Internet Tablet OS:

Maemo is similar to many handheld operating systems, and features a "Home" screen—the central point from which all applications and settings are accessed. The Home Screen is divided into areas for launching applications, a menu bar, and a large customisable area that can display information such as an RSS reader, Internet radio player, and Google search box for example.

Usage

Maemo's default screen is the "Home" screen—the central point from which all applications and settings are accessed. The Home Screen is divided into the following areas:

The interface uses either the touch screen, or a directional pad and select button, with separate back, menu, and home buttons. It is capable of two modes of text input: handwriting recognition, and two different sizes of onscreen keyboard, as well as hardware keyboard input with the N810 and N810 WiMAX Editon.^[1]

Maemo provides the Mozilla-based MicroB web-browser with complete Adobe Flash support, which can operate over a wireless connection. It supports an 800x480 display resolution, so many web pages can be viewed without horizontal scrolling. It can automatically connect to known wireless networks and download RSS feeds and email and disconnect automatically without user intervention.^[2]

Software is all installed or uninstalled using the Application manager. Users can subscribe to different software repositories which can then be used to automatically keep software up to date. The Application manager also provides an overview of everything currently installed on the system. Data can be synchronized with a PC via a USB connection, and the users files can be accessed using the standard Removable Storage Device protocol.^[2]

Features

Updating

Maemo devices can be updated using a simple flashing method with a computer over USB. This is done by

The tablet doesn't load the OS but instead enters a flashing mode, where it receives the firmware image from the computer, and erases and rewrites its flash.

The current release of OS2008, Diablo, supports "Seamless Software Update" (SSU), which allows incremental operating system upgrades "over the air" using APT without the need for a full flash with every update.^[4]

Flashing remains available as a way to start over from scratch with a clean install (much like formatting your hard drive and reinstalling your OS on a PC).^[5]

Security

The quick start guide for developers warns that Maemo security concentrates on preventing remote attacks (e.g. by wireless networking and Bluetooth). In particular, it warns that Maemo makes use of a root account, but has a trivial default password.^{[citation needed]}

Independent of the root password, Maemo provides a way to lock the device's controls and display with a numeric access code to help prevent casual access.^[6]

Components

BusyBox, a software package for embedded and mobile devices, replaces the GNU Core Utilities used in Debian-proper to reduce memory usage and storage requirements (at the expense of some functionality).^[9]

ESD is used as the primary sound server, and GStreamer is used by the shipped media player to play back sounds and movies. The formats supported by GStreamer can be extended by compiling GStreamer plugins in scratchbox (Maemo SDK), which was done, for example, to bring Ogg support to the platform.^[10] 3rd party media players can access GStreamer directly or via "osso-media-server".^{[citation needed]}

Although Maemo implements preemptive multitasking, the Matchbox window manager limits the screen to showing a single window at a time, although the home page allows multiple applications to have visible representation, and the system bar icons are dynamic allowing some display of live activity.

Despite being based on Linux and open source software in general, some parts of the Maemo remain closed source. Particularly the Wifi drivers, which contain a binary blob, and some user-space software, like certain statusbar and taskbar applets (including the display brightness applet) and applications.^{[citation needed]}

Software

Maemo comes with a number of built-in applications, but additional applications can be installed from a number of sources, including various official and community software repositories and deb files through either the built-in package manager "Application manager" or apt and dpkg.

Third-party applications

Due in part to the free and open source nature of Linux and Maemo, porting applications to Maemo is a straightforward procedure. Because of this, there are many third-party applications available for the platform. Some applications are original software written specifically for Maemo, while other applications are straight ports of existing Linux programs. Some notable software includes:

Filetype support

Software development

Software can be developed in C using the Maemo SDK, in Java which is supported by the Jalimo JVM,^[12] in Python, and in Ruby.

The Maemo SDK is based around the Debian-oriented Scratchbox Cross Compilation Toolkit, which provides a sandbox environment in which development may take place. Scratchbox uses Qemu to emulate an ARMEL processor or sbrsh to remotely execute instructions. Scratchbox-compatible rootstraps are available for both x86 and ARMEL, so the majority of development and debugging takes place on x86, with final packaging being for ARMEL.^[13]

Hardware

The Maemo is designed for Nokia Internet Tablets, which feature very similar specifications to Nokia's high-end N-series and E-series cellphones, with TI OMAP ARM SoCs, large screens, and expandable internal storage.^[14] Although the highly-optimized, hardware-specific nature of Maemo means running all of it on non-Internet Tablet hardware would be very difficult, most of the important non-proprietary parts of the OS and some of the available 3rd party applications are actively being packaged for Debian and are available for use on other distributions, which will open up a large range of other hardware options.^[15]

Version history

OS2005

Shipped with the 770 in November 2005, this is the original Internet Tablet OS. It came bundled with the Opera web browser, Flash 6, basic Email and RSS clients, audio and video players, PDF and image viewers, a graphical APT front-end (dubbed simply "Application manager"), and a variety of simple games and utilities.^[16]

OS2006

On May 16, 2006 Nokia announced a new version of Internet Tablet OS,^[17] which was subsequentially released as a beta version for the 770 on June 9, 2006 and as a final on June 20, 2006.^[18] The update featured improved performance and stability, a built-in Google Talk client, a refreshed look, and a new full-screen finger keyboard. Because of significant API and architecture changes, existing applications required recompiling. It is the last officially supported Internet Tablet OS release for the 770.

