must have done something right.   David Gilson for All About MeeGo, 18th January 2011 [Less]

Those of you who have used qmake to build projects for any length of time on Linux will have probably come across the PKGCONFIG feature by now.For those of you who haven't, here's a quick recap:CONFIG += link_pkgconfig # enable the PKGCONFIG ... [More] featurePKGCONFIG += glib-2.0 # link against glib-2.0While this looks simple, it has two small problems which aren't all that fun.Firstly, it had what was really quite easily arguably a bug in that it didn't halt the qmake process if a requested package didn't exist. It would happily tell you it didn't exist, and then continue as if nothing had gone wrong, a very annoying problem in large projects:$ cat test.proCONFIG += link_pkgconfigPKGCONFIG += foobar$ qmake test.pro:Package foobar was not found in the pkg-config search path.Perhaps you should add the directory containing `foobar.pc'to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variableNo package 'foobar' found$ echo $?0Secondly, it wasn't possible to (easily) check for optional dependencies and enable/disable functionality depending on the result of that check.This has now changed! Thanks to Oswald for merging merge request 1022 into Qt, PKGCONFIG will, in the future, stop on error, and (even more fun) - we can now use the shiny new qmake packagesExist() test function to detect whether a library is installed:CONFIG += link_pkgconfigpackagesExist(glib-2.0) {    DEFINES += HAS_GLIB    PKGCONFIG += glib-2.0}// and in the code:#ifdef HAS_GLIB    // use glib here#endifMuch thanks to Marco for prompting me to finally try fix this (I've eternally been annoyed by it, but someone else being frustrated by it made me leap into action), as well as to Oswald, Marius and Arvid for their review and comments during writing, and finally to Murray and Mathias for respectively reporting and trying to patch the first issue in this post, a fact I only became aware of *after* finishing my patch. Great minds think alike, it seems! [Less]

Front Page Second maemo.org/N900 coding competition in the worksCosimo Kroll, one of the organisers of last year's successful "maemo.org coding competition" has mentioned that they're working on the infrastructure for the next competition, and are ... [More] talking to Intel about a potential partnership: "This site will make it easier to submit code/screenshots/description and let the user vote. Also we are in contact with Intel for a partnership (it looks really good). Thanks for your patience and I'm sorry for the lack of information. We plan to start the competition right after the mobile world congress." Your editor suggests ignoring the coincidence of "after MWC" and the Harmattan device announcement rumours. If he's learnt anything in the last five years, it's that holding your breath for the next device is not a good idea (you're likely to suffocate).Read more LWN editor "predicts" "MeeGo will be a surprisingly big success" in 2011What Jonathan Corbet says almost always never comes true. However, it's still interesting, and a sign of how much work MeeGo has to do, that his 2011 predictions in Linux Weekly News (the inspiration for this pale knock-off) contain this at number three: "MeeGo will be a surprisingly big success. Android is increasingly looking like the Windows of the handset world - a universal operating environment which turns the hardware into a boring, low-margin commodity product. Manufacturers will be keen to see a competitor which allows them to differentiate themselves and to limit Google's control." Some of the commenters point to Eric S. Raymond's portrayal as webOS and MeeGo as "doomed, no-hopers".Read more In this edition (Download)...Front PageSecond maemo.org/N900 coding competition in the worksLWN editor "predicts" "MeeGo will be a surprisingly big success" in 2011ApplicationsTwimGo gets moved from Web Runtime to Qt Quick - shiny interface resultsDevelopmentQML - caching network resourcesTrying to use RDS to auto-tune car radio & N900 FM transmitterQML Scene Graph demoCommunityCambridge (UK) MeeGo meet-upProduct management wiki for MeeGoDevicesPoking through mce.ini for next Nokia MeeGo devicePorting MeeGo to Nexus One & Toshiba AC100AnnouncementsReSiStance RSS reader updated with updated GUI and Google Reader supportMedia Bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)TV-out control home plugin...and 8 more [Less]

Less than a month from now, Nokia will present their strategy for the upcoming year to shareholders and analysts at an event called Capital Markets Day. Rumors about adopting Android and Windows Phone 7 in Nokia devices have been brought up ... [More] several times before, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to have another analyst today [...]Continue reading What to do with Symbian? Analyst Suggests 4 Options for Nokia at The Nokia Blog [Less]

