My place to share some bits and bytes

Over the last days I did some changes to the SCMs for my private projects. Some got migrated from svn to git. Also some git repos changed the location. Please refer to the overview websites if you run into trouble:

http://svn.datenfreihafen.org/$PROJECT_NAME

http://git.datenfreihafen.org/

Since I left OpenMoko I have found some time to work on OpenEZX again. There are two nice things that happened since then.

The first one was that I got an 18bpp patch for all the second generation devices working. At least pxafb and fbcon are working fine now. I still need to test X more. :) The patch was from the gumstix patchset. Thank you guys.

The second was the boot_usb 0.2.0 release. We use this little tool a lot and SVN is stable most of the time. Especially after Daniel Ribeiro added support for initrd, commandline and setting the machine ID a release was needed.

Window mangers were always something I needed to switch after some time. I started with E16, had a short period with windowmaker, afterwards a long time with fluxbox and then gnome.

I switched to gnome because I liked to have a more integrated desktop. Having this smooth experience that all stuff just works. It turned out that it did not helped as much as I wanted it.

I don't use Evolution, I use mutt. I don't use the gnome-terminal, I use xterms. I think you get the picture. After looking more closely what stuff I really use from my gnome desktop there was not much left. Some app starter in the panel, 2-3 applets, well I think that's it.

As I have worked with the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries lately and I liked what I found I decided to give E17 a go. Fresh from CVS.

I now have just a small shelf, panel thingy, with 6 app starters, volume, time, date and battery gadgets / applets. Next to it a small stalonetray for systray icons. That's all.

I've won faster startup times, some small but nice eye-candy stuff. Not to much to distract me from work but enough to keep the joy of use.

Another big plus is the brand new tiling module. It makes window placement more efficient as it allows you to define how windows are placed on different virtual desktops. No more overlapping windows you have to place right yourself with a mice or similar. The whole space is used, nothing wasted. I use this for my hacking workspaces. Open more and more xterms and don't worry about a sane placement. Great. I wanted something like that since Harald showed me something similar with his ion3 setup on his laptop. :)

Mickey already blogged about it. This is something we talked about a lot lately. Sometimes frustrated sometimes with hope. It is something we never got right since the beginning.

Ease the development of new applications and services. Build your kick ass stuff on top of a good fundament. And if it does not give you what you need, extend it. It's not like other commercial frameworks where you have to deal with what you get. It's open, take it, extend it, send patches. :)

Let's hope the framework team get the resources they need for getting it done. I also have some private ideas how to contribute here. Once I have something ready I let you know.

As code is better then words, take a look at their git repos.