GNOME Mobile engineering, optimisation and integration. Kernel development. R&D Concepting.
Related
Matchbox
More Information
Maemo, Nokia N810, Nokia N800, Nokia 770
Nokia Internet tablets
Developer tools
For Nokia, OpenedHand developed several tools to ease development with Linux, X Window System, and GTK+ which form the basis of the maemo platform. Xephyr provides a modern X server in a window and is used to simulate the display of a device on a developer’s host machine. Xrestop measures of resource usage in the X server, and Xresponse, measures UI response times, both tools essential for developing new devices, debugging drivers, and creating new applications.
In addition to creating these tools, OpenedHand ported the existing OProfile and LTTng tools to the OMAP architecture of the tablet hardware. OProfile is a system profiler which enables developers to see the hotspots in applications they are developing. LTTng is a system for tracing the Linux kernel, providing output that can be analysed and charted to understand the performance of a running kernel.
Nokia is the world leader in mobility, and is the worlds largest manufacturer of mobile handsets. Nokia’s vision is a world where everyone can be connected. In 2005 Nokia launched the 770 Internet Tablet, a device designed to take advantage of increasingly ubiquitous connectivity, to provide a convenient vehicle for accessing the internet, with a bigger, brighter screen than a handset, but more mobile than a laptop. The success of the 770 lead to two further models, the N800 in 2006, and the N810 in 2007.
Nokia chose to build an open source platform, ‘maemo™’, to power the Internet tablet hardware. Maemo is a software platform for handheld devices built on Linux and the GNOME Mobile platform.
Launching any new product requires significant research and development. Nokia originally approached Matthew Allum, OpenedHand’s founder and CEO, during the first stages of R&D to help build the platform for what would become the Nokia 770. Initially engaged to adapt and improve their Matchbox window manager, adding open source support for features like i18n text rendering, advanced window compositing and improved themeing, OpenedHand’s work with Nokia has grown to include almost every area of the maemo platform over the past 5 years.
OpenedHand have developed several of the key open source infrastructure pieces of the maemo platform. As well as the Matchbox window manager, which provides the ‘look and feel’ and interaction of the overall interface, OpenedHand rewrote the desktop and task navigator for maintainability and performance, and worked on lower level performance improvements throughout the stack from font and X server rendering speed to flash filesystem performance.
A special area of expertise within OpenedHand is optimising and porting desktop applications to non-desktop platforms. For the maemo platform, OpenedHand optimised Evolution Data Server (EDS) for embedded use - primarily porting it to use the more lightweight IPC mechanism DBus. EDS then provided the base for OpenedHand to develop the address book and presence frameworks in maemo.
OpenedHand and Nokia continue to work together on R&D and improving the maemo platform.
Recent Blog Posts
Recent Press
- Nokia N810 review - Ars Technica, Dec 2007
- Nokia pushes for GTK+ 3.0 - derStandard, Aug 2007
- OpenedHand releases Poky Linux 3.0 with Sato - Ars Technica, Aug 2007
- Poky 3.0 Released - LWN, Aug 2007
- Clutter now includes OpenGL ES support - OpenGL, Jun 2007
- Interview With Matthew Allum of OpenedHand - Free Software Magazine, Jun 2007
Employment
Currently we have no open positions.
Developers
To find out more on our open source projects, please visit the OpenedHand Labs site.
You’ll find information on and links to all our various open source projects, the OH development blog, how to access source code and how to get involved with our projects.