[Trisquel-users] Re : Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
I don't need a new mobile phone. So the answer is no for me. I recently wondered about buying a Freerunner because I wanted a portable audio player. But there is a problem playing audio on the freerunner. And it also seems too weak to play videos. So, I stuck with the Unix way (one old mobile phone and a portable audio player). But if I would change my mobile phone for a smartphone I would be glad to find a free software-friendly one (if not too dear).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
What kind of issues? The real question is does it work well enough to utilise. Little issues may not be that big a deal. Particularly if we can document issues and clarify what features are supported, what is being worked on, and what might never get supported. Just because every feature isn't available doesn't make it a bad move. I think as long as the critical features work this is an incentive to buy such a phone. You know where your money is going. It's going to support the developers working on fixing your phone and develop a free software friendly ecosystem. And the main feature after all is not the normal smart phone features. It's the freedom. I may not be developing for a smart phone, but I would certainly prefer a phone that was catering to freedom, privacy, and at least basic support. I think the fact some/many people have these already is an indicator that there is demand. Well, we will see. I'm going to get one and see how things go.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
I think there are probably a lot of people like yourself. The last I used the freerunner it made a very very very poor phone. It was mainly because you couldn't hear people well enough and/or they couldn't hear you. I would not advise buying one unless you were seriously going to work on fixing issues and otherwise developing for it. I like the idea of the freerunner. I think we need to step back though and recognise not everything is going to be 100% free. It wasn't 100% free and with more customers there could be more significant resources going into development.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
Thanks for the link. It looks like a more dire situation than I thought. I still think the idea is good though. If we didn't all already have these I might think otherwise. The problem is we do already have these and people do need to replace broken phones. The question is are they going to be supporting free software developers / a free software ecosystem or are we just going to sit and depressed about it.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
I was thinking about designing such a portable Free Software device, but from scratch. I'm not really sure about the OS, though Maemo looks like a nice choice, better than Replicant IMHO. The target board to use is http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/ but it hasn't started shipping yet. I believe that such a phone can be targeted towards students, Free Software Supporters, and in my case, visually impaired people. I strongly think that a cheap computing device such as this is really needed in a world where there are people who need to do basic tasks and dont need Apps so much. P.S. My goal is to keep it under $150.
[Trisquel-users] Antwort: Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
I'm interested in such a phone. I use an old mobile phone right now which I'll give to my parents eventually and it would be awesome to have a free-software friendly smartphone. If it will really cost below $150 and work with German telephony providers I'd buy that.
[Trisquel-users] Re : Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
How about Boot 2 Gecko? Since Mozilla is behind this OS, I hope it will be as free as possible... but I could not find any information regarding the drivers/firmware. Maybe ThinkPenguin would like to be among the first companies to ship those phones at an international scale (the first B2G phones will be made by TCL Communication Technology and ZTE and sold in Brazil by Telefonica at the beginning of 2013). Maybe grvrulz would like to consider this OS for his project.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
The Freerunner should work well as a phone if you perform all the hardware fixes (e.g. Buzz fix, Echo fix, Deep Sleep, Bass Rework). Then the phone is at least somewhat attractive (you should get at least 4-5 days of battery life for making and receiving calls). Decent audio state files (that work well for calls, SIP and bluetooth) should also be configured for the user (and sent to him or her, e.g. via CD or email).
[Trisquel-users] Shutdown / restart issue
I have a Gigabyte motherboard with integrated AMD/ATI Radeon HD 4200: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128394 And I'm using a Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8 GHz CPU with 8GB of DDR3: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103851 With Trisquel 5.0 (and now 5.5), when I shutdown or restart, about half the time, I get an unending series of errors which don't stop. It refers to something about a radeon memory allocation error, and just repeats forever. The other half it does that for about 5x to 20x screen pages, and then reboots like normal. Has anyone else seen this behavior? Best regards, Rick C. Hodgin
Re: [Trisquel-users] Great usability of Trisquel 5.5 :)
I use a desktop computer with only 256 MB RAM using essentially only X-Windows, fvwm, xterm, xpdf and firefox as graphics software. Since I prefer the command line, this works well with Trisquel GNU/Linux 4.01. As a software developer I don't need much graphics software. I'm really grateful for this wonderful free GNU/Linux distribution. ~ ~ ~
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 5:53 AM, ch...@thinkpenguin.com wrote: I've been thinking about what projects and products we could put out that might be both worthy to take on and draw in new money. If we looked into it further would you spend $200 USD on a phone (excluding VAT) that excluded as many unnecessary non-free bits as currently possible? This would be a usable phone unlike developer targeted phones such as the freerunner. I think that such a possibility would be probably the only reason I'd switch to a smart phone. The price range looks reasonable for me. Best, -- Stefano
Re: [Trisquel-users] Shutdown / restart issue
I noticed similar end behavior (shutdown not completing) when using Trisquel 5.5 on my Gateway LT4004u. I don't know that machine's specs off of the top of my head, but I will post them later tonight. I will also try to track down what is causing this behaviour for me and post that as well.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
Umm here are some of the issues I have * Battery life (may be because I got the phone used) * No wifi (requires non-free software) * If I lose coverage I have to restart the phone to re-enable coverage * Sometimes phone hangs on reboots * over the air internet connection drops out often requiring reboot. Don't get me wrong the phone is usable if you fight with it but some of the issues can become tedious (constantly having to reboot) and not having stable internet.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
In a smart phone, any of these issues would be a deal breaker for me. Looks like I'd have to sacrifice a little freedom if I were to start using one of these things. -Dave On 07/03/2012 11:08 AM, sirgr...@member.fsf.org wrote: * Battery life (may be because I got the phone used) * No wifi (requires non-free software) * If I lose coverage I have to restart the phone to re-enable coverage * Sometimes phone hangs on reboots * over the air internet connection drops out often requiring reboot.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Shutdown / restart issue
Does this work for you guys? http://www.rrhistorical.com/rrdata/Fcpro65/ I used to have similar issue.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Shutdown / restart issue
Whoa dude you must have something weird going on with your system because that page (rrhistorical) is not at all what he linked. He linked to a trisquel bug page.
