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Root Debian dualboot

Hi all,

I played with Debian on my Galaxy. See video here and wiki/project here. It is a dual-boot system, but I use android's init to boot Debian, just removing android's services and adding things like 'startx', so you may say it is not a true Debian. It runs matchbox and LXDE.

I got this idea that it is possible to use Android's middleware, i.e. RIL, but run a custom desktop environment on top of it. I was looking at other environments like various openmoko distributions and maemo, but was not particularly impressed by any of them, so this question is open - do we need an alternative pure linux (no java) Debian compatible etc etc distribution for Android-based phone? And if yes, how should it look like?

I tried to write my own dialer application using different kits: GTK+/C, GTK+/Python, QT/C++, QT/Python, but could not make anything particularly worth looking at (I am poor designer anyway). However it seems that making it talk to the RIL daemon is not a big problem. Side note: Python versions occupied 14 Mb of RAM, C version only 7 Mb.

A possible advantages of such a system as I see it:


  1. Developing such a thing would let us (the community) have much better control of how things look like and behave on the phone.
  2. Compatibility between different phone models: we are using middleware/drivers provided by google/manufacturer which may be hardware dependent but our system should be not
  3. Decreasing dependence on Google, Samsung and others - the middleware/drivers ,I believe, is only a small part of the Andoid compared with the whole dalvik/framework/apps pile. Dalvik/framework/apps, although is open source, is developed by other companies with their own interests, which are not always the same as interests of us, customers and developers. It seems having something community-driven is a good thing.
  4. We have a freedom to use different programming languages. I find developing in python very fast. Someone may prefer C++ over Java.
  5. It would be possible to use a lot of open source code.
Please, tell me your thoughts on this and, especially, what you think should be done next.
 
well i havent a clue on how you would start to do it
not only that but no one else has mentioned it for the galaxy at least.

mer/meego looks interesting although it seems to prefer landscaped small screens
Yeah, I spent some time on trying to get Hildon (desktop manager from maemo) running, it is in debian repository btw, but it looks weird. The launch panel on the left occupies almost half of the screen.
 
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Nice, another one. I installed debian like 6 month ago on the galaxy but i gave up at one point. Mine was never running x, but at least i knew it works ;)

Kudos for dualbooting and LXDE. Thats pretty cool tho.

Well, after installing debian in the usual way (the way you probably did), with xserver-xorg-video-fbdev, you can almost type "startx" and it would work. The only problem is the double-buffer configuration of framebuffer which is used by Android. But this is fixable by changing a couple of lines in kernel sources, which are available from Samsung.
 
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gaosp project really needs you! anybody interested in and able to make galaxy better should first put all his efforts in there...
I suspected you mean gaosp. Well may be I should give it a try. Hopefully I get some new ideas and commit some fixes along the way. By the way, my Galaxo installation got buggy recently, may be because I messed up some things - so I was planning to reinstall it anyway.
 
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Anyone knows what causing this error?

Code:
tolis@tolis-laptop:~/Desktop/drakaz-GalaxoKernel-be86979$ sudo patch -p1 < fix
patching file drivers/video/msm/msm_fb.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 225 with fuzz 1 (offset 21 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 344 with fuzz 2 (offset 74 lines).
patching file drivers/video/msm/panel/mddi/mddi_toshiba_smd.c
Hunk #1 FAILED at 1711.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file drivers/video/msm/panel/mddi/mddi_toshiba_smd.c.rej
 
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Anyone knows what causing this error?
Yeah, sorry, I made the patch for linux 2.6.29 and you are probably trying to compile 2.6.27, but the problem can be easily solved anyway. Just open this file

Code:
drivers/video/msm/panel/mddi/mddi_toshiba_smd.c

go to the very end and find the line

Code:
pinfo->fb_num = 2;

Change 2 -> 1 and that's it.
 
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Yeah, sorry, I made the patch for linux 2.6.29 and you are probably trying to compile 2.6.27, but the problem can be easily solved anyway. Just open this file

Code:
drivers/video/msm/panel/mddi/mddi_toshiba_smd.c
go to the very end and find the line

Code:
pinfo->fb_num = 2;
Change 2 -> 1 and that's it.
The problem remains.
Can u upload the patched image?
 
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The problem remains.
Can u upload the patched image?
You see, patch modifies kernel source code. When you run the patch and get
Code:
Hunk #1 succeeded at 225 with fuzz 1 (offset 21 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 344 with fuzz 2 (offset 74 lines).
patching file drivers/video/msm/panel/mddi/mddi_toshiba_smd.c
Hunk #1 FAILED at 1711.
It was supposed to patch two files. The first file had 2 modifications Hunk #1 and Hunk #2 and they were successful. The second file had one modification, but the patch program could not make the modification. I just told you how to make that last modification yourself without using the patch program. Now, after you made that final modification you don't need the patch anymore, the source is ready you may compile and use it.
 
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Yeah, I spent some time on trying to get Hildon (desktop manager from maemo) running, it is in debian repository btw, but it looks weird. The launch panel on the left occupies almost half of the screen.

You shouldn't use hildon-desktop, but hildon-thumbnail

apt-get remove lxde
apt-get remove hildon-desktop
apt-get install hildon-thumbnail
apt-get autoremove

that's just a suggestion.
 
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