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An Interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi of Nokia (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal talks with
Dr. Ari Jaaksi about the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. "Nokia is
encouraging external development for the 770 with the release of the maemo
platform. Furthermore, the company actively is supporting mainstream
open-source applications, while encouraging maemo developers not to fork
from these foundational applications."
(Log in to post comments)
An Interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi of Nokia (Linux Journal) Posted Jun 7, 2005 18:40 UTC (Tue) by thompsot (guest, #12368) [Link]
Copy of the post I made at the end of the article:
"I have been looking at Sharp Zaurus and other handhelds as a solution for remote administration in a small package. When the 770 has support for a keyboard on it's USB port, and a terminal can be accessed (which is surely already possible via some minor hack), then this device will be exactly what I've been looking for. I'm already setting back money to buy one as soon as these things are ready."
This thing has a larger screen than the palm-type devices without making it too bulky, and it's already set up for wireless networking or networking over a bluetooth cell phone, so I see it as perfect for this purpose. What are any LWN readers currently using for remote administration in a small package (but not a laptop)?
An Interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi of Nokia (Linux Journal) Posted Jun 8, 2005 1:21 UTC (Wed) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link] With either a USB or bluetooth keyboard, this seems to be the portable Emacs platform that I've wanted.I'm happy with Gentoo as a distro. One wonders how Debian will compare. Favorably, I'm sure.
An Interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi of Nokia (Linux Journal) Posted Jun 8, 2005 2:53 UTC (Wed) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link] You asked what else people are using - I'm using a Psion netbook pro running an OE-based experimental distro, very similar to what has gone on the 770. It's a nice box with a 400Mhz xscale, 800x600 screen, and a real keyboard you can actually type things on (with PCMCIA, CF and MMC slots). It has firefox, gpdf, balsa, abiword, gnumeric, ssh, xterm, and the GPE set of PIM apps on it as well as a nice desktop environment, and you can add openoffice and evolution via a CF card. Some of these can be a bit sluggish but they generally work fine, and you get a genuine 6 hours use on the battery. With a wireless card in it is very nice to use as a mini-laptop (e.g. I took it on holiday to check out my photos and do a bit of wireless browsing from time to time).
The catch is that they are very expensive to buy new (GBP 1000-ish) and the Linux distro is not being taken forward commercially (by Psion). Psion have not yet given the offical OK to release all this code but they have promised they will soon.
An Interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi of Nokia (Linux Journal) Posted Jun 8, 2005 22:33 UTC (Wed) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link] The downside with the Netbook is the physical size/weight. It is close enough to a thin real laptop, such as the IBM X40 (oh my what a nice laptop that is, with good Linux support and battery run time in the same ballpark), that I think I'd go for the laptop. You can't carry it in your pocket like a small PDA.
An Interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi of Nokia (Linux Journal) Posted Jun 8, 2005 8:26 UTC (Wed) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] The n770 won't support a USB keyboard, since it's running in gadgetmode, not hostmode. However, we're working on integrating support for BT keyboards. It might not make it into the version of the software included in the devices, but it'll at least be available for download pretty soon afterwards =) (The support for BT-keyboard in itself is not a problem, the effort is integrating it properly with out input method-system).
An Interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi of Nokia (Linux Journal) Posted Jun 8, 2005 10:11 UTC (Wed) by nedrichards (subscriber, #23295) [Link] That's what you have to love about LWN. Answers to questions. Thanks!
An Interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi of Nokia (Linux Journal) Posted Jun 8, 2005 12:07 UTC (Wed) by thompsot (guest, #12368) [Link]
No kidding! Great responses. BT keyboard would be even better than USB and no doubt easier/faster to include for the coders. The 770 looks like a clear winner. Thanks everybody.
An Interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi of Nokia (Linux Journal) Posted Jun 8, 2005 22:30 UTC (Wed) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link] Yes, a BT mouse + keyboard sounds like an unbeatable combination -- if the battery run time is good enough with BT. Now we only need to be able to buy the actual *device* too ... ;)
Re USB keyboard Posted Jun 8, 2005 16:54 UTC (Wed) by HalfMoon (guest, #3211) [Link] Actually I'm told that a lot of the Nokia developers do hook up a USB keyboard (or hub, or disk drive) to that device port. Thing is since the device has a Mini-B port (I'm assuming!) you wouldn't be able to use a standard cable ... or even a standard kernel setup. The OMAP chip certainly includes an OHCI controller, which can be used on any of the ports that the peripheral controller can be hooked up to. I was kind of hoping this device would ship with a USB-OTG connector ... with a Mini-AB port and the right transceiver driving it, that port would work in either peripheral or host modes depending on what was hooked up to it. Evidently that's not an option for this first model, but I'll hope for a product revision to change the transceiver and connector.
Re USB keyboard Posted Jun 8, 2005 17:41 UTC (Wed) by thompsot (guest, #12368) [Link]
Sounds like a USB-OTG interface would solve printing needs as well...
Re USB keyboard Posted Jun 9, 2005 11:28 UTC (Thu) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] Yes, a lot of us use it in the host-mode, but we use modified hubs to drive the whole shebang. Not really a workable solution when walking around with your N770 =)
Remote administration in a small package Posted Jun 10, 2005 5:59 UTC (Fri) by dberkholz (subscriber, #23346) [Link] I'm using a Palm Tungsten C with a wireless keyboard. It works quite nicely and is incredibly compact, especially for storage. The Tungsten C has both a thumb keyboard and wifi, which were my basic requirements. But the thumb keyboard was slow enough for me to use that I added the external one for when I'm doing a lot of typing.
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