[Trisquel-users] Any experiences with Qi Hardware?
http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Main_Page Qi Hardware is sharing hardware. We document all steps necessary to build hardware so anyone may join us or reproduce our hardware. The ultimate goals are: to bring people together to share to fully document our hardware platform to share plans + software for manufacturing Sounds pretty cool.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Any experiences with Qi Hardware?
I own a Ben NanoNote.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Shutdown / restart issue
My fuckup, that's the link I originally erroneously pasted. Sorry for the hassle.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Any experiences with Qi Hardware?
So, what's the skinny? Does it do your laundry?
Re: [Trisquel-users] Shutdown / restart issue
On 07/03/2012 12:01 PM, sirgr...@member.fsf.org wrote: Whoa dude you must have something weird going on with your system because that page (rrhistorical) is not at all what he linked. He linked to a trisquel bug page. I'm seeing this thread and responding to it on the email list, not the forum. He must've edited it after the initial posting. Best regards, Rick C. Hodgin
Re: [Trisquel-users] Shutdown / restart issue
That makes sense. I thought you were getting man in the middle attacked or something.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Shutdown / restart issue
LOL! Well, that's not to say I'm not. :-) But, probably less likely that I am. :-) Best regards, Rick C. Hodgin On 07/03/2012 02:14 PM, sirgr...@member.fsf.org wrote: That makes sense. I thought you were getting man in the middle attacked or something.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
I just read the article about Firefox OS phones being launched in Brazil. This seems like a nice thing, although I doubt any of those phones will be as Freedom friendly as we need. Most common issues might be regarding drivers for the GSM modem and WiFi chip. Though I believ it would be possible to run it on an A10 CPU with a reverse-engineered MALI400 GPU and some trickery. The main thing is, we need a working screen reader and a daisy book reader for the project, and if those are available for Firefox OS, it'll be awesome :D
[Trisquel-users] Ubi-Partman Crashes when Installing Trisquel 5.5 32-bit
After downloading the iso, the md5checksums matched. A dialog asked whether I want to Continue the installation or Quit. I clicked Continue and the installation continued, but did not at any point ask on which partition I wanted to install Trisquel. I already have Pinguy OS and Windows 7 installed. During the installation animation, there was not progress bar. I stopped it after a while.
[Trisquel-users] Antwort: Great usability of Trisquel 5.5 :)
Yes, true...it is GNU/Linux. But in the end I think it is more important that I spent my little one a PC with a free GNU/Linux OS on it for playing her favorite MP3 files rather than a Windows 7 box, right ? I think for a standard vanilla Trisquel 5.5 2GB of RAM are mandatory. The system I used is an old Shuttle SN41 barebone system with NForce2 chipset and an AMD Athlon 2800XP+ inside. This mainboard is pretty picky about RAM. I am happy that I had 2x512MB of DDR RAM which runs stable in dual channel mode inside this box. For lower end desktop environment (e.g. XFCE, LXDE, OpenStep) 1 GB will be fine though.
[Trisquel-users] Antwort: Great usability of Trisquel 5.5 :)
Shure, for basic things at console level may be even 128 MB will be fine but if you install Vanilla Trisquel 5.5 with Gnome 3 2D fallback, you will experience massive slowdowns with 1 GB of RAM, trust me...
