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• Launchpad Entry: mobile-gnome-components

• Packages affected:

Summary

GNOME Mobile is a SW stack that is a subset of the GNOME Desktop platform. The components were put together by Nokia and other companies involved in creating embedded systems. Details of their work is here: www.gnome.org/mobile.

Ubuntu-mobile will include the GNOME Mobile components. The versions of the components will be those released in the September release of GNOME.

Rationale

Building upon the experience of those in the mobile and embedded space seems to make sense. In addition, Nokia has already created successful devices built upon the GNOME Mobile components. Finally, if we use GNOME Mobile components we are able to leverage the expertise of others in this area making applications and services for mobile devices.

Use Cases

A developer is creating an application for UME. The developer needs to know what services to use and what services are not good candidates. Knowing that GNOME Mobile is included and recommended, the developer can create a well-behaved mobile application. An example might be using dbus instead of CORBA for communication, or avoiding libbonobo in lieu of an alternative.

Scope

The GNOME Mobile components are the basis for what is included in the gutsy Ubuntu-Mobile distribution. There may be many more things included, but these will each be analyzed carefully.

Design

The GNOME Mobile components currently include everything below except Hildon (picture modified from GNOME Mobile website):

Components in GNOME Mobile

• Matchbox: Window Manager
• Pango: Text Layout
• Cairo: 2D Rendering
• ATK: Accessibility Toolkit
• Gnome VFS: Virtual FS
• BlueZ: Bluetooth
• Telepathy: IM/Presence
• GConf: Configuration
• DBUS: IPC
• GStreamer: Multimedia
• E-D-S: Contacts / Calendar
• Avahi: Service Discovery

Companies Involved in creation

• Nokia: Did much heavy lifting in defining and creating components
• Opened Hand: Open Source consulting and development company, focusing on X windows based solutions.

• ACCESS (Previously PalmSource): GTK+, and its associated graphical, user interface, and other technologies, is a core component of the ACCESS Linux Platform

• Garmin: Working on embedded Gnome
• Movial: Service company specializing in embedded Linux, involved with Nokia 770 development
• Kernel Concepts: Service company providing embedded Linux consulting and development works
• X-Tend: Open Source consulting company

Implementation

The components in GNOME Mobile need to be verified that they are available in Ubuntu mobile.

Outstanding Issues

BoF agenda and discussion

CategorySpec