27 Jan
2011
27 Jan
'11
4:08 a.m.
It's sorta-off-topic, but my Sprint contract ends next month, and I'm looking to
shake up my phone/mobile-network situation. I'm looking at other providers (and I
refuse to use Verizon on principle, becuase they are unscrupulous thieves, but that's
a different story).
Well maybe it is on topic, because I would LOVE a smartphone that runs linux and has a
hardware QWERTY keyboard, and even better if it could at least theoretically run
fluidsynth and jackd and aseqnet.
The perfect phone to get seems to be the N900, since Linux runs on it explicitly with
manufacturer support and usability, but it is very expensive (US$300 used).
There are, however, very many used smartphones on Craigslist for a third or less of that
price. I'd prefer going that route. But which run Linux? It's a zoo. There
doesn't appear to be any nice clean table anywhere showing what phones can or can be
made to run Linux and to what degree they actually work.
Any advice? I'm told some of the older HTC's out there have been made to run
Linux, but the documentation on that hasn't been too encouraging.
It's a cost-versus-risk thing. If I can find a US$30 phone with
sort-of-might-work-on-linux, then I'll take the gamble and try to get it running, and
just resell it if I can't. If I'm going to spend US$100, I need the thing to
pretty much be guaranteed to work. And if I've got to spend much more than that, I
might just keep saving up for a while and get an N900.
Thanks.
-ken
27 Jan
27 Jan
4:24 a.m.
On 27 January 2011 11:08, Ken Restivo <ken(a)restivo.org> wrote:
It's sorta-off-topic, but my Sprint contract ends
next month, and I'm looking to shake up my phone/mobile-network situation. I'm
looking at other providers (and I refuse to use Verizon on principle, becuase they are
unscrupulous thieves, but that's a different story).
Well maybe it is on topic, because I would LOVE a smartphone that runs linux and has a
hardware QWERTY keyboard, and even better if it could at least theoretically run
fluidsynth and jackd and aseqnet.
The perfect phone to get seems to be the N900, since Linux runs on it explicitly with
manufacturer support and usability, but it is very expensive (US$300 used).
There are, however, very many used smartphones on Craigslist for a third or less of that
price. I'd prefer going that route. But which run Linux? It's a zoo. There
doesn't appear to be any nice clean table anywhere showing what phones can or can be
made to run Linux and to what degree they actually work.
Any advice? I'm told some of the older HTC's out there have been made to run
Linux, but the documentation on that hasn't been too encouraging.
It's a cost-versus-risk thing. If I can find a US$30 phone with
sort-of-might-work-on-linux, then I'll take the gamble and try to get it running, and
just resell it if I can't. If I'm going to spend US$100, I need the thing to
pretty much be guaranteed to work. And if I've got to spend much more than that, I
might just keep saving up for a while and get an N900.
Save up. Anything else, you either don't get the full Linux experience
or don't get the full phone experience. Most older phones are not
really "Linux" as we have come to know it - they just run a Linux
kernel and some custom userland. Those that can be modded to take a
Linux kernel can be seriously crippled.
I have a ROKR E8 which I've painfully modded and have it running stuff
like mplayer, so theoretically I can play jack and fluidsynth if the
sound system allows for it. There's a crippled bash shell in it as
well with key-completion, aside from a full-blown text editor which I
have found no use for. There are lots of games system emulators, of
which ScummVM I have run, and I also played Quake II on it. Seriously,
the only useful outcome is mplayer.
The closest to Linux is the N900. Then you have the Androids.
--
GPG/PGP ID: B42DDCAD
5:23 a.m.
On 27/01/11 14:24, Ray Rashif wrote:
The closest to Linux is the N900. Then you have the
Androids.
Yep, the N900 is really the only serious option I know of. Android
phones run Linux, to be sure, but they're nothing like a typical Linux
system -- almost everything from the kernel up is Android specific.
There are a range of music-centric apps for Android, but none of them
are capable of anything like what Fluidsynth/aseqnet would be capable
of, and the OS has some fundamental limitations that prevent real-time
audio processing (there's always substantial latency, usually 100ms or
more).
