Episode: 187
Title: HPR0187: Maemo
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0187/hpr0187.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 13:13:41

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music
This is Riddlebox and I have on with me, JCA, how are you guys doing?
And today we're going to, JCA is going to tell me about MAMO and the MAMO project.
So I get, what's that?
At least I'm going to try.
Yeah, you can do it better than I can.
So I guess first, you want to just give a general description of MAMO and what it is?
Sure.
So MAMO basically is a platform that Nokia created for their devices.
That's the M770 or Internet tablet.
And then they created the new version, the N800 and the N810, which they're all Internet
tablet PC devices that run Linux.
And they run a subset of some of the tools that you will find on the GNOME desktop, but
they were modified for the specific specs of the device and they call it MAMO.
So this just specifically runs on the Nokia N8 series, right?
Nothing else.
Well, actually there's been some rumors about some UMPCs, UMPCs, ultra mobile PCs that
have MAMO, one of them is most of them, they're done in Asia and they're not really well-recognized
France or mostly like hardware labs that have been able to create an adopt MAMO in their
devices.
So what is one of the great things about MAMO?
Well, one of the things is that basically when Nokia said that they wanted to get into
the embedded Linux space.
But this is also very interesting.
Very interesting in the sense that Linux has been really strong on the embedded space.
There's not a single month that you don't see any new device coming with Linux embedded.
So when Nokia got, or Nokia got behind the project of trying to come up with an embedded
Linux system, it really resounds across the open source sphere.
And there was a lot of people that were excited about it.
They initially started with, also it was very interesting because they actually stand
behind devian, which also was, I guess, a very big victory for a lot of Linux users because
traditionally companies, big companies will ignore the devian space and either they will
create their own Linux distro or they will adopt some of the embedded Linux, commercial
embedded Linux like Montavista Linux.
And I think there was another one.
I can't remember the name now.
But basically, what they actually announced, they were going to work with the community
and they choose devian, a lot of people were happy about it.
Also they choose the GTK toolkit, which is the toolkit that people in the GNOME desktop
and XSE and others use as the core widgets or the core toolkit for their GUIs.
That also create a lot of vibrant noise across the internet.
And you will see Planet GNOME, a lot of developers start getting hired in Nokia and just devoted
to work on improving the toolkit and adapting the toolkit to the device.
The result was a great device.
It actually won a lot of awards and a lot of recognition.
When it was launched, I think it was launched in 2006.
I think 2006 was the year that in 2007 it was launched and it won a lot of devices, gadgets
of the year award.
I think Engagit also gave it the award as the device of the year.
It was pretty interesting times for the Linux people.
Now, since MAMO is built from the Linux kernel and devian and GNOME and stuff,
does it run a lot of the normal apps that are out there or do you have to get them compiled for that platform?
Well, yes, most people, because the N770 came with an ARMAL or with a strong ARM processor.
It wouldn't be a regular Intel processor.
In the very beginning, you didn't have many options to code from on the repository.
So the repository was very small.
But there were workarounds and one of the early workarounds was using Slackware.
So there was a repository for Slack packages on Slackware ARM.
So all the packages into that repository were encoded for the strong ARM processor.
You could download the Slackware installer and install it on your distro and it will run.
So you get all the sort of you got a larger repository and you will be able to get Apache.
You will be able to get WGET and all these kind of well-friendly Linux tools.
And it was fun times from that point.
Then the devian packages actually became larger and larger and more people start contributing.
And most people were realizing that they just really just need to download the source code,
ring code on the ARMAL processor.
And that was all they need to do as far as tinkering goes to adapt the application to the N770 platform.
So I guess one of the things was that they were very Linux compliant.
And do you own a 770 or 810 or?
Yes, I actually own a couple.
I own the 770 and the N800.
I didn't really jump into the N810 just because I didn't see much upgrade from the N800 to the N810.
However, my brother got an N810.
And he's liking it and it's a little bit improved, it's better processing power.
And it has an internal memory card.
