Category: Free Software

All things Free Software, in this blog at least…

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OMNewRotate 0.5.4 is out!

Today I released omnewrotate 0.5.4, which fixes issues 5 and 6

As I am testing the latest 2009 test image, I’m glad to announce that it still works fine with current FSO, but Paroli looks really bad when it goes landscape.

I’ve also added a “-p” (for powersaving) flag, oriented towards activating, well, more conservative approaches such as reading the accelerometer data not so frequently (which directly implies less responsiveness, but it was asked for).

As usual, the download links are at the project’s Google Code site for omnewrotate (see the featured downloads section):

Enjoy!

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FIT-PC2 is worthless for Free Software business

FIT-PC2 looks quite interesting for making a Free Software multi-media product which could be sold. It’s small. Looks good, has enough interfaces for your needs, and is powerful enough to play FullHD quality movies. nice huh? Except that it will only work on Linux 2.6.24. Except that it will only work on some version of Xorg. Why? Because it uses an Intel GMA500 as it’s graphics card which is, up to today, only supported through either VESA or a proprietary driver.

Now, since the proprietary driver will hold you back to nearly obsolete software, it’s not a possibility. Since VESA is quite the last resort, forget about playing FullHD movies as the hardware decoder will not be available. You’ll only be able to count on the CPU, which isn’t strong enough.

I wrote them asking whether they’ll make a better model in the future, but I can only take their answer as either a sign of sad ignorance or petty insult. Therefore, I strongly recommend against buying the Fit-PC2, or any other device containing an Intel GMA500.


From: Rui Miguel Silva Seabra
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 7:44 PM
To: info@fit-pc2.com
Subject: FIT-PC2 but without GMA500

Hello,

I was very interested into launching a product with something very
similar to the FIT PC2, it almost fit the bill perfectly.

But it has an Intel GMA500 which doesn’t work with Free Software, so it
is impossible to provide good support for it.

Will you do a better model?

Thanks,
Rui

So, the least I could expect is a «No, Sorry.» but hopefully I’d get an «We’re aware of the issue, and we’re studying alternatives.», huh? Well, no… this is what they preferred to answer:


Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:54:54 +0300
From: fit-PC2 info
To: Rui Miguel Silva Seabra
X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 12.0
Subject: RE: FIT-PC2 but without GMA500

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in fit-PC2.
GMA500 works in Linux with open source VESA drivers or with proprietary Intel drivers.
We do not intend to offer a different HW architecture in the near future.

Best regards,
«Name Withheld by me»
fit-PC Support Engineer

I guess the bold parts say it all, don’t they? Here’s my answer:


From: Rui Miguel Silva Seabra
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:26:29 +0100
To: info@fit-pc2.com
Subject: Re: FIT-PC2 but without GMA500

Hello,
Thank you for your quick answer.

I must however point out that claiming GMA500 works with GNU/Linux with
VESA is tantamount to undue sarcasm as it will render the chip virtually
useless for multimedia stations.

I must ALSO point out that claiming GMA500 works with GNU/Linux with
proprietary drivers is misleading, at best, since it will only work with
very specific versions of the kernel Linux and the Xserver it was
prepared to work with.

Since you do not intend to offer a different HW architecture in the near
future, I must indeed question whether your reply was truly void of
insult as both options are quite useless.

Best regards,
Rui

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OMNewRotate 0.5.3 is out!

Today I released omnewrotate 0.5.3, which fixes issue 4.

As I was starting to investigate libframeworkd-glib, that dependency was a problem for usage in the recently released Om2008.12 (basically, it wouldn’t run at all).

As such, I added a “–without-frameworkd” to the ./configure script, which I used for building the ipk of this release (OpenPGP sig).

Another good thing about this release, is that its tar ball (OpenPGP sig) is now the result of make dist. This should be a great bonus for integration with hackable:1, which is still using a pretty old version of omnewrotate. Just don’t forget to include “–without-frameworkd” in the configure process (I plan to have this detection done automatically in the future).

Enjoy!

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OMNewRotate 0.5.1 is out!

Hi,

I’ve just release a new version of OMNewRotate (source, it’s OpenPGP signature, an ipkg tested agains FSO M4.1 and it’s OpenPGP signature), the ‘Automagically Lazy Edition’ because it’s just like the ‘Lazy Edition’ but with Autotools magic. Yes, I know it doesn’t work well with suspend. I’ve just gotter suspend to work on my OpenMoko, so expect that it is fixed by 0.6.0.

