[maemo-developers] N810 upgrades

[From: Eero Tamminen]

Hi,

(commenting on this old mail...)

ext Martin Grimme wrote:
> the N810 supports over-the-air updates since Diablo OS. So there's no
> need for flashing for an update.
> 
> Maemo5 does not run on the N810.

Although 3D is given as one reason for this, I think Fremantle memory
usage and N810 having only half the RAM in N900 would actually be bigger
obstacle.  Fremantle apps take about 2x more memory than Diablo ones,
partly due to compositing used by the desktop, partly due to
panning buffers etc.


> The closest you can get is the alternative Mer OS

As to the community efforts, I think the Fremantle features
that would be most beneficial for the N8x0 base system would be:
- replacing JFFS2 with faster and less RAM using UBIFS[1].
   This would require kernel upgrade and remaking/reflashing
   the rootfs image.
- using swap partition from a memory card instead of a swap file
   on FAT file system.  This would be much more robust.
- replacing Busybox with a newer version in Fremantle (using
   the Diablo configuration though) to make it more compatible
   with Debian stuff.


[1] For full file systems.  Unlike JFFS2, UBIFS doesn't keep the whole
     file system in RAM so it uses less RAM, and it also mounts full
     file system _much_ faster than JFFS2.  However, there are some
     gotchas when moving from JFFS2 to UBIFS (writeback/synching,
     space accounting), mentioned here:
	http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/doc/ubifs.html



 > which tries to backport Maemo5 stuff onto a Ubuntu
 > based OS running on the N810.

With Ubuntu's base memory usage, that seemed a bit
strange choice.  (I've never tried Mer though, this
was just idle speculation)


 > It's still in an early stage, though.

But now that Mer people have changed to base things on MeeGo, maybe
the base system memory usage is less of a concern.


	- Eero