It sounds like Android 2.3 has new APIs that provide lower-level audio
access capable of realtime performance, but there's only one phone out
there running 2.3 today (Google's new Nexus S), and I haven't seen
much/any talk about Android music apps updating to the new APIs yet anyway.
There are definitely some useful audio apps for Android (Chordbot,
Tapemachine, and Fingerplay MIDI spring to mind), and I hope we'll see
more, but I don't think it'll ever be a platform for running your
favourite Linux audio apps on-the-go like the N900 can be.
Thanks
Leigh
8:29 a.m.
On 27/01/11 14:24, Ray Rashif wrote:
The N900 feels like a computer with a GMS chip bolted on. It feels like home,
SSH login, bash/tcsh, all the usual tools, easy to root and get access to CPU
clocking options and if you don't might putting PA into a hissy fit then you
can get right at the ALSA drivers and get low latency audio.
Android, on the other hand, feels like a phone. It does have the capacitive
rather than resistive screen so you don't have to hammer away like the N900,
and you get multitouch thrown in there. Pretty cool for audio although the
Google Dalvic code does tend to confuse pointer co-ordinates at a rather
surpisingly high rate.
The closest to Linux is the N900. Then you have
the Androids.
Yep, the N900 is really the only serious option I know of. Android It sounds like Android 2.3 has new APIs that provide
lower-level audio
access capable of realtime performance, but there's only one phone out
there running 2.3 today (Google's new Nexus S), and I haven't seen
much/any talk about Android music apps updating to the new APIs yet anyway.
So the going rate is that OpenSL was not intended to reduce latency, just to
remove the effects of garbage collection when using a Java thread. Have not
tested this since, as you note, it is not really readily available.
Regards, nick.
3:09 p.m.
----- Original message -----
Yep.. N900 is a pretty fine phoneputer. Feels like linux through and through and most of
the standard 'phone' function is as you would expect/want (this email client is a
bit of a mess, but i hate to moan and it's an exception - and i can ssh into a mutt
session if i really want). I've got puredata running and it's pretty great for
scratching together ideas while waiting for a bus.
A decent community behind maemo development, although nokia seem a little sidetracked with
meego/moblin dev and at times uncommunicative (just an observation from forums). But there
is enough scope with the current hardware to keep one ammused for a while, especially if
you don't mind getting your fingers dirty. I think there will be a growing pool of
community ports from linaudios extensive repertoire. Hopefully nokia will keep investing
in the platform and not abandon it as a short-lived experiment, anyones guess with google
breathing down their necks and apple setting the benchmark.
-dmotd
On 27/01/11 14:24, Ray Rashif wrote:
The N900 feels like a computer with a GMS chip bolted on. It feels like
home, SSH login, bash/tcsh, all the usual tools, easy to root and get
access to CPU clocking options and if you don't might putting PA into a
hissy fit then you can get right at the ALSA drivers and get low
latency audio. The closest to Linux is the N900. Then you have
the Androids.
Yep, the N900 is really the only serious option I know of. Android
3:54 p.m.
From: inaudible(a)simplesuperlativ.es
not abandon it as a short-lived experiment,
I thought that even Nokia recognised that Maemo was a stepping stone rather than
a final goal, a means of demonstrating feasibility of Linux as a mobile platform whilst
not actually being a corporate direction - I still see it as a sandbox for them rather
than a product.
anyones guess with google breathing down their necks
and apple setting the benchmark.
So this is personal opinion rather than anything heard off the net: I have iPhone,
Androids
and the N900 here and what is too evident is that Maemo is lightyears away from these
two competitors. The unit is great as a geek computer but the interface is slow and
kludgy
compared to the slick Android and 'iOS' interfaces, partly due to the resistive
screen but in
part due to the disparate focus of Nokia on Symbian, Maemo, Meego and others - there has
just not been enough attention to the usability or presentation of this interface. On top
of that
when I got the iPhone (for the wife, but I 'play' with it every now and then) the
store had
280K apps, then Google is up towards what, 100K+. The N900 has somewhere short of 3K
apps available and almost zero growth.