However, one of the big things that the N810 brings is a built-in keyboard,
which a lot of people thought that was very useful.
Although, after using N770 and N800, I got really well used to the virtual keyboard with the stylus.
And I got pretty fast, so I guess I don't miss the real hard work keyboard after all.
How was the community around the MAMO project?
Is it pretty big or is it still pretty small?
Actually, it's grown quite a bit.
A lot of people, you see the forums being very active.
So one of the best spots to go is a website devoted to as well, MAMO.org,
but also there has been a lot of fan or, I guess, fan sites.
And internet tablet talk is one of them.
And they have actually got really big.
The forum is pretty active, and a lot of people are constantly talking about how to hack their N800 or N810.
I found a lot of tips there, and I would encourage people to go and visit it.
There's also the weekies on MAMO.org, and there's also a garage, which garage is basically like a source forge.
It's a type of environment just for people that want to join in, open an account.
They will have all the source forge tools that they will usually use,
and then can use it to develop their own application for the N800.
And they also have IRC channel, and I see on their website they have tutorials and some documentation.
And there is a section in there for repositories.
Now the website is being really slow, so I can't see.
Is there a lot of extra repositories that you can add to it and get any different software?
Yeah, so they actually come a couple of times in a year with a new version of the upgrade,
the kernel, they patch the system.
And they have different repositories from those versions.
And you can see it up in pool.propository.mmo.org.
And that's one of the places that you can go to find all the different repositories for MAMO.
On the week, there's also a lot of help to get the extra repositories.
You can also get the alpha versions from the rash.
So packages that have not yet made it into the repository,
but some of them, because like I said, sometimes people just recompile,
and that's all they need to do to adopt it to MAMO.
You can actually take a little bit of chance with the alpha,
and install it on your N800 and run with it.
Now, the one thing I do remember hearing about everything with the N700,
the Nokia 770 and the N800, was you had to flash it to upgrade it, is that right?
And now, I guess with Diablo, you don't have to do that anymore?
Yeah, that's basically one of the very first requisites by the users.
They say like, I usually install Linux.
I just do an upgrade or an upgrade or something similar.
However, because it's an actual device and an embedded device,
they deal it by using frameworks.
So you will flash your memory, will install the new firmware,
and in the firmware, the actual OS will come with.
Like you said, well, actually Diablo tries to change that.
That would be kind of like the last distribution,
or actually the last version of the MAMO platform that you need to install by flashing the device.
But yeah, personally, I have not had any problems flashing the device.
It's a very quick and easy process.
It's just a new process, I guess many people were not welcoming
because the thing is that you lose your data.
It's not like you will partition, and it will just erase your root partition.
It will actually take out the whole memory.
Sometimes you'll have to migrate all your data to an external SD card,
and then flash it, and then restore the backup.
But I actually never lose any big information.
I did that, and it went without any problems, basically.
That's always good.
I know as soon as someone talks about flashing firmware,
everybody freaks out.
I still haven't updated my bios on my desktop because I'm just nervous.
These devices, you know, I'm looking at a picture on Wikipedia.
They're small.
I always pictured them as being big and bulky,
but they look like they're pretty small.
Yeah, they're pretty awesome.
Actually, my dad has an iPhone, and I have it in the iPhone.
It's basically the same size.
It's a little bit bigger than the 800,
but then again, if you look at it,
this is an internet tablet, and it has around speakers.
But the iPhone has this really tiny speaker hidden,
and it's just unfunctional,
while the other ones have like polygram kind of speakers,
or exterior speakers.
So they're pretty awesome.
You can just turn it on and listen to everything.
And what kind of software comes by default with it?
Well, so this is a natural end-user device.
It's marketed to end-users,
and it's not planning to be geeky.
So some of the stuff of the stack applications
might not be very exciting to many geeks.
So it's basically an image viewer, a browser,
note-taking application,
and the whole configuration stack.
And I think there was also another thing.
No command lines, for example,
no emulators, video game emulators,
or whatever.
