Here’s a quick video I put together while learning to use the video cam (you’ll notice that pretty soon) This is just a basic demonstration of how the Maemo 5 alpha SDK runs on the BeagleBoard. Sorry about the video quality, I’ll make a better one from the eventual Maemo 5 Beta release.. promise!

Check out the Maemo on BeagleBoard site for more information.

Cheers,

Juha

After the release of the Maemo 5 alpha SDK, I’ve been working between my other duties on getting it running on the BeagleBoard. The Maemo on BeagleBoard project site has today been updated to include instructions for anyone to do the same.

BeagleBoard running the Maemo 5 alpha Application manager

The alpha SDK has released some content in the form of closed binaries. You are required to accept an EULA to gain access to the closed content and that means a ready-made rootfilesystem cannot be offered as a part of this project.

Instead a full set of instructions on how to build your own rootfilesystem using the Scratchbox1 based SDK is provided. The kernel image and modules are available for download and the kernel build process is documented. I’m not entirely happy with not providing a ready-made rootfs, but the closed binaries prohibit me from doing so. I hope you can understand this.

The provided kernel is buildable from the Maemo 5 alpha kernel sources (2.6.28) plus a sizeable patch which reimplements the display subsystem for BeagleBoard. The dss2 patches originate from the Ångström distribution’s efforts available in the OpenEmbedded git, but within this project they are provided as one file.

The project’s default kernel configuration includes modules for USB HID, USB ethernet devices and USB mass storage devices. This means that you can use a mouse,  a keyboard, a USB-Ethernet plug or even a USB hard disk with your Maemo powered BeagleBoard — if you also have a powered USB hub, that is.

I was able to install packages from the Fremantle extras-devel repository directly to the BeagleBoard using apt-get. Someone had already uploaded a fun puzzle game Hex-a-Hop and it runs perfectly on this setup

Cheers,

Juha