Nokia announces new Mobile (N900) that runs on linux (Maemo)

We have always had linux for mobile devices. But use of linux as mobile OS has mostly been limited to enthusiasts who like to fiddle around with technology and somehow it has not been able to break into the mainstream mobile market.



But all that is going to change with Nokia, one of the largest mobile companies in the world, announcing their forthcoming release of N900 which runs on linux based Maemo platform. It not only has the capabilities of supporting the normal smartphone features but also utilizes the limited resources available in mobiles optimally (which comes naturally to linux :P). It has all the regular linux desktop features including multiple desktops. Just go through the N900 feature set and you will get an idea about its capabilities. And although it already has so many apps made for it ,as it is an Open Source you can expect regular improvements and loads of free apps as it catches on in popularity.


Another aspect of this release, which excites me the most is that finally linux will be used by common people who usually get scared hearing the name of linux (although unknowingly they use it very often, maybe directly or indirectly). Even though linux for PCs have become more user friendly over the years and still most people have the misconception that it isn't like that and is meant only for geeks.

So lets wait and watch the impact of this release.

How to enable voice and video in pidgin (linux only :D)

Finally we have voice and video support in pidgin. It had always been so hard to understand why it is taking them so much time to implement it. Better late than never.

The new pidgin (version 2.6.1) has been released with media support in linux only at the moment. It was done by someone as summer of code project. You can find the list of new features and the whole story about it on their site.

Now coming to the real point. As soon as found out about this release it soon tried installing. Now the issue is that it had been released as source and though it works perfectly on most distros, it wasn't working on ubuntu 9.04 (working with earlier versions) . The problem was that jaunty isn't having the right versions of libraries needed to compile it and so the debs available on the net didn't install pidgin with voice and video support.

But things move fast in the open source world ... someone managed to compile it successfully on jaunty and has added it to ppa.

So here are the instructions:

To add the sources, go to the main menu, click System, then Administration, then Software Sources. Click on the Third-Party Software tab, then click the Add button.

Paste Code:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kalon33/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Click Add Source, then click the Add button again and add the PPA:
Code:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/korin43/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Close that window then open up a terminal and put this in:

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install pidgin

This is it. It should work now :)