[09:19] <Lantizia> Hey, since Maemo is set to shut down because Nokia can no longer be arsed any more
[09:19] <Lantizia> and MeeGo is RPM based (and Qt too) and that doesn't please me at all
[09:19] <Lantizia> What are the odds of seeing nice debian-based Ubuntu Mobile (with hildon) on the N900 any time soon?
[09:20] <Lantizia> Need to know my N900 still has a future
[09:21] <persia> Very low, actually.
[09:21] <persia> There's a few obstacles, which I'll outline:
[09:22] <persia> 1) hildon in Ubuntu is just not going to work cleanly because of the nature of the patches to gtk, and the difficulties in integrating this in any sane way.
[09:22] <persia> 2) There's not enough information about the N900 hardware for anyone other than Nokia to distribute a kernel
[09:22] <Lantizia> Does Mer have it's own kernel - that is working on the N900
[09:22] <persia> 3) Nobody seems to be working on trying to solve either of these problems for Ubuntu right now.
[09:22] <Lantizia> *Doesn't
[09:23] <Lantizia> So Hildon is doomed?  Dead projecty?
[09:23] <persia> Mer is probably the best bet for what you seek, yes.  I believe that Mer suggests using the HW vendor distributed kernels, but I haven't been following Mer for the past 9 months or so.
[09:23] <persia> I don't want to say it's doomed.  There's interesting stuff there.
[09:23] <persia> It's just not sanely mergeable with Ubuntu.
[09:24] <persia> So if you want hildon, you're better off with Mer.
[09:24] <Lantizia> I really like Hildon, I don't want to go Qt based for my UI at least - and I certainly don't want to go RPM based
[09:24] <Lantizia> But you're already using Hildon with Ubuntu Mobile
[09:24] <persia> Well., kinda.  It was hacky, and never quite worked.
[09:25] <persia> I don't think anyone seriously worked on it since the 9.04 release.
[09:25] <Lantizia> So with Hildon out of the picture for Ubuntu Mobile... is Ubuntu Mobile itself dead?
[09:25] <Lantizia> or is there a move to Qt planned or something else?
[09:26] <persia> Well, "Ubuntu Mobile" was never very well defined.
[09:26] <persia> It's had lots of guises over time.
[09:26] <persia> The "MID" flavour is not currently built.
[09:27] <persia> The "UMPC" flavour is similarly not currently built.
[09:27] <Lantizia> Well theres "moblin" and "intel" written all over it... now I know what moblin is (more by force since my Maemo is now a dead duck) I can't see how Ubuntu Mobile is related to moblin
[09:27] <persia> I think most of the interesting bits of both have even been removed.
[09:27] <Lantizia> Especially since moblin is RPM
[09:27] <persia> The Netbook flavour is now "Ubuntu Netbook Edition", and quite popular, but also maintained by the Desktop team.
[09:28] <persia> The "lubuntu" flavour (lxde) has had fits and starts, but doesn't seem to have gotten everything working yet: maybe for 10.10
[09:28] <Lantizia> What devices ran (embedded devices) Ubuntu Mobile?
[09:28] <persia> The "liquid" flavour (Qt) is also having issues, and likely to be in better shape for 10.01
[09:28] <Lantizia> lol yeah I tried Alpha 2 the other day - what a mess :)
[09:29] <persia> Well, the embedded project never really got much traction.  There's people who use Ubuntu on embedded devices, but it's very much self-assembled.
[09:30] <persia> Most of the Mobile developers have taken the attitude that handhelds and similar are powerful enough to be treated as normal computers.
[09:30] <persia> and "what shipped with Ubuntu Mobile" is another interesting question :)
[09:31] <persia> One might say that a raft of netbooks did, but lots of that was done by other teams, so perhaps not precisely correct.
[09:31] <persia> SmartQ5, SmartQ7, Sheevaplug, Efika MX, etc. all ship with a vendor-modified Ubuntu, but I've not investigated precisely what that means.
[09:33] <persia> But more generally, just about anything with x86, powerpc, or arm processors (of sufficient revisions), and the ability to control the boot to handle install *can* run Ubuntu, if you're up for a bit of hacking.
[09:33] <persia> I know people have run it on all sorts of MIDs and UMPCs, and a variety of Atom and ARM development boards.
[09:34] <persia> Someone was trying to get it to work on the Wii, but I never heard if this was successful.
[09:34] <persia> (although the XBox and PS3 communities are active)
[09:39] <Lantizia> See I liked Maemo, so p*ssed off they're discontinuing it
[09:39] <persia> Then join Mer :)
[09:39] <Lantizia> exactly what I wanted it, hundreds of my regular apps available via APT... GTK based interface
[09:39] <persia> Seriously, that's the best place to work on a hildon-based mobile environment.
[09:39] <Lantizia> I get the feeling when Maemo goes... so will mer
[09:40] <persia> Depends on the number of hands who join in to keep it.
[09:40] <Lantizia> plus I don't know if Mer will work with the phone functions of the N900
[09:40] <persia> I don't think anything will unless Nokia opens up more code.
[09:40] <persia> But seriously, if you want a project to continue, the best way to keep it is to jump in.
[09:40] <Lantizia> the dream of the 'open yet brand backed phone' hasn't quite come true
[09:41] <Lantizia> I'm considering selling my N900 since it's still in very good condition and only a month or so old
[09:41] <persia> Ubuntu UMPC was put together by two people over a four month period, and they stopped being interested, and stopped.  Lots of people complained about it being "dropped", but two other people didn't step up to continue it.
