Fictitious Nonsense

In order to use my Freerunner tomorrow at work without bothering the other inhabitants of the cube farm, I needed to do two things.

1. Disable the click when the screen or a button is pressed
2. Vibrate instead of ring for incoming call/sms

First, I seached hi and low but could not find out how to control the vibrating.  At first, I thought I needed enable/configure the vibrating, but I realized it already vibrates for an incoming call.  So my solution to both needs is to modify the sound events.  This is handled through PulseAudio.  This is actually very easy.  I commented out the following lines from /etc/pulse/session

    #load-sample touchscreen /usr/share/openmoko/sounds/touchscreen_click.wav
    #load-sample ringtone /usr/share/openmoko/sounds/ringtone_classy.wav

Then I restarted Pulse with “/etc/init.d/pulseaudio restart”  PulseAudio complained about running as root, but it worked.  Restarting the phone will do the same, but why bother.

Now, it no longer clicks or rings!

I recieved my Freerunner yesterday after going crazy tracking the package via UPS.  So far it is a good phone.  It is very minimal with just a dialer (phone calls), SMS app, contacts, terminal, and some minimal settings.  But hooking it up to a computer and sshing into it works great.  I got my MacBook to provide internet to the phone through USB, but I can’t get windows to do the same.  But that is ok.  I also got WiFi working, but it won’t connect to the internet through it.

I am happy, but it is definately a developer release and not meant for mass consumption yet.  I will provide more details as I play more.