In my last Weekly Rewind I alluded to a dramatic episode I suffered with the Nokia N900 at the weekend. I wanted to tell that story in full and I figured it deserved it’s own post. I’ll also try to offer a little advice about flashing Maemo devices from a Linux desktop, based on my relatively limited but successful experience. There are already very good guides for this around though, so I don’t want to just duplicate them.

N900 - Keyboard Open

I was lucky enough to be sent an N900 for testing and review purposes by Nokia before Christmas, a lot of you reading this will know that already. Lately some software updates to Maemo 5 (the N900 operating system) have been rolled out, and of course I wanted the latest greatest versions. I received one update about a week ago over the air, which means there was no need to do anything more complex than press “yes” on the phone and let it do it’s thing. It all worked beautifully and I was very impressed. However, when I was prompted about another available update later in the week the process was anything but smooth. Little did I know it but my problems were just beginning. I tried to apply the second update on the phone in the same way but was told I needed to connect the “Nokia Software Updater” tool via a PC. It seems this happens if you have certain testing repositories enabled on your Maemo device like I did, it can cause package conflicts. I’m not averse to using the official software to perform an update if needed, but what I am averse to is the fact that this software is only available for Windows. I’m a full time Linux user as most of you will know and considering the the N900 is a Linux device you’d think they’d have a Linux updater too. Read the rest of this entry »

Fennec On My N900

I’ve got a quick tutorial of sorts for you today. As you may have read in my last update, I was very lucky to receive an N900 Linux-based phone from Nokia last week. I’ll do a proper in-depth write up about the device and the Maemo operating system in due course, when I’ve had some more time to test it. But for now I’d like to talk about installing Firefox. For a while now Mozilla have been developing a version of Firefox called Fennec, and it’s aimed at mobile devices. The name comes from a type of fox known for it’s small stature. I originally thought it would keep the name Fennec through it’s entire lifespan, but I’ve since been told that it’s only called Fennec as a codename whilst in development. Once it’s released it’ll just be called Firefox. Confused? Anyway, this is all beside the point.

I read earlier in the week that Fennec had been packaged for Maemo and would be available on the N900 and N810. I actually like the default browser in Maemo a lot, but I was also curious to see just what Mozilla had done with the interface. A choice of web browser is always nice on a system anyway, just ask Microsoft… oh no wait, don’t. A quick web search brought up the appropriate page on Mozilla’s website and I was able to install Fennec with ease. So for the benefit of anyone with a Maemo device, here’s what I did. Read the rest of this entry »