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GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - FSFE Fellowship interview with Timo Jyrinki (fsfe.org)

Submitted by
Stian Rodven Eide
Stian Rodven Eide writes: "In addition to being the friendly media face of Wikipedia Finland, the team contact for Ubuntu Finland and founder of local advocacy project Vapaa Suomi (Libre Finland), Timo Jyrinki has been involved as an active developer and translator for a wide range of Free Software organisations such as FSFE, Debian, GNOME and Openmoko. He has worked on computer graphics for much of his life, with a particular interest in human-computer interaction, and spends a lot of his current time making improvements to embedded systems. I had a lovely interview with Timo, in which he shared his thoughts on user interfaces, the Free Software situation in Finland and how businesses should let the community lead."

Comment Wrong title, FreeRunner is still continuing (Score 1) 219

by MrvFD (#27463555) Attached to: No More OpenMoko Phone
I think the title and description give a false, tabloid-like sensational impression. Neo FreeRunner will continue to sale, and a new revision of it (A7) will even hit the shelves soon.

What has been stalled is the development of the successor of FreeRunner, formerly known as GTA03. It will not ship in 2009.

Anyway, I hope they will stay in business as they are still the only one doing a phone that is really usable as a phone with eg. Debian or whatever. It would be perfectly fine if they now scrapped _all_ their non-hw & non-kernel efforts. They are lousy at handling a software community or coding UI anyway.

As can be guessed, I'm a happy user of FreeRunner as my only daily phone, and it would be sad if one day I would be forced to use a less free phone. And yes, Android dev phone is quite far from Openmoko in reality... it's not like buying a new computer and installing a distro of your choice on it like it is with Neo.
Cellphones

No More OpenMoko Phone 219

Posted by timothy from the now-what-will-you-run-debian-on? dept.
TuxMobil writes "Bad news for FreeRunner fans: development of the first Open Source smartphone will be discontinued. (English translation via Google) OpenMoko executive director Sean Moss-Pulz said at OpenExpo in Bern (Switzerland) that the number of staffers will be reduced to be able to stay in business. OpenMoko had high intentions: the offspring from Taiwanese electronic manufacturer First International Computer (FIC) wanted to produce an Open Source smartphone. Not only with Open Source software pre-installed, but with free drivers and open specifications of the hardware components. This would give programmers as well as users complete freedom. Up to now the manufacturer has produced two models, the first has sold 3,000 units and the second one 10,000. Both models were targeted primarily to developers. From the beginning, OpenMoko had to fight with different problems. The smartphones came onto the market after a huge delay. Some phones came with construction defects. Also, changes in the team slowed down the development. Software development for the current smartphone will be continued but with fewer resources, Moss-Pultz said. He still hopes the community will support the FreeRunner."

Comment Power management is a problem in Android devices (Score 1) 160

by MrvFD (#26479085) Attached to: Debian For Android Installer Released
The problem with (originally) Android-based devices is that their power management is done in a completely non-standard way. It's not that it would not be open, but passing tokenized dead mice through a wormhole is quite a pain. Will there be enough community interest to actually ever put the power management to a level that can be used by non-Android distributions?

This is where the Neo FreeRunner shines - not only you can install Debian (or Gentoo) on the device, but you can actually use it as your daily phone / GPS device / music player to a similar extent you can use the Openmoko distribution.

It's not just, or it should not just be a "fun hack" to install Debian on your phone - the point should be that you can use your phone with Debian, similar to what you done on your desktop/laptop computer. Of course, there should not be any need to hack the phone before being able to install own programs on it, but there is already the Android dev phone available so that's not the problem with Google phones.

Comment Other games based on box2d library (Score 4, Interesting) 78

by MrvFD (#26462679) Attached to: <em>Crayon Physics</em> Combines Science and Puzzles
As the game is based on open source box2d physics engine, there are also other games with partially similar feel and game play. Crayon Physics was the one with the original idea, though.

Nokia Internet Tablet and Openmoko Neo FreeRunner owners might be interested in Numpty Physics: http://numptyphysics.garage.maemo.org/ & http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/rantalai/freerunner/numptyphysics/
X

Submission + - X.Org 7.2 Ready for Primetime

Submitted by
F-3582
F-3582 writes: "After three months of getting behind the schedule the X.Org Foundation has announced the release of a new X.
From the Press Release: "X11R7.2 [...] incorporates significant stability and correctness fixes, including improved autoconfiguration heuristics, enhanced support for GL-based compositing managers such as Compiz and Beryl, and improved support for PCI systems with multiple domains. It also incorporates the new, more extensible XACE security policy framework.""

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