Robert Schusters Blog

Fedora giving FOSS graphics driver “nouveau” a try

The free and open-source graphics driver for Nvidia graphics cards “nouveau” is going to be tested in the Fedora distribution. I have to say that, as a user, I have some troubles with Fedora right now but this move makes me happy. Even of I do not have this kind of graphics boards in use any more.

Yeah, you heard right: I don’t use Nvidia hardware and I find it great that Fedora is trying ‘nouveau’. I even read the development’ teams status updates and was anticipating the day some distribution would make their support official (I know it is in Debian as well).

Let me use this nice news to point to a big adversity that is coming to the embedded Linux world (or is already there). The PowerVR SGX is a graphics chip for embedded use. It is very powerfull but requires not much power to run. It is also contained in many of the new embedded CPUs like OMAP3/4, i.MX51 etc. Soon many consumer devices running a Linux-based OS will be delivered to users (e.g. the new Nokia internet tablet and the Touch Book). If you own an Intel Atom-based system with a ‘Poulsbo’ graphics chipset you already have an SGX implementation. The new Qt version already has a GL widget which can be driven by the SGX.

And this is where the shit hits the fan: At this time the OpenGL ES drivers for the SGX are proprietary and can only be distributed through your particular vendor. It is also like when asking about Jazelle things. Everyone is extremely close-lipped. I doubt that this has something to do with a possible move towards free software (*curses NDAs*).

I can’t do anything about this but I can utter my discontent. If you are affected by the above situation you may do so, too.

My BeagleBoard also contains an SGX.

PhoneME for Jalimo – continued

We all love it: Screenshot time!

This is PhoneME running on an N800 with the Chinook/Maemo 4.0/OS 2008 distribution. Since the differences between Maemo’s Chinook and Diablo distribution releases are minimal you should be able to use the same packages on both. More on that later.

And here we have the same app (= jalimo-swt-example) running on OpenMoko’s Freerunner.

Needless to say that startup and runtime performance of PhoneME simply rock: The small SWT-based UI appears within 4 to 5 seconds on both devices.

If you have any of the two devices (or an N810) you can now install the JVM through Jalimo’s repositories. Get them while they are hot.

breiPott: Free (as in Freedom) music party in Berlin

Now this is cool!

Yesterday I learned about a club in my city that exclusivly plays CreativeCommons-licensed music. According to their website they also make sure that only those variants of the CC-licenses are used that free software people would identify as ‘free’

Tommorrow there will be a party where they celebrate the adaption of the latest CC-BY-SA (version 3.0) to the German jurisdiction. They use a CC-BY-SA licensed excerpt from OpenStreetMap on their flyer:

Damn, I find it so cool when people combine all those free as in freedom things! In my opinion this is exactly the goal we wanted to achieve with the free software movement and which many of its naysayers and opponents did not get.

And while talking about OpenStreetMap. Here are two examples from OSM which shows that this effort has so much potentiality in being vastly superior than existing proprietary map data.

The first screenshot is from the area around the city train station Ostkreuz (some 500m from my home):

Noticed those crossed quads connected by grey lines which start in the west of the Lenbachplatz? Those are overhead power lines. So imagine if you want to move within Berlin and want to avoid living besides those, just scan the area with OSM first.

The next example is from the Teufelsberg (a hill) which lies within the Grunewald forest:

Some really hard-working people (perhaps its just one who knows) have mapped all the footways in the forest surrounding the hill. If you look up the same spot on the proprietary Google Maps you will only see a large green area with no ways drawn in.

Well done OpenStreetMap!

Now imagine every place on the planet would have such incredible accuracy and you do not need to sign a contract with anyone to use that data in any way you want: This is what we mean with “free as in freedom”.