Like I did when receiving the Cosmo Communicator, I want to share the first impressions while unboxing the brand new Astro Slide, I have received yesterday. About two and a half years ago I have backed Planet Computers Astro Slide Indiegogo campaign. Again Planet Computers has promised a device that is different from anything else, that is available for purchase. The Astro Slide is a slider class device with a fully integrated keyboard and touchscreen and full phone usability that is designed for Android, but will also be capable of running Linux or Sailfish OS. No need to go through the full specs here, everything interesting regarding these can be read on Planet Computers web page. Originally Planet Computers was planning the device in March 2021, then Covid-19 appeared… Yesterday, after a long time of waiting the parcel with the Astro Slide finally arrived. When receiving the parcel I had to pay an additional 33€ import fees.

Inside the parcel has been a single box.

Before opening the box has to be fold out.

After Opening the box one can see the well packed Astro in there.

The full content of the box can be seen below. One can see the Cosmo wrapped well in foil as well as an envelope containing a quick start manual and the Sim card tool. Still in the box are two smaller boxes containing the charger and the USB cable.

After some further unboxing we can see charger and user manual.

After removing the foil we can see the Astros full beauty.

From the back side we can see camera and rubber feet.

With the opened device we can see the display and the German QWERTZ keyboard. The keyboard again feels more solid as with the Cosmo.

When opened we can see the sliding mechanism from the back. The sliding mechanism is a bit clumpsy as others described before. It will take some time to get the feel for it.

After completing the initial setup process the Astro shows the Android desktop.

Below we can see the desktop in landscape while the keyboard is slided out and its backlit is turned on. Unfortunately the display corners are far rounder than with the Cosmo.

I am hoping you have enjoyed the photo series and some first impressions of the Cosmo. Further articles regarding testing some aspects of the device, and hopefully some solutions will follow. Stay tuned for updates.

Jürgen

Posted in android, fun, gadgets, hardware, linux | No Comments »

Like I did when receiving the Gemini PDA, I want to share the first impressions while unboxing the brand new Cosmo Communicator, I have received today. About one year ago I have backed Planet Computers Cosmo Communicator Indiegogo campaign. Planet Computers has promised a device that is different from anything else, that is available for purchase. The Cosmo Communicator is a clamp-shell class device with a fully integrated keyboard and touchscreen and full phone usability that is designed for Android, but will also be capable of running Linux or Sailfish OS. Major improvements compared to the Gemini PDA, beside better specs, are the outside cover display and the backlit keyboard. No need to go through the full specs here, everything interesting regarding these can be read on Planet Computers web page. Yesterday, after a long time of waiting the parcel with the Cosmo finally arrived.

Inside the parcel has been a single box

Before opening the box has to be fold out.

After Opening the box one can see the well packed Cosmo in there.

The full content of the box can be seen below. One can see the Cosmo wrapped well in foil as well as an envelope containing a quick start manual and the Sim card tool. Still in the box are two smaller boxes containing the charger and the USB cable.

After removing the foil we can see the Cosmos full beauty.

With the opened device we can see the display and the German QWERTZ keyboard. Keyboard and hinge even feel more solid as with the Gemini PDA.

After booting the Cosmo shows the initial welcome screen. With a press to the start button one could start the initial setup process.

The outer cover touch display, which shows the caller id and allows to accept calls can be seen below.

For the Cosmo Communicator I also ordered a third party belt case which can be seen below with the Cosmo inside and a Adonit Dash2 stylus attached.

I am hoping you have enjoyed the photo series and some first impressions of the Cosmo. Further articles regarding testing some aspects of the device, and hopefully some solutions will follow. Stay tuned for updates.

Jürgen

Posted in android, fun, gadgets, hardware, linux | 3 Comments »

What is going on here? An unboxing article on MyGNU.de? Well, this is the exception, since the Gemini is an exceptional device like Nokias N900 has been before and in the future hopefully the some day finished  Neo900 might be. Well, I do not want to stray away any further. About 13 month ago I have backed Planet Computers Gemini PDA Indiegogo campaign. Planet Computers has promised a device that is different from anything else, that is available for purchase. The Gemini is a PDA class clamp-shell device with a fully integrated keyboard and touchscreen that is designed for Android, but also capable of running Linux. No need to go through the specs here, everything interesting regarding these can be read on Planet Computers web page or on Wikipedia. Last week, after a long time of waiting, the parcel with the 4G version of the Gemini, the connectivity kit and the optional camera finally arrived. The order id has been in the 20XX range and the device is with a non UK keyboard, so the device is most probably from the third batch.

After opening the parcel and removing some wrapping material one can see multiple smaller boxes containing the device and its accessories.

The boxes shown in the photo below contain from left to right, the leather pouch, the special HDMI adapter (only this one allows connecting an external display), the Gemini, the USB type C hub, the external camera addon and an additional charger.

The larger box welcomes us with “hello” printed in several languages and contains  a smaller black box containing the manual and the cover removal tool (needed to insert a SIM card and a SD card), the PDA itself and (still in the larger box) a charger and the Type C to Type A USB cable.

Below we have a closer look to the PDA well wrapped in foil.

After removing the foil we can see its full beauty.

With the opened device we can see the the display and the German QWERTZ keyboard. The keyboard feels solid and has no wobbly keys like it has been reported by backers who have received devices from the first batch.