- They have lost it.
The issue is not the _number_ of apps, the issue is that developers are simply ignoring
the
platform, all of the Nokia platforms at the moment, including Symbian. People are looking
at smartphones for apps. Nokia has none. That does not draw in customers and without the
customers then the developers are not going to get onboard - with previous phones (I have
been a staunch user of Nokia phones for years) their own technology defined the
popularity
of the product, Nokia were in control. They are no longer directly responsible for the
success of their products, the apps companies are, and Nokia seem to have a problem
getting their head around this.
It is going to be a seriously slow crawl out of a damn big hole they have dug for
themselves,
will just have to see if it is 6' deep leaving them as an 'also ran', or that
they back off and
release an Android phone/tablet thereby giving up on the mobile OS race.
Regards, nick.
4:36 p.m.
Just another vote for N900.
I have a bunch of devices here, including an Openmoko. There are some
Android (and some Windows CE phones thanks to the HaRET bootloader) that
have been jailbroken or hacked to run other software on them (typically
Ubuntu) or to avoid the limitations of their original firmware. Those
modifications are usually quite experimetal, expect many glitches,
missing and not working drivers, and a lot of patience and time to make
them barely usable. It is OK if you just want to develop or hack them
for fun, but if you actually expect to use the phone then go for N900,
there is no other comparable alternative right now.
4:42 p.m.
On Wednesday 26 January 2011 22:24, Ray Rashif wrote:
The closest to Linux is the N900. Then you have the
Androids.
People have also gotten a full Ubuntu running on the Palm Pre (it normally
runs the kernel and normal libs, unlike Android, but runs some weird custom
Webkit-based GUI rather than X). Mine is my production phone, so I haven't
tried it myself. I also can't recommend the Pre for its build quality,
since I had to replace my first one due to a bad earpiece and the second
one is starting to develop earpiece issues too. But I would imagine
they'll be pretty cheap on Craigslist in about 3 months when those of us
who bought it on launch day go off-contract.
It uses gstreamer for its media stuff, and people used that to enable voice
and video recording before Palm officially supported it. No idea how tough
it would be to stick JACK in there or put a full desktop environment on it.
But apart from the N900, it's the closest thing to a Linux-based mass-
market phone there is.
Rob
7:40 p.m.
Hi,
I'm a bit late into the discussion. I've used a N900 for a year now and are
quite happy with it. The N900 seems more like a small computer with a phone
app. It's laggy at times and it needs a reboot now and then (about once every
month). But for me and my colleagues it's the only thing that could be used in
our company (we do a lot programming and managing of servers round the world).
We use IRC extensively in our work and Xchat works perfectly on N900. The
browser isn't that good but it works. Opera is there if you like that. The
media player doesn't do all the videos out there but I use mplayer for those
that can't be played. The real culprit of the device is actually the office
stuff. The calender is awful and there is actually nothing to else to use. If
you use google-stuff it might work for you but our company can't hand over our
internal stuff to Big Colorful Company. Most messaging is going on with dbus
so you can do a lot of small stuff yourself. Wifi works great. In fact. It's
way better than my Lenovo T500 wifi. Skype is not that good on it. No video
with others than other N900. You can't get Spotify other than poorly
implemented stuff from 3rd partys. But, as you probably already know I use a
lot xterm. That's sooooo goooood on this device. Theres a lot more to say
about this phone but I'll stop with "top". Very nice :)
Oh. Some one said it had very few apps and that's true, as far as the
comparison with iOS and Android look-a-like-apps. But as we use the command
line a lot I think that N900 runs circles around other phones in that app-
respect. If I wanted a small phone with useful AND lot of useless (bit of an
ice berg there. seems like 10% useful and 90% useless) apps with GUI I'd go
for a iphone or android. Otherwise I'd buy a N900, or wait for the Nokia N9,
hopefully having Meego.
regards,
/bengan
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linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
8 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Bengt Gördén -
dmotd -
Ken Restivo -
Leigh Dyer -
Nick Copeland -
Ray Rashif -
Rob -
Roberto