Friday, July 11th, 2008 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
GUADEC is going to end for me today — I am going back home tomorrow. Was it worth going here? Yes, it was. I met interesting guys, spoke about nice projects which I will probably work on soon etc.
Talks
There was lot of interesting talks during this year GUADEC:
- “Bob the Builder: How can he fix it?” by Rob Bradfort from OpenedHand — it was about Poky, developing for embedded targets, which tools are available and how to use them.
- “Clutter guts” by Tomas Frydrych, Emmanuele Bassi and Øyvind Kolås from OpenedHand. This was was about Clutter — what it is, how to use, what it gives. For me it was interesting as I did not knew what exactly it is.
- “Location-aware applications with GeoClue and Gypsy” by Henri Bergius (Nemein), Iain Holmes (OpenedHand), Jussi Kukkonen (also OH) — from clock applet which automatically change your timezone for shopping lists which reminds you about milk when you are near store. I wonder how those projects will change the way of writing applications. For those who does not know what Gypsy is — it is GPS multiplex daemon which does not have gpsd bugs.
- “Breaking the Silence: Making Applications Talk with Telepathy” by Robert McQueen from Collabora. I think it was a bit too technical but otherwise it shown what Telepathy is and how cool can it be.
I see that some of Lighting Talks can be also interesting.
Parties
O yes… parties… Monday and Tuesday were easy days — we got some Turkish coffee somewhere (it was really good) and Turkish beer (was not good) but next days were different.
On Wednesday evening there was roof party at the University. Lot of people and red wine in plastic/paper cups. Get to sleep at ~02:00…
Thursday… Collabora boat party with “unlimited” beer… That was great event. At 21 we get on board and the party started. Carlsberg is quite good beer and after 3rd can you do not notice taste :) There were few places with stronger alcohols — 15 years old whiskey for example. We went under Europe<>Asia bridges — the first one has animated lights which looks very nice. I spoke a lot with Ken Gilmer from Bug Labs company and it was good spent time. Later from party to came to “bar” near the Golden Horn hotel and from there I walked to our hotel. Final bed time: 03:30…
Today there will be Google sponsored party but I do not plan to go there. I prefer to have some time for packing and rest before traveling home (Istanbul -> Berlin -> Szczecin) and going to the party would makes me look like zombie on Saturday… And I have family event on Sunday so I should look like normal person rather :)
BTW — after boat party I thought that conference could be named GUADEP as sometimes it looks like parties takes more time and attention then conferences :D
Summary
I will not write that it was worth going to GUADEC because it is widely known fact. I met interesting people (also few not interesting ones), discussed some projects with their managers (as talking is always better then exchanging emails).
Next year should be even more interesting as it will be merged with Akademy which is KDE conference (and I use KDE3/4 rather then GNOME on my machines).
Tags: company google guadec poky No Comments »
Thursday, June 12th, 2008 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
As we plan to move from Poznań to Szczecin this week we are spending at Ania’s parents house.
To have better work equipment then my Dell D400 laptop I grabbed some unused components from home to build computer. The list was not so long:
- 120GB ATA hard disk (it was system one some time ago)
- DFI RS482 mainboard with 2.1GB ram and Athlon64 X2 cpu (my previous desktop)
- cpu cooler
- keyboard
- PS/2 mouse (which I used before buying wireless one)
- power supply
- USB->Serial adapter and some other USB gadgets
- some cables
- headphones
The only thing which was needed to make it computer was case. And this shown that Szczecin lacks good computer shops — I had to visit 4 of them just to buy decent case as most of time they only had cheap ones.
Anyway I am using this machine for few days now (connected to old 17″ CRT which I used in 2006) with on-board ATI graphics card. It has many names… “RS485, ATI Radeon x1250 Chipset” etc… And this is crap never mind which drivers are used ;(
First I started with “xf86-video-ati” one. Version shipped in Debian ’sid’ (6.8.0) is very old and reports that I have the same monitor connected to VGA and DVI outputs. Result is not funny. Driver from “experimental” is much better. But 1024×768@85Hz resolution which is default is not so nice — 1280×1024@85Hz is much better but needs to be set by XRandR call or tweaking of X11 config file.
So I tried to use official ATI driver: “fglrx”. As usual it required patching to build with last release kernel (2.6.25) but patches are already in Debian so it took less time then my last fight with NVidia driver. Effect is also strange — this time monitor started in 2048×1536@60Hz which is just insane on 17″ CRT. After switching with XRandR to sane 1280×1024@85Hz it is much more usable.
Good side is that I do not need to use this machine too often so it will stay like it is for some time. When we move it will be one of my build machines.
And if I ever will have to use it I will put NVidia card into this — they at least works perfect in X11.
Tags: amd64 ati company free drivers No Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
2007 is ending. It was very good year for me. I am now married man, waiting for daughter birth. Have own company, working as contractor for one of biggest companies in OpenEmbedded world.
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
- GUADEC — I was going there with thinking “what I would do at GNOME conference” but it was also occasion to meet OpenedHand gang and people from other projects. I still remember how badly I lost on first day… and I did it twice ;(
August
September
October
- OEDEM 2007 took place. Nice event, lot of OpenEmbedded developers.
- Maemo started developer program for Nokia N810 tablet. Due to limitations I was unable to take part of it. ARGHH!