It's just very, very bare bones.
And for people that are not geeks,
actually the coolest thing would be the video chat application
that will integrate with the Java,
they have a negative Java client for IM
and video chatting,
a video conferencing.
And also they have a Skype client,
which also is pretty good for both people.
So it's got a microphone built in.
Does it have like a headset port?
Yeah, no, no.
Standard headset port.
You can just plug in your headset and speak right through.
The mic is built in.
It's very good quality.
It's pretty good.
Like, for example, you go to a 20-cafe around the corner
that has an open Wi-Fi,
and you're just basically doing your work
and talking to the device,
and then you're talking to, I don't know,
two or three people that you're doing conferencing,
and you're just there talking to the device.
It's pretty handy.
It's pretty geeky, also.
Yeah, it's right on par with the Tripoli PC,
but Tripoli PC is a little bit bigger.
Right.
And this is like, you know, like conference call,
you can just put it on the table,
because speakers are pretty good.
You can actually listen to the conversation
without having to device holding your hand
and put it on your head or whatever.
The display is actually pretty good.
You can watch right now.
Now, once you get the reposts,
and once you start looking at all the things
that you can get,
there's a whole bunch of stuff.
You get the X-Term,
you get the MC,
me and my commander.
You got all the N-curse applications,
VNC, so you can VNC into your desktop,
or you're laptop,
you have SSH,
you have SSTP.
Everything that you expect from a Linux distro,
you actually have SCUMVN,
which is a video game emulator.
You can have a Game Boy emulator.
It's pretty awesome.
It will blew your mind once you get all the applications
that have been around for 800 nowadays.
I can say that one of my favorites
is also a WordPress client.
I mean, a WordPress client,
so you can block offline,
and when you get a hotspot,
it will just sync it to your block,
which is pretty cool.
That is nice.
I've heard, like, some people
have mapped out keys and stuff for emulators
and for maim and stuff,
so that you can actually download it
and install it on the N800,
and it's right out of the box,
ready to play with, you know,
in the most comfortable position and stuff.
Right, so the N800,
they have a pad on the side of the screen,
and it can work basically,
like if you were playing some kind of game gear,
Game Boy device, PSP device,
so I have to use it,
and of course,
it's not the most perfect pad
because it's not built for playing video games,
but it's quite useful, I mean, it's usable,
and you can have a very good fun playing with it.
I can say that they also have a YouTube client,
so if you can do the actual application,
it's built as it was like the YouTube website,
and you can get the most views button,
and all these other buttons
that you will see on the website,
and you can just browse,
it will download the YouTube video,
you can either save it to your device,
or stream it right through.
It also has a KM player,
it has M player,
and it has all the supports
that you expect from M player,
to play MOV quick time,
and all the different formats.
And a KM player,
there's actually a World 99 TV,
or World TV 99,
as you get all these channels
from all these countries,
you have a global TV guide,
you can just go to France,
and watch French TV,
or either odd places that,
I don't know, Georgia,
or Romania,
or South Africa,
it's really, really, really geeky.
Hey, I'm watching a Thai MTV, for example.
That's pretty funny.
Yeah, I'm watching it,
but can't understand any of it.
Right.
Well, that's pretty neat.
I think the whole thing is,
you know, the whole project
is looking pretty nice.
Yes, and if you have a chance,
or anybody has a chance to go
and take a look at the garage,
the garage.memo.org,
there are some amazing projects,
and some of the developers
is a one-man operation,
and they'll be gladly to,
you know, you can just join them
and use your skills,
and you can actually learn a lot
in developing software for the memo,
and the cool part is that,
your knowledge that you get
developing for memo,
you can actually fly it later on
to the Linux desktop.
So, most of the development
is, like, for example,
pie memo,
which is almost the same as pie GTK,
and it's the combination of Python,
with GTK.
So, if you can get that narrowed down
and become a good developer
for pie memo,
it will be really simple
just to start coding applications
on the desktop.