Phone manufacturers recommend to charge the devices a first time fully before using. Most probably this is a myth without any use than having a fully charged device, but anyway I did.

I am hoping you have enjoyed the photo series. Further articles regarding testing some aspects of the device, Linux on the Gemini, and hopefully some solutions will follow. Does it really contain a X27 CPU? We will find out later. Stay tuned for updates.

Jürgen

Posted in android, fun, gadgets, linux | No Comments »

We, the authors of MyGNU.de are proud to celebrate an anniversary today. This is the one hundredth article published on this blog. But how does one celebrate such an anniversary? For sure, the best way is to write another article. Well, and perhaps drinking a beer or two.

Lets summarize some history. This blog, MyGNU.de started on November 29th 2008 – roughly three years ago. During these years Thorsten and I had the opportunity to provide useful information, helpful scripts and programs to you, our readers. – At least we hope so. This way we have been able to give something back to the open source community that has supported us in so many ways. We have written about solutions to many problems, regarding the Linux operating system, we encountered. It would be to much to write if I tried to mention every single article now, but some have to be mentioned.  For sure the highlights, that can be found on this website are SIV, the stereoscopic image viewer and vrtrack the headtracking driver for the Vuzix VR920 head mounted display.  The most popular download until now has been the Iptables Mirror target, which I ported to 2.6 and 3.x Linux kernels. The kernel module enables one to create a more active Iptables firewall by returning the attack to the attacker. In total it got 5897 hits until today. In the beginning some of the articles were shorter than the more recent ones, but with time our knowledge and writing skills evolved and some recent articles are of quite high quality. We hope you have enjoyed reading the articles and got some useful insights and information.

For the future we hope to keep on this way and improve our skills, to write better and more useful articles and software and publish these on MyGNU.de.

“So say we all.”

Well, now there is only one last thing to to do. To say thank you! We have to say thanks to you for reading, and we have to say thank you to our company the main-host.de GmbH for providing the webspace for this blog.

Happy anniversary MyGNU.de!

best regards and keep on reading

Jürgen

Posted in about us, fun, mygnu, news | No Comments »

Some years ago I played nethack on my old PC. Nethack is a Diablo like RPG that was originally released in 1987. Before playing a game, you have to create a character. You can choose between different character classes: Archeologist, Barbarian, Caveman, Healer, Knight, Monk, Priest, Ranger, Rogue, Samurai, Tourist Valkyrie and Wizard. These classes have different abilities in fighting and using magic. Afterwards you can descent to the dungeon where you have to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor and defeat the bad Moloch. For some more information on gameplay and how to win see the links below the post.

By chance I discovered a maemo package for vultures eye which I installed on my Nokia N810. Vultures eye is a nice graphical frontend for nethack.

Then I felt it would be nice to have Vultures Eye also on my PC. With a large screen and real mouse/keyboard input the game is easier to play, than on the small n810s touchscreen. Since the latest available Gentoo ebuild was far out of date and the sources for it are no longer available I wrote a new ebuild based upon the old one. You may download my new ebuild from here: [download#38]

To use the ebuild it just copy it to /usr/local/portage/games-roguelike/vultures/. You probably have to create the directory. Then run

ebuild /usr/local/portage/games-roguelike/vultures/vultures-2.2.100.ebuild digest

Be sure to include the following line in your /etc/make.conf.

PORTDIR_OVERLAY=”/usr/local/portage”

Then just emerge vultures and enjoy many YASDs. But beware, one can get quite addicted to this game.

Jürgen

Resources:

NetHack

beginner’s-guide-to-nethack

how-to-win-at-nethack-wishes

vultures-eye-nethack-nice-graphics

nokia-n900-downloads

gentoo bugzilla

Posted in fun, games, gentoo, linux | No Comments »

I have searched for a 3D game on Linux and found this nice flight simulation. In Gentoos portage tree there is only an old version avaiable, so I wrote an ebuild for the new version. It compiles fine on my computer wth 64bit Gentoo – Linux.

The Power of my graphics board (nVidia Corporation Quadro FX 360M) seems to be enough for this simulation. The control is not easy, but with some time, you can fly around, like in a real aircraft.

What is FlightGear?
The FlightGear flight simulator project is an open-source, multi-platform, cooperative flight simulator development project. Source code for the entire project is available and licensed under the GNU General Public License.

HowTo install on Gentoo:

Download [download#37] file which include the ebuilds

cd /usr/locale/portage
tar -xzpvf ~/flightgear-2.0.0.tar.gz

Then you have to unmask the ebuilds in /etc/portage/package.keywords :
=games-simulation/flightgear-2.0.0 **
=dev-games/simgear-2.0.0 **
=dev-libs/boost-1.37.0-r1 **
=dev-util/boost-build-1.37.0 **
=media-libs/freeglut-2.6.0  **

now you can ’emerge =games-simulation/flightgear-2.0.0′

Have fun

Xexplorer

UPDATE 04.03.2010:

Now it´s in portage, with two different lines. First of all I found out that freeglut 2.6 is needed for flightgear, so I put it in the ebuild. And the second is a patch witch is needed if you don´t use freeglut 2.6. So I think my choice is the better way.

Posted in 3d, fun, gentoo, linux | 3 Comments »