November
December
Tags: company life openmoko timeline No Comments »
Thursday, June 21st, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
From time to time there is situation when you need to use kernel sent to you by vendor which you support (or use device which they made). The problem is that often all you can get is one big tarball with “our current code” which means Linux upstream + extra patch(es). How to get something usable from it?
First step is checking version of vendor kernel (if unknown). If you are lucky then main Makefile contain informations such as “2.6.19-rc3″ which is a sign what to get as clean base.
Then clean sources — simple make mrproper will remove all results of compilation so diff will have less work to do.
Third phase is taking first diff:
diff -Naurpw linux-original/ linux-vendor/ >vendor.diff
Result will be probably very big but often can be made slower by looking inside of it. Check for backup files, extra log files etc crap — here I usually use Midnight Commander due to it’s “patchfs” which allow to go inside of patch and work on “per-file” changes.
Next step can contain searching for popular kernel patchsets which can be in vendor kernel. This is hardest part as there are many of them and often only parts of them are applied.
Same rules apply to other code from vendors — toolchains, libraries and other forks.
Tags: company consulting linux openembedded 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 10th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
I just got my GTA01B_v4 from UPS courier. This is send as “developer update” as package contains:
- GTA01B_v4 phone
- battery (charged)
- Europlug -> US plug adapter (no idea what for)
After powering phone I started ‘DM2′ application which allow to make few simple tests of hardware. And let Mickeyl and Sean stop talking that Neo1973 has nothing common with “The Matrix” movie — the sound sample used to test audio subsystem is Morpheus telling Neo that he is “The One”.
What do I plan to do when I have two phones? First I will upgrade Bv4 to newer software. Then I have to decide which one will run OpenMoko and which Ångström — so I will be able to compare (now both has OpenMoko distribution installed). And I wonder will Bv4 recognize my SimPlus prepaid card (it is normal 250 entries sim) — Bv3 do not like it.
This time I had to pay customs and UPS — 109 PLN (~30 EUR) in total. And as this time it was sent to me as person not as company I can not add this into company costs. But it does not really matter — I have phone and this is more important :)
Tags: angstrom company consulting openmoko phone 7 Comments »
Thursday, April 26th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Some time ago new kernel hacker joined team of people working on 2.6 kernel for Zaurus machines — Thomas Kunze gave us SD/MMC driver for collie and works on other subsystems to get this machine working. As result collie got added into list of Ångström supported devices and test images were generated.
Also during last time people were asking Koen Kooi when Ångström is going to be released. He usually answered that it depends on OpenZaurus release plans (OZ first).
But we lack developers to work on two distros in one time. Release of OpenZaurus 3.5.4/3.5.4.1 took me few months of work as I had to organize beta testing program, build images, fix bugs, find someone to work on documentation, build feeds. Then due to limited access to main mirror I had to work on upgrades feeds. Those tasks will be split to more people in Ångström.
As a result I was going to tell world that there will be no new OpenZaurus releases ever. But I did not wanted to sound like dictator — I asked other developers on openzaurus-devel ML what they think. There were 3 options:
- we release OpenZaurus 3.5.5 for all Zaurus models
- we release OpenZaurus 3.5.5 for Collie/2.4 only
- we close OpenZaurus history and switch to Ångström
During week twelve persons replied — no one chosen option 1st or 2nd…
So Ångström is a future for our machines — and many others already supported in OpenEmbedded. End of OpenZaurus does not mean that Zaurus models are obsolete or that users need to switch to pdaXrom or Cacko.
It needs work to create nicely working distribution which will use up-to-date technologies, will base on current software etc. Personally I do not even plan to look at 2.4 kernel for Zaurus any more — it was ‘created’ in such bad way that… no comment
What does OpenZaurus meant to me?
For me it was really nice to have OpenZaurus on each Zaurus model which I had in my hands. It started with SL-5500 collie which I bought for quite big amount of cash (about 2/3 of my month salary), then was C760 donated by Richard Jackson. Later I got SL-5600 and SL-6000 donated by anonymous donor from USA. During OEDEM I got SL-C3000 from Mickeyl and gave him SL-5600 instead. Now SL-C3000 is in Rolf Leggewie hands and SL-6000 waits for developer which would like to work on improving support for it (SL-5600/6000/C3000 are OpenEmbedded project devices).
Thanks to OpenZaurus I started to use OpenEmbedded. First as stupid novice, then advanced user finally one of core developers. Without playing with those systems I would not be the person which I am today. Since I left my previous work as PHP programmer I finally do what I like to do (and I am paid for it).
Without playing with it I would not have all those gadgets/toys which I have here.
I would like to thanks for some persons:
- Chris ‘kergoth’ Larson for starting work on OpenZaurus distro
- Michael ‘mickeyl’ Lauer for maintaining OZ
- Richard ‘rp’ Purdie for maintaining Linux-2.6 for all Zaurus models
- John Lenz for starting work on getting Linux-2.6 working on collie
- Dirk Opfer for Tosa part
- Graeme ‘xora’ Gregory for being one of most active Zaurus developers
- Koen Kooi for maintaining Ångström distro
- Scott Bronson and Simon ‘lardman’ Pickering for work on OpenZaurus documentation
- Thomas Kunze for work on SD/MMC driver for collie
- all other OpenZaurus hackers
For all time which they spend on getting Zaurus machines supported.
Tags: collie company consulting donations nokia oedem openembedded openmoko openzaurus poodle progear tosa zaurus 4 Comments »