The next Portland MeeGo Network Meetup will be Monday, January 17  at 6:30pm at Kells. We will also be meeting at Kells on the third Monday of every month starting in March, but we’re skipping February to celebrate Presidents Day. Our featured ... [More] speaker this month is Quim Gil from Nokia, and we invite anyone who wants to learn more about MeeGo to come hang out and talk about the project. Agenda 6:30 – 7:00: Hang out and talk to other people interested in MeeGo. 7:00 – 7:15: Introductions 7:15 – 7:45: Quim Gil – MeeGo on Nokia Device Demo 7:45 – 8:30: Open Agenda item or Q & A Logistics Date: January 17 Time: 6:30pm – 8:30pm Location: Kells Private Room Upstairs at 112 SW 2nd Ave. It would be great if you could RSVP on Upcoming to let us know how many snacks we should have available. If you want to get notifications about future meetings, you can join the Portland MeeGo Network Google Group. Sharing is good [Less]

[December] The Meego technical steering group have announced a new policy for dealing with the increasing backlog of vendor-contributed kernel patches relevant to MeeGo waiting to be added upstream. Each of these vendors accumulated hundreds of ... [More] patches which made managing the MeeGo kernel impractical. To remedy this, the new policy requires specific compliance from vendors, and will entail maintaining a "reference kernel", which closely matches the upstream Linux kernel. Read on for more analysis.The MeeGo reference kernel is designed to be an easy to manage adaptation of the upstream Linux kernel, and will ship in future MeeGo platforms. Vendors wishing to use the reference kernel without supplying their own adaptations, must already have drivers for their hardware included in the upstream Linux kernel. According to the kernel policy, vendors not wishing to comply with the requirements of the reference kernel need to supply their own (clearly named) .RPM package created with one of the MeeGo OBS instances. Vendors choosing this method of kernel adaptation will therefore be held responsible for maintaining their own packages for the lifetime of their product, with respect to both bugs and security fixes. The kernel policy also states that vendors are still expected to get their drivers and kernel adaptations pushed upstream within "a reasonable time frame". This requirement seems to firmly delegate the responsibility of resolving patch conflicts to vendors, and away from MeeGo developers. Correspondingly, maintainers of "kernel adaptations" will be expected to backport features from the main MeeGo reference kernel to their own kernels, to protect the reputation of MeeGo and maintain functionality for end-users. You can read the full kernel policy here.   David Gilson for All About MeeGo, 13th January 2011. [Less]

Developers looking to experiment with the latest Qt Mobility API should direct their attention to Nokia's Qt Labs, where a technology preview release of Qt Mobility 1.2 was announced during the Christmas break. The primary focus of the 1.2 release is ... [More] delivering backend support for MeeGo. However, there are also some new features, which will be of interest to both MeeGo and Symbian developers. A beta release of Qt Mobility 1.2 will follow this technology preview at the end of January.Qt technology preview releases are not intended for use in commercially deployed applications. Rather they are released to publicise and encourage feedback on both capabilities and API features and structures. The Qt developers are looking for feedback on the 1.2 release, in advance of shipping with MeeGo 1.2 in "early 2011". Qt Mobility 1.2 will also be included in future versions of Symbian and will likely be made available for existing and older versions via the Smart Installer. The current technology preview does not include a Symbian .sis file due to the (im)maturity of the backend for the Connectivity module on Symbian. However, this is expected to be rectified at the beta stage. In addition to the MeeGo backend work, the Qt Labs blog highlights two significant additions in Qt Mobility 1.2: Connectivity Bluetooth and Connectivity NFC (Near Field Communication). NFC is set to be a hot trend in 2011. The majority of Nokia's future Symbian^3 and MeeGo devices are set to include NFC. The first device with NFC support is the Nokia C7-00. However, currently, the NFC chip is the C7-00 is inactive; it is expected to be 'activated' by a future software update. As a result, NFC testing will need to be done in the Qt Simulator, until such time as the necessary back ends are completed and NFC supporting hardware is available. A complete list of 1.2 roadmap items is available in the roadmap and more details are available on the Qt website. Those wishing to check out up to date builds of Qt Mobility 1.2 can download from the following URL's" Source code: http://qt.gitorious.org/qt-mobility/qt-mobility/commits/masterMeeGo packages: http://download.meego.com/live/devel:/qt-mtf:/qt-mobility:/1.2/testing/ David Gilson for All About MeeGo and All About Symbian, 13th January 2011. [Less]

