Ubuntu Wiki

Summary

This is a list of applications that will be used in the UME release:

TODO

• Review for style, accuracy and completeness.
• Package the applications.
• Add links to the games.

Applications

Browser

For the browser, Firefox will be used. There is already efforts to reduce its footprint and currently we are running an internal version. If we need to fit the browser into a very small profile machine a possible alternative is Opera. In a operational level, both are equivalent and can carry the same plugins.

The Maemo project just released a new browser, based on the gekko engine which is fully integrated into the hildon environment. Need to check it.

Plugins to be included

• Adobe Flash Player 9
• Adobe PDF Reader
• Java Runtime Environment (JRE)

• Media player. Currently it's being considered Helix. Possible option: mplayer.

Chosen

• Firefox derivative mid-browser.

Current status

• Hildonized - No
• Uploaded - Yes

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Dictionary

Stardict

Stardict seems to be the best option so far:

Advantages

• Small
• Fast
• Flexible
• Bidirectional
• Lot's of languages available.

Disadvantages

• The interface needs work for usability and to better fit Hildon.

Chosen

• Stardict.

Current status

• Hildonized - Yes
• Uploaded - Yes

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Email

Claws

The specification asks Thunderbird which is a great email application but I think that a better alternative is Claws which is a improved version of Sylpheed.

Advantages

• Lightweight
• Fairly complete
• It's already packed for Maemo so it's easy for us to integrate.
• There's a lot of plugins that we already have packaged like
  • news feed
  • basian filter
  • spamassassin
  • acpi notifier (to blink a led if an email arrives, for instance)
  • smime
  • clamav

Disadvantages

• None that I can point at this time.

Modest

Recently we were pointed to a new email client called Modest which will become (but, as far as I can tell, there's no official position on that) the new email application for Maemo.

Advantages

• It was created for Maemo so should be fairly easy for us to integrate.

Disadvantages

• It's still under heavy development;
• It was created to be very light, adequate to a more limited hardware platform;
• Don't have all the possibilities we have with Thunderbird or Claws and I understand that it will never have as it's not the project target.

Chosen

• Claws.

Current status

• Hildonized - Yes
• Uploaded - Yes

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Media Player

To be provided by Intel. It will use a simple frontend that will talk with Helix and gstreamer working as backends.

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Camera

There is video capture applications (like xawtv, camE), programs that can read, record and process V4L devices like mplayer and videolan which can also be used to process the stream in realtime using filters and programs like EffecTV, GePhex and snapshot applications like Camorama. I couldn't find a single application that could do what they want, so I think that we could use something like Camorama as base and add continous video processing. Maemo uses gstreammer as the backend and their camera applications (which is closed) talks to it.

• Possible applications: many (xawtv, camE, Camorama, mplayer, videolan).

Cheese

There is one application being developed for the Google Summer of Code called Cheese that can be very handy.

Advantages

• It can capture video streams and stills.
• Have a plugin system that can be used, and already is, to apply effects.
• Uses gstreamer as the backend.
• It's written in GTK.

Disadvantages

• It's not complete yet but going there fast.

Chosen

• Cheese.

Current status

• Hildonized - Yes
• Uploaded - Yes

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Ebook reader

FBReader

There's one FOSS champion: FBReader which is the one used by Maemo.

Advantages

• It can read a several formats like:
  • fb2 e-book format (style attributes are not supported yet).
  • HTML format (tables are not supported).
  • CHM format (tables are not supported).
  • plucker format (embedded images are supported, tables are not supported).
  • Palmdoc (aportis doc).
  • zTxt (Weasel format).
  • TCR (psion text) format.
  • RTF format (stylesheets and tables are not supported).
  • OEB format (CSS and tables are not supported).
  • epub format (OEB successor) (CSS and tables are not supported).

  • OpenReader format (css and tables are not supported).

  • Non-DRM'ed mobipocket format (tables are not supported).
  • Plain text format.

Disadvantages

• Can't read DRM'ed books which can be a problem to commercial applications.

  • MikhailSobolev: DRM formats are mostly proprietary and their specifications are usually very well closed

Mobipocket

A proprietary one, Mobipocket, seems to be an interesting option. They have a closed java lib that needs an UI. That's the way it's used in PepperPad.

Advantages

• It can handle DRM'ed ebooks.

Disadvantages

• There's a very limitated number of formats supported. Currently only OpenEBook (OEB) besides itself.

Others

Only for CHM there is alternatives like xchm and kchmviewer. Not very usefull anyway. There's others like dotReader but mostly based on its own format or use Palmdoc/plucker only.

Chosen

• FBreader.

Current status

• Hildonized - Yes
• Uploaded - Yes

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IM

Pidgin

Pidgin (formely known as Gaim) covers the specification out of the box with one exception, the Myspace IM protocol. There is a plugin in the works, still alpha quality but it is already able to:

• Sending and receiving instant messages
• Buddy list support (basic support only)
• Looking up user information (in Get Info and tooltip text)
• (Some) formatting of incoming instant messages

Chosen

• Intel's own IM application based on Telepathy.

Current status

• Hildonized - No
• Uploaded - Yes

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Video Conferencing

Ekiga

Ekiga is the preferred application in the specification.

Advantages

• It covers the specification already.
• It's a gnome application, so should not be difficult to integrate.
• Supports STUN.

Disadvantages

• It's know to be problematic sometimes.

wengophone

A current option for Ekiga is wengophone

Advantages

• It can also work also as a IM client.
• Using the Wengo service, calls to landlines and cellphones can be done.

Disadvantage

• Interface is based on Qt.

Chosen

• Ekiga.

