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KDE 4 just got its first plasma game (I think)...
Introducing the most complex game ever:
The fifteen pieces puzzle!
Hours upon hours of fun can be had arranging the blocks!
Note: I had a really nice block icon, but for some reason the animations become dead slow if the applet becomes scaled in any way. I'll just draw gradients on the fly for now, apparently that's faster for some reason.
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Was this the year of the Linux desktop? Dell, OLPC, Walmart, Chumby, and now this? (not to mention the slew of mobile Linux devices)
Today I got a friendly little package from Taiwan... Inside, I found the smallest laptop I've ever seen before. The Asus EeePC, preloaded with Linux (Xandros/Debian Etch) and KDE/IceWM.
Less than 1kg, solid state drive, and pretty good performance (900mhz/intel graphics) means that this little puppy will be my new carry-around laptop :)
Best part: *everything* works in Linux out of the box. Perfect suspend/resume, integrated webcam, and wireless support. Yay! Now I know how Mac users have felt for the last few years ;)
Of course, the community that has already begun sprouting up doesn't hurt either ;)
The keyboard will take some getting used to, but otherwise so far I'm very happy with it :)
Hooray for Linux, and hooray for companies finally starting to get it!
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To commemorate Girish's last day at Trolltech and to hopefully find some KDE 4 bugs, a motley group of hackers gathered for some pizza, movies, and coding on various things...
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Left to right: Andreas (Maelcum), Simon (Tronical), Thiago, Myself, Kavindra, Girish, Thomas(Z), and Carlos. Not pictured is Veronica who was the photographer.
Farewell Girish and good luck in India!
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The libraries
First, we need the GNU toolchain to cross-compile things for the Chumby. Download and install it from:
Now, we need to decide where to install our files to; i.e., our prefix. Since I'm having some trouble with my NFS share, I'll use my USB stick. (Located at /mnt/usb). Feel free to replace this with your prefix wherever you see me mention this location. Next, we need to download and install tslib for the touchscreen.
I used version 1.0 from: http://tslib.berlios.de/
Make sure you have autoconf, libtool, and the other usual suspects installed. Then from the extracted files directory run:
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/mnt/usb --host=arm-linux
make
If you get some errors about rpl_malloc, simply comment out that evil line in config.h and try make again.
And finally:
make install
Next up is Qt.
Unpack it, and run:
./configure -embedded arm -pch -prefix /mnt/usb -qt-kbd-usb -qt-mouse-tslib \
-L/mnt/usb/lib/ -I/mnt/usb/include/ -nomake examples -nomake demos
Note:You can leave out the -qt-kbd-usb if you want. I kept it in since I like being able to type on the Chumby with my USB keyboard ;). Also, thanks to orangerobot from the Chumby forum for pointing out the mangled -L line.
Next:
make
make install
So far we don't have any Qt programs to play with. Let's compile a small Qt widget/app called PictureFlow (http://code.google.com/p/pictureflow/) by Ariya Hidayat.
I have modified the sources slightly (added basic mouse support, some images, resizing), and packaged it here:
pictureflow-chumby_1_0_tar.gz
Uncompress it, and in that very directory:
/mnt/usb/bin/qmake
make
Copy the resulting binary and images to a place on your prefix:
mkdir /mnt/usb/test
cp pictureflow *jpg /mnt/usb/test/
Now, we need to create a file with some environment variables that you can use when you're in your Chumby shell.
Create a file in your prefix (/mnt/usb for me) called chumby.env with the following contents:
export TSLIB_TSDEVICE=/dev/input/event0
export TSLIB_FBDEVICE=/dev/fb0
export TSLIB_PLUGINDIR=/mnt/usb/lib/ts
export TSLIB_CONSOLEDEVICE=/dev/ttyS0
export TSLIB_CONFFILE=/mnt/usb/etc/ts.conf
export TSLIB_CALIBFILE=/mnt/usb/etc/pointercal
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib:/mnt/usb/lib
export POINTERCAL_FILE=/mnt/usb/etc/pointercal
export QWS_MOUSE_PROTO=Tslib:/dev/input/event0
export QWS_KEYBOARD=USB:/dev/input/event1
Finally it's Chumby time!
Enable SSH on the Chumby as per:
http://wiki.chumby.com/mediawiki/index.php/Chumby_tricks#Open_a_secure_s...
SSH in and cd in to your directory of installed files.
For me, this meant:
Plugging in my USB stick.
ssh root@<ChumbyIpAddress>
cd /mnt
umount usb
mount usb
cd usb
Lets start off by killing the current Chumby GUI:
/usr/chumby/scripts/stop_control_panel
Now, we need to source that file with environment variables:
source /mnt/usb/chumby.env
Then, we need to configure the touch screen for tslib.
Make sure that your etc/ts.conf file has the input module un-commented.
My /mnt/usb/etc/ts.conf looks like:
module_raw input
module pthres pmin=1
module variance delta=30
module dejitter delta=100
module linear
Finally, we need to calibrate the touchscreen:
/mnt/usb/bin/ts_calibrate
Make sure that you touch the five different crosshair locations. If you accidently tap twice at the same spot, re-run ts_calibrate untill you get it right :)
To test and make sure that tslib is working correctly, feel free to play with:
/mnt/usb/bin/ts_test
You should be able to drag the crosshair around.
And last but not least - it's time to try out our Qt app:
cd /mnt/usb/test
./pictureflow -qws
If all is well, you should see something that looks like this:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2yN0F7_YlI)
Hopefully you didn't encounter any problems. These steps worked for me, but I may have just been lucky ;). More likely though is that I forgot to mention something. Please feel free to ask questions on this Chumby forum thread:
http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=720/
Allthough I realize that this was quite cumbersome, the good new is that you basically only need to do this once. Thereafter you just need to write your Qt app (Google for tutorials ;)), qmake, make, and copy the executable to your Chumby! :)
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I finally managed to get the last detail (touch screen, thanks to tslib!) sorted out, so without further ado... Qt 4.3.2 running on the Chumby! :)
If the flash player doesn't show up in your browser click here to go directly to Youtube.
I'm going to clean up the process and post instructions once I find some time... And yes, I still need to get a better camera ;)
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A strange package arrived today...within it dwelled a cryptic cotton sack labelled Chumby:
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What could be inside? I wonder...
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My long awaited Chumby of course!
The packaging and manual were really neat, and setup was a breeze. Simply plug it in, and follow the on screen instructions. Extra props go to the calibration tool (was almost fun ;)), and the ultra simple wifi setup.
