Re: [Sheflug] Barcamp Sheffield update

[Tim Dobson <lists@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard Ibbotson wrote:
> On Monday 24 November 2008 18:10:17 Andy Halsall wrote:
> > On Monday 24 November 2008 17:41:59 Chris Warburton wrote:
> > > I'll bring my FreeRunner too. My OS of the week is currently QT
> > > Extended. The battery may be dead, and the display may crash
> > > after coming out of suspend, but it'll be there :P
> > >
> > > Chris
> > Remind me not to bother getting a freerunner....
>
> Yes :)  The software is in the early development stage just now.  
> Which is made clear on the OpenMoko site.  However, the OpenBSD team 
> in the shape of Wim Vandeputte are selling these - www.kd85.com. 

Haha. What Andy meant was:

Q: What did the Neo say to the insomniac?
A: At least when you go to sleep you know you'll wake up!
  from: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Jokes [1]

In all seriousness though, and running the risk of spoiling any possible 
talk I might do, (but what the hell!) this is not the user experience I 
have had with the Freerunner.

The Software is not really in a 'early' stage of development. It is 'in 
development' but this is just testament to the new and exciting things 
that are being done with the device.

In fact, what I find funniest about Warbo's statement is that he is 
running the distribution considered by OpenMoko to be 'finished'[2] 
where as I am (in theory at least) using 'unstable/the cutting edge'[3] 
and have been (as my *main* phone) for the past month or more. I think I 
have just over 300 SMS in my inbox to give you an idea of just one of 
the things I use it for.

Recently, I was one of three people who helped give a presentation at 
Manchester Free Software group about the Neo Freerunner, the other two 
people talked about all the cool things they had done with the device, 
that it had really got them into mapping, that they had used to to plot 
places of interest when they went on holiday etc. but using Debian (and 
Qtopia I think), they did not see it fit to use as a phone. (Debian does 
have a phone front end called Zhone - it's not dialling from shell!)

I was stunned, because I use my Neo as phone pretty much everyday, and 
though I wouldn't say it is flawless, it gets the job done just fine. I 
use and support FDOM[3], an image of Openmoko which adds cutting edge 
fixes and installs by default a load of cutting edge but generally quite 
stable applications which the barebones openmoko distro doesn't.

Anyway, I could go on all day, but instead I'll just mention that a 
video of the talk will be available for download sometime in the 
(hopefully) near future, and you read through an improved copy of my 
slides here[4]:
http://files.tdobson.net/openmoko/freerunner/presentation/openmokopresentation1.2.pdf

Have a look through them, I try not to let you get bored :)

Tim

[1] The sign of a *really* vibrant and active community is the one who 
can write jokes about themselves.
[2] http://www.openmoko.com/download-qtopia.html
[3] http://www.tuxbrain.com/fdom_en.html
[4] translations to Portuguese and Spanish available at: 
http://files.tdobson.net/openmoko/freerunner/presentation/
--
www.tdobson.net
----
If each of us have one object, and we exchange them, then each of us
still has one object.
If each of us have one idea, and we exchange them, then each of us now
has two ideas.   -  George Bernard Shaw

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