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

[gregor herrmann]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:27:54 +0200, Thibaut Girka wrote:

> 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.

Debian in NAND might be nice but I'm not sure it works out ...
 
> 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)?

I don't think any assumptions on what's already there can be made.
But d-i could offer to install a bootloader in NAND.

> 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'm quite happy with matchbox.
That said, I think the important thing is to get a working Debian
base system on the Freerunner, the user can install anything else
later anyway.
 
> 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.

That's politely put :)

> Then, do you use your FR as a phone? If yes, what software do you use?

I'd like too, but neither phone nor the SHR stuff looked very
promising to me, and I don't know anything else at the moment.

(Maybe ofono + telepathy-yafono would be interesing but I haven't
looked at them yet.)

In general I think the question of applications is not that
important, I'd concentrate more on the core (d-i installing a kernel,
installing/configuring a boot loader, the base system and ssh).

Cheers,
gregor

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