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Showing posts from March, 2010

Battery monitor

I'm working on kernel for rx1950 in parallel with userspace work. Since next step is improved battery driver, I've spent couple of hours to create following app . It's simple battery monitor with logging capability - I need some logs to get U,I(t) battery dependencies, as I don't believe windows driver, it seems that it displays battery level applying some heuristic - I don't see direct correlation between battery voltage/current and level displayed by windows driver. P.S. I've sent rx1950 patches upstream on 20 of March and still no responce. I'm a bit disappointed - does it really take so long to review patch series?

Distro and Env for rx1950

I've took a look on dwm window manager, and it impressed me a lot :) Highly configurable via config file, and so simple... It will be easy to add dwm layout for on-screen keyboard, and it will be easy to add some buttons such as on-screen keyboard show/hide button. Also I want to patch it to add support for drawing icons on its bar (yes, I heard about dzen2, but I don't want to use it). If anyone knows on-screen keyboard that is as light as xkbd and has more functionality - please let me now, as I'm going to use xkbd, however I need to patch xkbd to make it set its window class name. Also I've took a look on iplinux distribution - and it looks good and convenient, and it's still pretty simple. I'll use it as distro for rx1950 because I don't like openembedded complexity. P.S. Need to test dwm-gtx...

Just fot note

http://code.google.com/p/ftk/ http://en.qi-hardware.com/pipermail/developer/2010-March/thread.html

Researching for a new PDA environment

I'm still researching for a new PDA environment: now I evaluate iplinux distribution/build system (based on debian) and EFL (enlightenment foundation libraries) . I hope 32mb is enough to run Xfbdev* with a light WM like DWM and some EFL environment. Some EFL-based apps were developed by openinkpot project, such as: mpd-frontend (madaudio) pdf-viewer image-viewer (madeye) And also there's efl-based browser (google for webkit-efl) developed by SHR project. * or even xorg-server + xf86-video-fbdev, I heard that there's no difference between xorg-server and Xfbdev in recent releases, not sure if Xfbdev become too fat, or xorg-server become lighter)
It seems that directfb backend of gtk+ is broken in recent version. I hit 2 bugs (segfaults), first is fixed, but second is not. And according to bugzilla, directfb backend has no maintainer :(

DirectFB overlay

I've created repo with DirectFB-related things for Gentoo. Emerge packages in following order: linux-fusion DirectFB SaWMan Thing is SaWMan is not working with SHM implementaion of Fusion :)

Call for developers :)

Does anyone want to work on new environment for PDAs based on directfb/gtk+? It seems that there's no supported environment for PDAs, especially for PDA with small resources (i.e. with 32mb of RAM :)) - opie and gpe are dead, we see only bugfix releases. Short plan: 0. Develop directfb-based shell that will provide such functionality as app launcher/window manager/on-screen keyboard 1. Take Pimlico suit and port it to directfb (it's gtk based, so I hope it will be easy) 2. Port some mpd frontend 3. Port FBReader 4. Port some browser (midori?) Mentioned applications cover all functionality that I need from PDA: PIM, book reading, mp3 player, web browsing :) All we need is people who wants to work on this idea: programmers, and, of course, designers - I'm programmer, but not designer, I can't create all these nice icons/screen designes, etc. Any ideas? :) P.S. Join jabber conference: rx1950@conference.jabber.com.ua

ramzswap

Yesterday I tested ramzswap on rx1950 :) Shortly, it allows to use part of RAM as compressed swap. With ramzswap rx1950 is able to boot GPE environment (Xfbdev + gtk) without swap file on sd card, however GPE doesn't work smoothly.

Playing with Android

I've just played a bit with android emulator (to find out is it worth to build image for rx1950), and it looks like it's impossible to run android on device with 32mb RAM. But it runs smoothly on 64mb... So Google guys lie to you when they say that Android runs on 32mb :) Anyway, I don't know any environment that runs on 32mb devices except opie. And that's sad, because opie is a bit outdated.