[09:42] <Lantizia> No I can't do this again - if I want an OS on my phone... I want something where the people doing the work are getting paid
[09:42] <Lantizia> I got screwed over by the Zaurus before
[09:43] <Lantizia> although they did continue - just in the japanese market
[09:46] <persia> Not anymore.
[09:46] <persia> The 3200 was the last unit sold.
[09:46] <Lantizia> oh :(
[09:46] <persia> The Netwalker is the closest available (and ships with a modified Ubuntu 9.04).
[09:47] <Lantizia> oooh that looks nice
[09:47] <persia> That said, my Zauri still get some use.  Just because the manufacturer doesn't make it anymore doesn't mean it's useles.
[09:47] <persia> I like it :)
[09:47] <Lantizia> i still have a collie with angstrom on it
[09:47] <persia> It's basically a laptop with a 4G SSD, except it fits in a pocket.
[09:48] <Lantizia> not a phone however :S
[09:51] <persia> Well no, but neither was the Zaurus.
[09:51] <persia> My personal preference is for a really small dumb phone with bluetooth coupled with a fairly powerful handheld.
[09:51] <Lantizia> I still have my E51
[09:51] <Lantizia> before the N900 I was going to get an N810 and use it with the E51
[09:51] <lool> E51 rocks, but it's a pre-iphone world phone
[09:52] <Lantizia> was waiting on a UK release of the N810 WiMax - but it never happened
[09:52] <lool> You have actual wimax coverage?
[09:52] <Lantizia> why does it matter it's pre-iphone?
[09:56] <lool> Lantizia: Well it's a perfect "old phone world" phone
[09:56] <lool> But it's not really on par with devices like N900, iPhone, or Android / Palm etc. phones
[09:57] <persia> This is a *good* thing.
[09:57] <persia> I want my phone to merely be a conduit.
[09:57] <lool> That's not what most people want though; I don't think such phones will exist much longer
[09:58] <persia> Yeah, and then I end up with a 200g phone :(
[09:58] <lool> I was really happy with my E51 though; it worked great even offline (in foreign countries notably) and the battery lasted forever
[09:58] <lool> It's funny it's mentionned here today, I just took it out yesterday to hand it to my neighbor who's phone was broken
[09:59] <lool> I told me for like 10 long minutes about all the cool features I used on it (or just tried out); of course it's full of proprietary software, but I kept enumerating the features it had, and I was amazed by the many things it did
[10:00] <lool> e.g. GPS with Nokia maps, how great the Google maps Symbian app was, Youtube/flash support, real player, remote erase, PDF/office viewer
[10:24] <Lantizia> I love my E51, dosbox, putty, google maps, good beer guide :), and of course full native SIP support
[10:24] <Lantizia> it wouldn't be so bad giving up the n900 for it
[10:25] <persia> Bah, features.
[10:26] <persia> Seriously, what does one need aside from the ability to act as a router to handle 3G/WiFi/WiMAX/etc. and maybe voice calls.
[10:32] <lool> persia: Well one thing I was missing was visio
[10:32] <lool> I also did use the SIP support, but it wasn't so great
[10:32] <persia> lool: That's why you carry a handheld :p
[14:15] <persia> asac: In the meeting there was some discussion of a potential MIR for chromium-browser.  Has that been filed, or will it not be filed for lucid?
[14:15] <asac> persia: we (me and security team) want to have a meeting asap discuss whats going on
[14:16] <asac> how much effort it would require. if its doable etc.
[14:16] <persia> Would it be possible to file a tracking bug in the meantime, even if it gets marked wontfix for lucid?
[14:16] <asac> go ahead ;)
[14:17]  * persia looks up the new MIR process again
[14:18] <rbelem> persia, i can help you with kde ftbfs
[14:19] <persia> rbelem: You can?  My basic problem is that I can't run `sudo apt-get build-dep kdebindings` successfully, and I don't understand why.
[14:19] <rbelem> ehehhe
[14:19] <persia> So, I'd appreciate help, but this is an area I should be able to sort, and is almost entirely unrelated to the actual code involved :)
[14:20] <persia> By the way, how goes -default-settings?
[14:20] <rbelem> it is almost ready
[14:21] <ian_brasil> rbelem, lets finish that now then
[14:21] <ian_brasil> ?
[14:21] <rbelem> ok
[14:21] <rbelem> and i'm working on kdm now
[14:21] <rbelem> maybe it will become a fork
[14:21] <rbelem> :-)
[14:22] <persia> To me, -default-settings is more time-critical than kdm.  kdm is likely to be out-of-archive, but we want some -default-settings in-archive.
[14:22] <rbelem> and later i will try to get it upstream
[14:22] <rbelem> ah cool
[14:22] <persia> Every patch is a fork: the key is to have them short-lived :)
[14:22] <rbelem> now i see
[14:22] <ian_brasil> rbelem, lets do default-settings soon
[14:22] <rbelem> ehehe
[14:23] <rbelem> ian_brasil, let's go
[14:23] <rbelem> persia, is there any other stuff that i can help?
[14:24] <persia> rbelem: Review https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MobileTeam/UbuntuLiquid/Seed and mark anything that belongs in a PPA ?  That's about it, really.
[14:25] <rbelem> cool
[14:25] <persia> Without the interface, the rest of it is mostly about creating the infrastructure to be well-poised to deliver in lucid+1
[14:27] <rbelem> :-)
[14:29] <persia> asac: Bug filed.  I've assigned you as you say you're planning to have a meeting.  Please reassign as appropriate once the bug can move forward.
[14:34] <asac> kk