dimitris kalamaras

math, social network analysis, web dev, free software…

Tag: N900

SocNetV on Maemo-N900?

Easy. Short of.

I did this ‘experiment’ to test how much cross-platform Qt really is. I wanted to see if SocNetV can run on Maemo with no modifications whatsoever. These are the steps I followed:

1. Downloaded and installed the Xephyr X11 server (this is a small X11 server that runs inside ‘normal’ X and provides a virtual device screen where you see all the Maemo applications running):

sudo apt-get install xserver-xephyr

2. Downloaded and installed  Scratchbox and  Maemo SDK  in my laptop (Kubuntu x86/lucid).  I followed the straightforward instructions from the Maemo wiki and especially “Installing Maemo 5 SDK on x86-32 Debian based distribution“. It’s only seven steps and circa 100MBs of total downloads…

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free space is important!

That is the lesson I have learned today.

Despite my eagerness to update my N900 to Maemo 5 v10.2010, the software update tool kept giving me the following cryptic message:

not enough memory in target location

Wtf? The message was a surprise for me, since I thought the 32GB of my N900 would be more than enough for an 113.1MB update. But…Rootfs partition in n900 amounts only to 227MB, which apparently was nearly consumed by all the silly tools I have installed recently (mc, gnu-tar, openssh, lighttpd (yep, I run a web server on my mobile phone!), numpty-physics, bouncy, scummvm etc), along with ovi maps, micro-blogging app, etc.

After a while searching the Internet, I ended up in the maemo.org excellent wiki which of course was giving some usual-space-saving linux tips:

apt-get clean
apt-get autoremove

along with some more unusual (to me!) ‘opt-ifications’.

What’s that? The maemo slang for “move whatever can be moved from /usr to /home/opt”. For instance, you can easily mv nokia-maps from /usr/share to /home/opt and then ln -s back to where it was, so that the relevant application could run. Using this technique I managed to free almost 60MB in rootfs.

Now the update is underway and I am eager to see what’s new.

 

I’ve got Linux in my pocket too!

Yeeeeeeeeeeah! I am now yet another proud Nokia N900 owner!

Nokia N900 (Image from NOKIA)

Nokia N900 (Image from NOKIA)

This device runs Linux on an ARM Cortex 600MHz CPU, 1GB RAM and 32GB HDD, and it is more a portable computer than a mobile phone, thanks to its 3.5” touch screen (800×480 resolution) and the embedded keyboard. Right now, my N900 is still charging (minimum 6 hours initial charge I was told!) so I haven’t had the chance to play with it yet, but I plan to explore it tomorrow evening. Stay tuned!

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