Poky Linux 3.0 "Blinky" Released
After much blood, sweat and tears, Poky Linux 3.0 (also known as Blinky) is released. Poky is an OpenEmbedded derivative, focused on building GNOME Mobile-based images for embedded and handheld devices such as the Sharp Zaurus or the Nokia N800.
Aside from the usual set of software updates and infrastructure improvements, Blinky contains the first public release of Sato, an example GTK+/Matchbox based PDA environment aimed at devices with high resolution, physically small screens. This includes a new Matchbox panel and desktop, the Pimlico suite of PIM applications, and a fast, clear GTK+ theme.
Pretty much everyone at OpenedHand has been involved in Poky to some extent, so it's great to see a release. Personally I'm really pleased with how far Blinky has advanced over the last release, Clyde, and will shortly be working on a branch of Blinky to integrate the complete GNOME 2.20 release set.
If anyone is interested in Poky then it is easy to try: there are for a several devices: the Nokia N800 and several Sharp Zaurus models; and Qemu images for both ARM and Intel. Give it a go and tell us what you think!
NP: Love and Affection, Joan Armatrading
Thank you for your reply.
As I dont want to brick my device, could you give me the exact command line instructions to flash the kernel or the JFFS file on Mac ?
Moreover, could you provide an image to flash for the 770 (as I have also one) ?
$ flasher -k [kernel] -r [jffs] -f
If you are worried about bricking the device, I suggest you don't reflash it. :)
As I said in an earlier comment we don't have 770 images, but you can build one yourself easily enough. Setting up poky takes about two minutes, then you just leave it overnight.
A few remaining question:
1) why using different kernel revision for n800 compared to the other devices ? Is it for some kernel module issues ?
2) to what extent is the hardware support of the n800 ?
3) is it possible for me to get Java running on the n800 after flashing poky ? (Java support just sucks with the nokia releases....)
4) I have read on the linuxdevices page that there is also a bootable iso CD for x86 but could not find it. Could you give me its url ?
1) We use a Nokia kernel for the n800 rather than a mainline one we use for the other devices and we therefore use the version Nokia released.
2) Could be better could be worse. Wifi won't work with the released images but we have ideas to sort that in the future. Currently, if you build the image yourself you can make wifi work by copying a file in but we can't distribute the result. On the power management front, the device will suspend/resume if you run "apm -s" but that isn't hooked to the power button. These issues are why its marked experimental.
3) We have no java support in Poky as standard. I'm not sure what the status of java is in OE but if it worked there it would be easy to make it work in Poky too.
4) There isn't an iso image released at the moment but poky can generate them which is a new feature, the linuxdevices article got that confused.
