[pkg-fso-maint] What software do you (want to) use on your Freerunner?

Gaudenz Steinlin gaudenz at debian.org
Thu Apr 29 13:54:22 UTC 2010


Hi Thibaut

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 03:27:54PM +0200, Thibaut Girka wrote:
> Hi,
> As you might know, I will soon be working on debian-installer support for the Freerunner (and probably other "similar" devices) as a GSoC student[1].
> 
> Before starting the actual work, I would like to have your opinion on a few points:
> 
> 1°) µSD, yes, but NAND?
> In any case, µSD will be supported, but do you think it is worthy to provide support for Debian on the NAND?
> It shouldn't be that hard, but I don't think there is any benefit in it, since there is only 256MB available.
I don't see any benefit. Also I doubt that you will be able to fit a
regular (standard installation) Debian into 256MB. For NAND one of the
emdebian flavours would be better suited.

> 
> 2°) What bootloader should be supported? Qi? U-Boot? Both?
> The boot process slightly differs between Qi and U-Boot.
> The installation process will use the ROM U-Boot (since it's available on any FR, and provide useful things like DFU),
> but once Debian is installed, it should be easier to use Qi.
> What about U-Boot support? Is it really needed? Should we assume Qi is installed on the NAND?
> Or maybe install it ourselves (but this way sounds far too intrusive)?

It would be good if the installer worked with whatever is already on the
phone. For the start I would concentrate on u-boot because that's what's
on the device from the factory. Manually installing Qi should be
possible. Later it would be great if d-i autodetects the bootloader used
on the device and configures anything accordingly.

> 
> 3°) Which Desktop Environment should be the default?
> Gnome is the default DE for a desktop installation of Debian, but it, of course, isn't suitable for the FR.
> I guess the main challengers are:
>   * XFCE: quite similar to Gnome, stable, usable, it has been in Debian for a long time and there is already a task for it
>   * Illume: faster and finger-friendly, but much more experimental, and available in unstable only
> 

I'd say Illume. But I don't care that much. I think this needs to be
part of the "phone task" for tasksel.

> 4°) The phone suite
> Well, after all, the FreeRunner is a phone.
> A quick testing of Zhone, already available in Debian, shows that it seems reliable and relatively fast.
> However, it is really simple, and does not provide many features.
> Then, do you use your FR as a phone? If yes, what software do you use?

I think that the pkg-fso group agreed that they want to package SHR for
Debian. But I might be mistaken on this.

Gaudenz


-- 
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
~ Samuel Beckett ~



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