Re: [Trisquel-users] Great usability of Trisquel 5.5 :)
With 1GB GNU/Linux can become unstable depending on the desktop environment, software running it, etc. Unity/Gnome are both pushing it and swapping is occurring with 1GB of ram. You are definitely not able to take full advantage of the system with 1GB of ram any more. That said until you've opened so many windows that it crashes and locks up it probably still runs adequately. That's the one thing that amazes me about GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux doesn't become unbearable even when things are stretched to the breaking point. There is no doubt in my mind it would run better than trying to put Microsoft Windows 7 onto the system /w anti-virus and other bloated software (GNU/Linux has bloat although it isn't nearly as bad if you ask me).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Great usability of Trisquel 5.5 :)
Something nobody ever seems to keep in mind when chatting about this topic is the target user one is talking about. When you start talking about this kind of stuff the user is key. The user and the software make a huge difference. For a developer that likes the terminal it is certainly possible to get away with terribly little in many cases. Not that this is always the case though as it does depend on the setup and what software one might be working with and how it is being compiled (offloaded etc). The majority though with a standard GNU/Linux setup tend not to need nearly as much ram as a similar setup running Microsoft Windows latest and greatest. It's a combination of bloat from defaults in driver installation discs for printers, anti-virus, and increased system demand from the main OS. There is also more sharing of code on GNU/Linux. Microsoft Windows application do share code too although it's not to the same degree. The current standard default setup for most distributions needs 2GB or the system will start swapping. Swapping is where the disk is used as ram and the disk is much slower. You don't want your system to swap. That will slow the system down. Modern swapping is a bit more complicated than this although the same basic idea applies. You need enough ram to avoid swapping being necessary (even if swapping occurs when it's not needed to speed the system up).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Great usability of Trisquel 5.5 :)
You could use Trisquel mini.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
That is interesting. I wish I had a working phone to try. I never did attempt the buzz fix and it was an issue at the time. The other problem with the freerunner is price/availability. As far as I'm aware you can't get this any more. There is a newer version although it's only the motherboard and the cost is astronomical. It's not a good model to generate funds for such a project. It might make more sense to do a Replicant phone and then fund (or partially fund) a project that is trying to move forward with the freerunner.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
The one issue with the newer phones is the PowerVR. There are many others. If we could design a phone in the $150 price range I think it would work. If you move forward with a project to design a free software friendly phone let me know. I think some of the ideals for such a project should be: Processor isolation; I believe this means the modem can't access the memory or control other parts of the phone. no spying in other words. Graphics, mic, audio, wireless, and bluetooth that are not dependant on proprietary drivers/firmware. Any any other component. The modem may have to remain closed although if we can isolate it I think we can partially work around the non-free software issue. I believe this has been discussed once before. It can be treated as a circuit or something to this effect. The one thing that I would like to see if at all possible is a one way receiver. I'm doubtful this could be done although at one time I believe there were chips that received but didn't send over the cellular networks. The reason you would want this is because it could impede tracking. If the modem can be turned off and the one way receiver chip kept on then a system could be designed in such a way that when a call came in it would first 'page' (like old pagers) a device (a broadcast goes out to every device in a given area) and if the device detected the page it would turn the mode (once the user accepted the call) in order to receive the call. The tracking would be limited to knowing the time/place a call was received/sent as opposed to having a tracking device that could pin point you at any given time and keep tabs on you at all times. The alternative to this might be to simply find a way to turn the modem into a receive only mode. It's probably not possible to do this without the source code and even then it may not be feasible. I'm not sure how the old one way pagers worked exactly or if that technology is still around. I believe they used the cellular networks though so I would think in theory you could turn a modern modem into a one way pager with the right sources if the one way pager technology on the other end still exists.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
I don't think there would be an issue with it working in Germany. However at $150 USD it is unlikely to generate much profits. It might be possible to get the cost down to around $100 USD. The problem is even that really wouldn't generate that terribly much. I think the prices keep dropping for the one phone which would work so it may be that a large quantity purchase + a little more time could see it turn into $80-$90 USD cost and $160 USD sale. At that price it would be a good solution.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Poll: Interest in a usable free software friendly phone?
This is what I mean by demand. I don't think it is a good idea to encourage people to buy phones with non-free software or any phone if ones doesn't have one already. Although for those of us who are already stuck getting such phones it makes sense to shoot for furthering the projects working on such a device. Again- I have a phone coming that is unrelated to this. I'll probably see how it works out with Replicant and maybe we will go forward from there. Maybe not. We will have to see. If somebody can propose a good argument not to do this from a free software perspective I'd like to hear it.
[Trisquel-users] How to have two monitors have different backgrounds?
Is there a way where I can have two monitors have different backgrounds in Trisquel?
Re: [Trisquel-users] Great usability of Trisquel 5.5 :)
I can't wait to see how 6.0 turns out. Not only is it a 5 year LTS version, but Ruben and crew will have had more time to tweak the Gnome 3 codebase. 5.5 felt like I was using beta software and 6.0 should benefit from a later version of Gnome and Canonical's contributions to their 12.04 release.
Re: [Trisquel-users] How to have two monitors have different backgrounds?
Install nitrogen. It works. Search nitrogen in Synaptic or via Terminal. sudo apt-get install nitrogen then you open it with Alt+F2 or Terminal: nitrogen and add the images directories in preferences.
