14 DAY TRIAL // An independent developer, by the nickname of PenguinBait, has ported Linux's K Desktop Environment to Nokia's Web Tablets: N800 and 770. For the older 770 the addition of an RS-MMC card upgrade is necessary so that KDE will function correctly.
In January 2006, Nokia released 770 as its first Linux-based Internet tablet, but in less than a year, it was replaced by the N800, leaving some users feeling abandoned in spite of some third-party upgrades for Nokia's Tablet OS.
Nokia's Tablet OS uses Gnome, KDE's main competitor in the desktop Linux World, but Nokia had collaborated with KDE a couple of years ago, when they started using KHTML and KJS components in their proprietary browser for Series 60. Since Nokia adopted Gnome, a lot of work has been invested in optimizing it for small footprint devices, like the Gnome Foundation's Mobile and Embedded Initiative.
The KDE 3.5.6 for Nokia's Tablet OS has been released in March by PenguinBait, and he encourages participation in building a stable and complete KDE-based environment for the device. Some polls indicate that the majority of people prefer to wait until the moment the port will be more mature before trying it out.
If you have one of these two Internet Tablets and you want to try it out, here's how you can do it (courtesy of www.internettablettalk.com):
1. Follow the instructions from here. (Warning: Save anything you consider important from your MMC card! This step will erase everything on it!) 2. Then follow these directions. 3. Now you should boot your tablet from the MMC card. 4. Download this archive and copy it in "/" or "root" folder on your tablet. 5. Open an X-term on your tablet or an SSH session connected to it. Sign in as root, using SSH or "gainroot". 6. At this step, you should run the following commands:
apt-get install bzip2
cd /
/tar-temp/bin/tar jxvf KDE356FINAL1.tar.bz2
7. After you've run all the above commands, restart the Tablet and boot from the MMC, there should be an option under "Extras" for KDE.
If you've done all the above steps correctly, you'll have KDE 3.5.6 installed on your Nokia Internet Tablet!