So, there's a lot of push-off,
new and very creative applications
that use some of the specific things
on the device,
like the pressure points
of the stylus
that you might not find
in the desktop,
necessarily, with the mouse,
but most of the things
are transferable.
I mean, so,
the widgets, the windows,
the interface,
it might change the interface,
but at least the code,
the engine will be the same.
And we're getting new,
exciting things,
like, for example,
an open document viewer
in my memo,
an office suite
develops specifically for memo,
with Diablo,
a lot of new tools came,
like, came,
came of age.
So, for example,
we have,
it's not evolution,
really, it's more like,
you know,
calendar,
but it's a very
evolution-like interface,
and it will connect
with Google Calendar,
so you can sync your,
your memo calendar,
with,
which is a GTK-based calendar,
with,
with Google Calendar.
So,
that's also pretty cool,
as you merge the Web2.0
with the mobile device.
It looks like right now,
they have a 685 projects
on garage.memo.org.
Yeah, that's quite cool.
So, yeah,
it looks like,
it's pretty popular.
Yeah, that's right.
And I will,
I guess,
I mean,
college students
that might be hearing this podcast
want to do a project
as a,
as a graduation,
or,
you know, just to get the degree,
I mean,
this device may actually
be a perfect fit.
There's a lot of people
starting to innovate,
I've seen YouTube videos
that they just blew up my mind.
I mean, the projects
are becoming so geeky
and complex at the same time,
that it's like,
you will never think
that this device
will be working for,
for this kind of application.
So, for example,
I saw a guy that was using
his name on YouTube
to,
as a universal remote controller.
So, he was able to manage,
like, five different PCs
on the network,
and being able to monitor
the traffic of the packages
between the PCs.
So, he was using the memo
as a visualizer
of the packages.
I was pretty geeky.
Yeah, I've heard of people
that have,
somebody made a,
like a remote control
for myth TV,
so you could control it
over your wireless network,
you know,
and do that.
Yeah, actually,
there is a project in name
of repo called
myth,
myth remote,
or myth mod.
So, it's basically that,
it's how to get an interface
to control your myth TV.
Yeah, the figure,
myth TV would come
into the project
sometime.
Yeah, it's also a,
a lot of developer
for the device,
for mobile devices.
So, one of the down things,
a lot of people say,
oh, well,
it's not really
what I was looking for,
because they say,
Nokia, they think phones,
however,
this device is not a phone.
It's a,
I guess it's an internet phone,
because it has,
Githmo,
and it has,
Skype on it,
but it's not really a regular
3G network phone,
but it will connect to the phone,
and there's a lot of projects
that are also involved,
using your phone
in, in conjunction
with an 800,
via the Bluetooth chipset.
So, you will connect
a phone,
use the tablet
as an interface
to type your text messages
and even control
other parts of most of the phones
that.
So, you will download
the calendar,
I mean, not the calendar,
but the
list of contacts,
and you can call them
straight from the
800.
So, the phone will be just like,
basically, I guess,
the chipset,
like an API,
kind of a setup.
And most things
are going to voice over IP anyway,
so it will probably,
you know,
slowly get better and better.
Yes, and the quality
is awesome, also,
on the 800.
Like I said,
I used it in a noisy
coffee place,
and the person that was
listening to the conversation
on the other end,
she was bringing press.
She was like,
oh, I thought you were
at home.
There was a really good
noise cancellation
engine on the
800.
Well, that
sounds
I'm sold, I think.
I'm going to have to
go buy one now.
Yeah, you should.
Actually, what I heard
is that there
are selling
an 800s for $150
up in eBay.
Does it
cause an a 10-thousand?
So, they're really,
really, really inexpensive.
If you know,
and if you have the patience
to look for one
up on the eBay
and all these other sites,
you might be able
to get one pretty cheap.
And there's rumors
of the next version,
the N900,
and they have,
there's still a lot of
vaporware around that,
but it seems that a lot of things
are going to migrate,
and this is one
of the controversies,
I guess.