Significant updates to MeeGo and the MeeGo SDK have been announced at the MeeGo Wiki. Both MeeGo Core and Netbook have received updates in both the 1.1 and 1.0 branches, receiving their second and sixth updates respectively. The MeeGo 1.1 SDK has ... [More] been updated to verson 1.1.2 which includes accelerated graphics performance for Linux QEMU VM, and numerous of bug fixes. More details were not available at the time of writing. Read on for more details about the Core and Netbook updates.MeeGo 1.1 updates MeeGo Core and Netbook UI/IX have booth been updated to version 1.1.2. Below is a summary of all the updates. Core 1.1.2 updates (source): This update is recommended for all users running MeeGo 1.1. The update includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your devices. Fixes include the following: Fixed many important security issues Updated connection manager to 0.60.7 with many bug fixes Updated syncevolution to latest stable release 1.1.1 Detailed change summary: cups Fixed DoS via noet properly allocated memory openconnect Updated to 2.25 to avoid spoof attacks via crafted SSL certificates cURL Updated to 7.21.2 to address issue of remote servers overwriting arbitrary files Connection Manager Updated to 0.60.7 to fix AP list gone issue and connection manager stuck issue libmeegotouch Removed linker options from meegotouch_common.prf, which prevented compiling MTF applications if older Qt was used in the system samba Fixed DoS via stack-based buffer overflow iputils Fixed DoS via crafted echo response Package Manger Updated to show patch updates only Syncevolution Updated to latest stable upstream release 1.1.1 wget Fixed the security issue where a server-provided filename allowed a remote server to create or overwrite arbitray files and execute arbitray code using 3xx redirect poppler Fixed several security issues WebKit Updated to 1.2.5 to fix several security issues Evolution data server Fixed e-address-factory crash issue when gmail returned an error gnupg2 Fixed DoS via crafted certificate mesa Added osmesa.pc for devel package   Netbook 1.1.2 updates (source): This update is recommended for all users running MeeGo 1.1 Netbook UX. The update includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and graphics performance of your devices. The following fixes were applied: Resolved several media player issues Resolved several email client issues Enhanced Myzone panel, devices panel and networks panel Updated Google Chrome to latest 8.0.552.224 Detailed change summary: Devices Panel Set DPMS standby time to system idle time Check disk size when displaying storage level Banshee  Switched to now playing screen on video start Fixed the issue where banshee quit when the volume was adjusted several times Removed duplicate "Music" and "Video" items in import media dialog Fixed search query issue in media panel Fixed sound distortion when enabling equalizer Gnome-media Fixed volume control from sound recorder Myzone Panel Fixed crash in capplet Fixed appointment launching Fixed Myzone string Datetime Panel Fixed time and date formats for JPN, CHS, CHT and KOR Networks Panel Updated so networks panel works with openconnect 2.25 Syncevolution GUI Updated to latest stable upstream release 1.1.1 Evolution mail client Set label size to fit the width of the screen Fixed duplicate strings in Evolution UI Localized "Calendar" in Applications panel Google Chrome Updated to Google Chrome 8.0.552.224 MeeGo 1.0 updates MeeGo Core and Netbook UI/IX have booth been updated to version 1.0.6. Below is a summary of all the updates. Core 1.0.6 updates (source): This update is recommended for all users running MeeGo 1.0. The update includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your devices. Fixes include the following: Improved the security of the system Detailed change summary: Kernel Fixed several important security issues poppler Fixed several important security issues dhcp Fixed DoS attack via DHCPv6 relay-forward messages cabextract Updated to 1.3 to fix several security issues   Netbook 1.0.6 updates (source): This update is recommended for all users running MeeGo 1.0 Netbook UX. The update includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and graphics performance of your devices. The following was resolved: Resolved several media player issues Updated Google Chrome to latest 8.0.552.224 Detailed change summary: Banshee Player Made search entry in media panel show query filter properly Fixed sound distortion when enabling equalizer Google Chrome Updated to Google Chrome 8.0.552.224   David Gilson for All About Meego, 13th January 2011. [Less]

There is a new guide on the MeeGo Wiki detailing how to install the MeeGo handset image onto the new MeeGo-powered WeTab. The WeTab is one of the few devices seen since late last year running a bespoke MeeGo UI, and is an 11.6" multi-touch tablet ... [More] device. The WeTab is only available through a handful of retail chains in Europe, so the risk of bricking the WeTab in this process should be seriously considered . Only recommend for developers and the most enthusiastic of testers. Thanks to Quim Gil for the heads up on this one.Again, this is strictly for those keen to test MeeGo images on a large touch device. From the Wiki entry there are the following issues with handset UI running on the WeTab. The touchscreen is unresponsive. (Presumably this is a driver problem.) 2. The UX launcher image does not utilize the whole display, which is unsurprising since Pinetrail is a handset image. (Presumably this problem is fixable with xrandr.) 3. The build comes with the ath3k driver rather than the ath9k one that the modem requires. The Wiki entry also starts with this entry to emphasise the risks involved with this experimental process: Warning: the Pinetrail image running on the WeTab has some problems as of 1/6/2011. See below. Warning: as with any other device, if you incorrectly reflash the bootloader and/or kernel, you may brick your system. Here's a mock up image of what you should see after successfully flashing your WeTab: David Gilson for All About Meego, 12th January 2010. [Less]