Canonical ported the Dalvik JVM to Ubuntu. The Android apps run in their own window on the desktop.

This phone runs an OS very similar to Ubuntu. Both are based on Debian, and unlike WebOS and Android they use a traditional UNIX userland. They both also use an X server to drive the display. Not only will most Linux software run on the phone, but Canonical's port of Android/Dalvik should run on it too.

So yes, it will run Android apps.

What I'd like to know, is whether it will take unsigned firmwares, and whether I could run Ubuntu ARM on it.

This thing has basically the same specs as the Always Innovating Touch Book netbook/tablet.

Maemo is a much more conventional Linux distro compared to Android and WebOS. It runs a X server and can run regular linux desktop apps. It can probably run Firefox 3.5 for example, or maybe even OpenOffice.org. The major limiting factor of course being that it only has 256 MB of RAM.

Qt is also a good move for Maemo. The old GTK+ apps will still run, but Qt has much better cross platform support. It means that a developer can write for Qt and have her/his app run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X on the desktop, and on Symbian S60, Windows Mobile and Maemo in the mobile space. Nokia purchased Qt to act as a sort of bridge for developers moving from S60 to Maemo.

Call me crazy, but I'd like to see the Pre running with X-Windows and the freesmartphone.org (FSO) phone stack, on Linux of course. And GSM. In other words, a Linux distro like Openmoko's on the Pre.

The thing about FSO is that it really doesn't care what gui toolkit you use. You get the same kind of flexibility you have on Linux desktops. In fact, there are already two different phone gui's for FSO, Paroli and SHR. And another one called Zhone that is really just meant for testing purposes.

Then you're not limited to just phone apps. For example on my Freerunner I've used Firefox 3. It was a little slow on the Freerunner's ancient CPU, but it wasn't Fennec or MiniMo or some watered down version, it was the same Firefox that runs on desktop systems.

I've watched videos of Firefox running on BeagleBoards which I think use a CPU from the same family as the Pre's, and it seems plenty usable on it.

I'm just using Firefox as an example. Running regular desktop apps (or at least light weight ones like Abiword instead of OpenOffice.org) on a phone with a physical keyboard is exactly what I want. This fantasy of mine could presumably happen once Debian is ported to the Pre which will probably happen sooner than later. Or if Nokia actually releases a Maemo phone, even though they're making Ofono from scratch instead of simply helping with FSO which already exists and is almost ready for everyday use.

The CPU might not be the hard part. Getting the cellular modem to work right could be a big problem. I don't know about CDMA, but different GSM modems have different deviations from the standard AT command set. And some modems are multiplexed in different ways.

Mickey Lauer (of freesmartphone.org) wrote up an interested blog entry about the challenges involved in supporting different modems in FSO (the gui-agnostic phone stack sponsored by Openmoko). It's a good read if you're into learning about this type of stuff: http://www.vanille-media.de/site/index.php/2008/12/03/ogsmd-and-its-modems/

Thanks for the correction. It's hard enough for a small company like Openmoko to thrive, misinformation certainly doesn't help.

As for Koolu (I bought my Freerunner from Koolu) news of a Cupcake release is a bit of a surprise. Koolu's software development seems really insular, at least for open source. For example, their forum requires an account to simply VIEW posts. I think it's great what they're doing, but they'd probably have more help from the community if they kept us up to date more regularly.

I'm still optimistic about Openmoko. They're getting really close with their own distribution of Linux (which is basically the same as GNU/Linux would be on the desktop, only smaller) and we should have working, reliable phones running their platform within a few weeks.

Something that didn't get any press coverage at all (as far as I can tell) is that after Openmoko canceled the GTA03, they started collaborating with community members to design the hardware for their next-gen phone. This is done with the understanding that it could take a long time and not go anywhere, but it's very cool that a company is experimenting with involving community developers in the design of their hardware.

The Freerunner wasn't canceled and Openmoko didn't collapse.

Openmoko postponed development of the successor to the Freerunner so they could focus delivering on their promise of the Freerunner as a working phone. They're also working on a "Project B" which is not a phone and is expected to be announced in August.

Check your sources Engadget, the "Openmoko collapse" story was set straight a while ago.