But they're migrating
to QT because, well,
Nokia,
but troll tech,
which is the people
that use QT,
two-kit,
or framework,
and they're migrating
a lot of stuff to KDE.
So now, I guess, they're
turning and hiring a lot
of KDE developers
to port some of the KDE applications
into the N800.
And the latest was that,
I think, K-Office
was already running
on the N800.
Or, I think it was the N810, actually.
So, they have
created this
graphic application,
and KXE was also
running on the N810.
So, I was pretty awesome
because now you're getting a lot
of the best of both worlds,
now you're getting a lot of KDE
and QT type applications.
Another thing that they were
also innovating was
on the browser.
So, at the beginning,
we have Opera Mini,
which was, well, basically,
Opera the browser,
which is very prevalent
in the embedded space.
So, all your Nokia
cell phones will have
the Opera browser.
However, they switch
and they switch
to a browser called MicroB.
MicroB is basically
a small embedded form factor
browser,
like Firefox.
So, it will use Gecko,
it will use the,
it will act as Firefox,
but then again,
downpoint is that
some of the essentials
were not really built
as compatible
with the MicroB browser.
It was a very good
stable browser.
And now,
what they're trying to do
is they want to innovate
once again and migrate
to WebKit.
So, they want to have a
WebKit-based browser
for the next version
of the Nokia tablet family.
All right, well,
I'm pretty much out of question,
so.
Well, like I said,
if people want to learn
about getting in touch
with the MAMO people,
go to MAMO.org,
and go to visit the wiki,
and also Google
for Internet tablet talk,
which is the premiere form
for the MAMO users.
And if you don't have
yourself a MAMO
or at any hundred device,
go to eBay
and try to get it for cheap.
And I bet you're definitely
going to enjoy it.
I guess the big comparison is,
well, what about the iPhone?
And the iPhone has been overexposed
for so many years.
Well, since it came out,
however, like I said,
my dad has an iPhone,
and I haven't any hundred.
And I'm seeing that the iPhone,
well, really is all about,
it just represents what,
usually what commercial people
or commercial platform users
think about devices.
Like, oh, yeah,
this is so functional,
but each step of the functionality
you have to spend money on it.
And even if it's a dollar
or if it's two dollars,
it's cheap or whatever,
you still have to, like,
well, you cannot see
the source code of the applications.
You can only, you know,
tinker with things
that companies provide to you
or developers provide to you.
And you're just, you know,
trapped in these, well,
consumerism that you need to get
more applications
and you need to pay for those applications.
And then your iPhone goes
to crap because it has
so many applications
that start crashing all the time,
while the A800 on the other side,
well, it is the open field
of going into a project,
opening the source code,
getting really easy languages
to learn, like Python,
and tweak and start playing around
with your own development.
So, for example,
I went to Sweden
earlier this year
and just like a couple of days
before I start getting my
first Pi GTK application,
that will transform from
Crohn's, which is the currency
in Sweden, to euros two dollars
so I can know the dollar amount
of whatever I need to buy there.
And I just did it myself
and I was pretty proud about it.
And I didn't, I didn't need
to go and ask Apple for permission
so I can develop
or jailbreak my iPhone
or whatever to be able
to develop for my A800.
So, this is the freedom
that we're usually used to
if you're a Linux user,
but it's also amazing
that you can start applying
to embedded devices
that you buy it
and in a certain,
I guess you can use it
to a certain level,
but once you get all the
developers in,
it just explodes
into these multi-purpose
devices that can do anything.
So, I guess that will be my
closing speech
about getting an A800
and speaking of a memo.
All right, well,
I guess that's it then.
Great, awesome.
So, send you guys an email
if you guys have questions
at jca at openoffice.org.
You can send me your comments
and also there are things
that you want us to talk about.
This is our second episode
and I hope you guys enjoy it.
Yep, and you can reach me
at jamesatnigmatech.com.
Thank you for listening
to Hack the Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by
kero.net,
so head on over to
LRO.int for all of us here.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for watching.