From the ChangeLog:

2008-12-09 - 0.5.1 - Automagically lazy
	* same as 0.5.0 plus auto tools magic
	* desktop icon
	* places a starter script
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Starting OMNewRotate automatically

Following a question from Leonti Bielski in the OpenMoko Community Mailing List, here’s a tip on how to start OMNewRotate (or any other rotate for that matter). Just execute the following (from the phone’s terminal or from an SSH connection), and restart the xserver:

echo '/home/root/rotate&' > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/89rotate
chmod a+rx /etc/X11/Xsession.d/89rotate

My first reply has a bug, so maybe you should trust the above version better. I think Leonti caught it, since it worked for him 🙂

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OpenMoko NewRotate 0.5.0 ‘Lazy Edition’ is out!

Hi,

I’ve just release a new version of omnewrotate (OpenPGP signature), the ‘Lazy Edition’ because it uses so much less CPU than any version I did before. Oh, I forgot to mention it in the release commit, but at least with FSO M4 I’m getting a very stable rotation BUT if the screen looks garbled, please wait a few seconds until the graphic user interface adjusts to the screen changes. I don’t think I can do much about that…

From the ChangeLog:

2008-11-19 - 0.5.0 - Lazy edition
        * uses a second thread for reading the accellerometer packets
        * drops Fabian's changes (not that they weren't good, just not
          needed any more)
        * adds flags (look at display_help() or ./rotate -h)
        * drops packets with 0 value coordinates (I got bogus packets
          like that so I decided to drop them, if you feel you get good
          packets with 0 value, you can use '-0' as an argument to take
          them in account).
        * top -d 1 -p PID shows 0.0% CPU usage (of omnewrotate) even
          during rotation
        * seems to waste a little too much memory (some stuff could be
          done with one number and bitwise operations instead of several
          numbers, I wonder how much that will improve and if it's worth
          the effort...)
        * only output outside of debug mode are real errors
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This made my day…

… Marcus Bauer, who writes TangoGPS (an app I like but rarely use because GPS eats battery), uses one of my rotate versions. Neat!

I really gotta make a new release, but first I must decide wether to move to FSO (of which I’m trying out fso-image since M4) or Debian. I’m kinda of bored of the “hard” way OpenEmbbeded paves for writing applications…

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Dealer internacional vem a PT angariar dealer nacional

Na lógica da analogia do software e formatos proprietários à droga, na qual os traficantes oferecem as primeiras doses (é de graça, é de graça, não faz mal nenhum), por forma a criar habituação, e depois há os efeitos secundários que levam ao vício (dependência química ou, neste caso, vendor lock-in), quando Steve Ballmer veio cá a Portugal negociar o Memorando de Entendimento v2, tratou logo de arranjar um traficante local com abrangência nacional e apoio estatal: a Caixa Geral de Depósitos.

«Este protocolo com a CGD vem dar corpo ao compromisso da Microsoft no desenvolvimento da economia local (…) queremos motivar os estudantes a apostar na investigação e projectos empresariais inovadores», refere Nuno Duarte, director geral da Microsoft Portugal

E como vão eles fazer isso? O artigo é claro, “oferecendo” o que qualquer um já consegue obter gratuitamente na Net sem acordos de bastidores:

«a Microsoft irá disponibilizar, gratuitamente, às instituições de Ensino Superior, clientes da CGD, a plataforma Windows Live@Edu, oferecendo assim aos estudantes universitários um conjunto de serviços gratuitos, nomeadamente 10 Gigabytes para a sua caixa de correio electrónico pessoal, suporte para mobilidade, blogs, espaço para trabalho colaborativo, contactos, calendário, fotos, entre outros. O pacote de serviços inclui, também, protecção anti-spam e anti-vírus»

Eu pergunto-me é se somos mesmo todos estúpidos ao ponto de acreditar que é com estas tretas que se aposta na investigação e projectos empresariais inovadores, ou se são só as camadas decisoras por detrás destas génio-deficitárias decisões que são estúpidos.

Ou se calhar não é estupidez, é algo pior. Parafraseando o presidente da Mandriva quando perderam um negócio depois de uma súbita viagem de Steve Ballmer, nós cá em Portugal temos uma palavra para isto, sabia Steve? Imagina qual é… vá lá… eu sei quem em Inglês também existe…