Nokia, Qt, and Raspberry Pi

More info on Qt for Raspberry Pi:

• http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/11/25/qt-platform-%E2%80%9Cmkspecs%E2%80%9D-now-publicly-available/ -- discusses the hardware-specific Qt "mkspecs" which assist in building Qt for specific platforms.  To quote the article, "You may have been reading about Broadcom's 2835-based development platform - better known as Raspberry Pi - we have Qt Mkspecs for that too."

• Unfortunately it's still early days as mkspecs for Rpi seems to be a Work In Progress.  I chased up the links and cloned the repository from Gitorious -- http://gitorious.org/qt-platform-mkspecs --, only to find that it had failed in code review -- https://codereview.qt-project.org/#change,21749 -- and the Rpi mkspec was currently marked as deprecated.  Just a temporary hiccup I'm sure.

• Repository problems aside, the Qt 5 code is working great on Raspberry Pi in their labs, with impressive OpenGL ES2 acceleration -- http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/10/03/chasing-the-raspberry-pi-dragon-opengl-es2-accelerated-qt-pi/ -- which is shown running here -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwsoInZk428 .

• See also the impressive videos on the wiki page linked in post #1 above.  Here is one -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq7IJLIIs2c .

Morgaine.

The RPF site has finally caught up with this topic too -- http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1146 .

RPF downloads are here -- http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads ,  QtonPi section is second from bottom, and here's the relevant blurb with links:

• Description:            QtonPi is an Embedded Linux platform plus SDK optimized for developing and running Qt 5 Apps on Raspberry Pi
• Project site:             http://wiki.qt-project.org/QtonPi
• Torrent:                   qtonpi-0.2.tar.bz2.torrent
• Direct download:     qtonpi-0.2.tar.bz2
• SHA-1 digest:          665b6ccf59ccbd4c38827f5554aa823302730a04
• Default login:
  • Username:      root
  • Password:       rootme

Note that the Code Review status that I mentioned in the previous post is now "Merged" (was "Deprecated"), so they've fixed the issues.  This whole Qt project looks extremely promising to me.  My Pi is still months away, but I'm looking forward to working with Qt5 on a different platform in the mean time.

Morgaine.

Thanks for all the links and info.  I'm a bitter about Nokia after they gutted Maemo/MeeGo for a cash payout, but the Qt folks seem do interesting work so glad they managed to survive.  The demos using OpenGL ES are impressive.  I'm interested in learning some basics of 3-D graphics with the Pi, and it looks like QtonPi might turn out to be a good way to do that.

Aye, virtually nobody technical was impressed by recent top level business decisions at Nokia.  But their techies are very unlikely to be able to do anything about the failings of their management, as it's a colossal company and they're almost certainly lightyears away from the seat of power.  I bet they were every bit as annoyed at the board/CEO as the Nokia users and us observers outside.  Their good work on Qt continues anyway, and is fully open source.  At least Nokia management hasn't shut that down.

Microsoft in $7B deal to aquire Nokia's cellphone business.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324432404579052112731349626.html

coder27 wrote:

 

Microsoft in $7B deal to aquire Nokia's cellphone business.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324432404579052112731349626.html

I would have loved to see what Groklaw had to say about this   Ah well.

Forget NOKIA, another failed venture in the hands of Microsoft... Ballmer keeps innovating about how to leave as much damage as possible at Microsoft before leaving.

They should also acquire Zynga so they can have a good excuse when the new Xbox fails to compete with other boxes.

BTW have you seen how stylish the NOKIA made Windows phone that Ballmer and Elop were holding on their hands during the announcement ?

-J

Thanks for pointing this out... at least now everyone will now explicitly know that microsoft owns nokia - in contrast to their effective ownership since Elop got put in place.

cheers,

a bitter N900 Maemo Linux user

I would have loved to see what Groklaw had to say about this   Ah well.

yes, $2B of the $7B is for patents (10 yr license), and there has been some concern about

Nokia's pledge not to assert its patents against Linux.

http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/06/nokias-promise-not-to-assert-patents.html

Drew Fustini wrote:

 

Thanks for pointing this out... at least now everyone will now explicitly know that microsoft owns nokia - in contrast to their effective ownership since Elop got put in place.

That's a good point.  Yes, among all the bad things that happened in the downward spiral of Nokia, at least who is in the driving seat will now be explicit.

As an owner of a Nokia 9210 Communicator (one of the original "smartphones"), it's really sad to see a once-great company led astray and torn apart by management incompetence.  And just think how the Finns must feel.