Also included was the ability to support 2GB RS-MMC cards (formatted FAT). The Linux kernel was upgraded to 2.6.16 with the associated patches for the OMAP platform. This new version uses kernel preemption for improved interactivity.

OS2007

OS2007 was released and bundled with the N800 on January 8th, 2007 after its announcement at the Las Vegas CES 2007 summit. It featured significant bug fixes and performance improvements in almost all areas of the OS, bringing updated versions of Opera 8 and Flash 7, an updated interface and various API and library updates.

OS2008

OS2008 was released with the N810 in November 2007, based on Linux 2.6.21, and featuring MicroB, a new Mozilla-based web browser that replaces Opera, integrated Samba file sharing and additional support for Windows Media Player Formats and H.264, improved support for USB devices,^[19]^[20] among other incremental UI improvements (particularly in the direction of finger-friendliness).^[21] CPU frequency scaling (between 165 MHz and 400MHz) was also implemented, which gave the N800 a 70 MHz speed increase.^[22]

Diablo

Diablo is the codename for the OS2008 Feature Upgrade (corresponding to Maemo 4.1).,^[23] released in June 2008.^[24] Major features include significant improvements to the built-in Application manager, incremental operating system upgrades without reflashing ("Seamless Software Update", SSU), Modest as the default mail client, and a new version of the MicroB browser with more optimizations and some interface improvements (though still based on the same Gecko release as Chinook's MicroB).^[25]^[26]

SSU

SSU, in particular, is one of the most significant parts of the Diablo release, as it eliminates the flash-based upgrade system of previous Maemo releases which required the user to completely wipe their device with each upgrade. With SSU, the user can receive "over-the-air" updates to the live system. This also decouples bundled software updates from the major system updates as was required with the flash-based method, so Nokia can release more frequent updates to individual packages than before.^[27]

The first SSU update was pushed on August 11th, 2008, and brought Diablo up to version 4.2008.30-2. The update primarily features MicroB, Modest, and connectivity framework updates as well as a number of other minor bugfixes.

Hacker Editions

Nokia's release of the N800 in January 2007 brought Internet Tablet OS 2007. OS2007 ran only on the N800 and Nokia initially had no plans to release it for the 770; however feedback from disgruntled 770 owners^[28] led Nokia to release an unsupported hybrid of OS2006 and OS2007, dubbed Internet Tablet OS 2007 Hacker Edition, in February 2007.^[29] OS2007HE combined the binary parts of OS2006 with most of the updated libraries and user-space applications of OS2007.

Nokia followed the release of the N810 and OS2008 in November 2007 with the OS2008 Hacker Edition for the 770 on February 14th, 2008, following a similar method to the OS2007HE release to create a hybrid between OS2006 and OS2007. The Hacker Editions allow 770 users to access the latest Internet Tablet OS releases and 3rd party software, although due to the 770's hardware limitations and the increased CPU requirements of OS2008, performance is inferior to that of OS2007 HE in most areas.^[30]

Alternative desktops

In addition to the officially supported Hildon environment that comes standard on the tablets, several alternate desktop systems are available. Penguinbait, a member of the Internet Tablet Talk community, has successfully ported KDE 3,^[31] Openbox,^[32] and XFCE^[33] to the N800 and N810 (the 770 is able to run an early version of the KDE port). KDE 4 is being ported at the present time.^[34] Also, Google's Android (mobile device platform) has been run on the N800 and N810 tablets.^[35]

Future

Fremantle

Fremantle is the current codename for what is expected to become Maemo 5.0.^[23] At this point no major information is known about this software or the hardware upon which it will run. The release is likely to feature a much more finger-friendly and consistent UI, and an X-server based on Xorg rather than KDrive^[36]^[37] Current community speculation is that this new release will run on a Texas Instruments OMAP3 SoC and provide significant enhancements in areas of speed, 3D acceleration, and media playback.^[38] The release will also bring community-supported Qt libraries alongside GTK.^[39]

Harmattan

Little is known about Harmattan except for the plans to bundle officially supported Qt libraries with it, as well as improved power profiles.^[40]

In January 2008, Nokia began the process of acquiring Trolltech, the developer of the Qt GUI toolkit. Nokia has since announced plans for the Qt libraries to be bundled with Maemo by Q4 2008, though without a platform-specific "hildonized" UI as is offered with GTK (meaning Qt applications will look different from hildonized GTK ones).^[41]^[42] This will make porting of Qt applications to the platform easier for developers and make new applications available to users. Qt support on S60 devices will likely lead to cross-platform application sharing between the two platforms.^[43]^[44] The announcement has met with mixed reaction in the developer community.^[45]^[46]

Release history

Internet Tablet OS

Contents