Current status

• Hildonized - Partially
• Uploaded - No

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Office document viewer

Excluding PDF that can be read by Evince for instance, there is no FOSS software available to this kind of task but some very old filters or format converters that only could be used with very old Microsoft formats. At this moment I can foresee 2 possibilities related to FOSS software.

Include the appropriate filters into evince

Advantage

• Evince would become an universal viewer of sorts, handling all the viewing necessities in one place.

Disadvantage

• It would be quite some work to integrate, say, the Abiword filters into it.

Modify the Office package of choice to have a simplified, read only mode, therefor using the same application for view and edit files

Advantage

• I guess that would be an easier task than modify Evince.

Disadvantage

• It's inconvenient to load the office application just to view a file.

TextMaker Viewer

There will be a commercial product called TextMaker Viewer that fits very nicely but it does not exists yet and looks like to be based on Qt.

Chosen

• This issue will require, at least for now, a double solution. Evince should take care of the files with exception of MS Office format which will be handled by OpenOffice.

Current status

• Evince
  • Hildonized - Yes
  • Uploaded - No

• OpenOffice

  • Hildonized - No
  • Uploaded - No

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Casual Games

The specification asks for more action-packed games. Some suggestions, depending on the profile:

• All-time favorites

  • Pingus

  • SuperTuxCart

  • SuperTux

  • Planet Penguin Racer - Former Tux Racer and soon-to-be Extreme Penguin Racer

  • Frozen Bubble

• Card games

  • PySol

• Educational Games

  • GCompris

• If the machine can handle

  • Open Arena

  • Thunder&Lightning

• Emulator

  • ScummVM

There is a huge selection available. It is just a matter of choosing.

Tested Games

As a base for testing a Q1 Ultra was used which gave the opportunity for testing 3D games.

3D Games

• All the games were adjusted to run in full screen mode whenever possible.
• BZFlag - Worked very well after reducing a bit the graphical requirements, setting Smoothing to off and Lightning to Fast.
• Alien Arena - Barely playable unless the video features are very reduced.
• Armagetron Advanced - Works very well with the default settings.
• Billard-GL - Works very well with the default settings.
• Foobillard - Works very well with the default settings.
• Neverball and Neverputt (they are two different modes of the same game) - Playable with default settings, much smoother if the textures are reduced to low quality or reflection is turned off.
• Open Arena - Works well with default settings.
• Supertux - Works very well with the default settings.

• SuperTuxKart - Works very well with the default settings.

• Planet Penguin Racer - (former Tux Racer) - Works very well with the default settings.

2D Games

• Frozen Bubble - Works very well with the default settings.

Chosen

• In a first moment the games included will be Foobillard, Neverball and Neverputt (they are the same), Frozen bubble and gnudoku.

Current status

• Hildonized - No (not needed).
• Uploaded - Yes

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RSS reader

There's plenty of them available. The more suitable ones for our needs are Liferea and Straw. Both are quite equivalent but Liferea is starting to make incursions to integrate with blogs witch is an interesting feature. A second option is to use the one integrated into the email reader. Both Thunderbird and Claws suggested above can do it.

Chosen

• Liferea.

Current status

• Hildonized - No
• Uploaded - No

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Clock

This item is just a matter of choosing what gadget would fit better into the current home applet environment as the requirements are quite common except for the fact that it requires the clock to run full screen but this should not be difficult to achieve. The original Maemo's panel clock or this clock applet can do that. Another option is GPE's clock that is be an interesting option if the GPE PIM described below is chosen.

Chosen

• Intel's applet.

Current status

• Hildonized - Yes
• Uploaded - Yes

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PIM

The GPE can provide all the PIM needs easily. Some of the projects we can make use are:

• Contacts

• Calendar

• Sketchbook

• Voice Recorder

• Today

• Todo List

• Time Tracker

After further consideration, Pimlico was the chosen one.

Chosen

• Pimlico.

Current status

• Hildonized - Partially. There's still issues with Contacts.
• Uploaded - Yes

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Remote desktop client

Currently, we have tsclient which is a wrapper that actually runs rdesktop and vncviewer on demand. This covers the specification with the exception of the listed functions:

• Scaling an panning: needs to be implemented on the clients but, despite not in the upstream, this has being done before.
• Stylus to Mouse click conversion is a matter of choosing input methods. There is no consensus around this yet and some additional work might be necessary to give to the user a better visual feedback.

Note: see the VNC viewer project below.

Chosen

• Combination of tsclient and rdesktop.

Current status

• Hildonized - No
• Uploaded - No

VNC Viewer

Unlike the standard VNC viewer (and rdesktop) projects, which have not been ported to Hildon, the Maemo VNC viewer project is a fully Hildonized VNC viewer that was originally implemented for the Nokia Internet tablets. It is in the process of being ported for use on MIDs. A preliminary package for x86-based MIDs should be available shortly. For more information, go to the Maemo Garage site for VNC viewer.

Current status

• Hildonized - Yes
• Working - Yes
• Uploaded - No

Other suggestions - TBD

Learning Remote

LIRC is a package that allows you to decode and send infra-red signals of many (but not all) commonly used remote controls. The most important part of LIRC is the lircd daemon that will decode IR signals received by the device drivers and provide the information on a socket. It will also accept commands for IR signals to be sent if the hardware supports this.

The PepperPad Linux UMPC has a learning remote control, and it is popular.

Simple image manipulation

• Should this be integrated with the media player?

Offline blogging client

• Simple html-capable wysiwyg editor and posting tool (ftp and common blogging API's)

Voip client

• Should be the same used for video conference?
  • Ekiga
  • Twinkle

  • OpenWengo

GPS software / Navigation software

GeoClue seens to be a good starting point and there is a Maemo port already.

Quick voice/audio recorder/audio notetaker

Image posting client (flickr/windows image posting wizard)