Downloading applications on Nokia N900 Maemo

Downloading applications

Internet Tablets use the concept of software repositories, a concept carried over from Linux. You can tell your N900 where these repositories are via the Application Manager. The Application Manager automatically then presents you a list of available applications that can be installed on your device, and takes care of any dependancies that may be required.

There are multiple repositories available for the N900:

1. Nokia's Ovi Store
2. Commercial Application Vendors
3. Community Applications

The Application Manager also allows you to uninstall applications as well as keep you notified of updates to your installed applications.

You will also find One Click Install Applications on the web for instance in the Downloads section of this web site. You may also want to ]install applications which are not available through maemo.org, but which you download from third party sites.

If you can't find what you want, sign up to Maemo Talk and ask. If a few people are interested, or if a particular developer sees value in your idea, it's likely someone will write you an application to do what you want. And yes, that really does work.

Or you can learn to program in Maemo or Qt yourself.

There's a good set of tutorials here, with a Hello world app too... and there's a separate Developer FAQ on this site.

Application manager

Application manager is a preinstalled graphical user interface to APT.

Application manager shows contents of configured repositories. It is a tool to search and install software. The basic repository list has approximately same content as maemo.org Downloads.

Application manager also handles software updates automaticly.

Managing Repositories

In this example, we will be enabling the 'maemo.org' repository. (Which should already exist, but this is simply an example.)

Open Application Manager (Dashboard > Menu > More... > App. manager)



Go to Application catalogs (Press the menu bar at the top, where it says application manager)



Press New



Enter the Catalog Details



You can also disable catalogs for future use (Useful for maemo.org extras-testing and maemo.org extras-devel catalogs.)



Save.

Other ways

It is recommended to use the application manager since it this is the easiest way to install software. If it doesn't suit your needs please see the following solutions:

* Maemo Select - showcase for the best community and commercial apps
* maemo.org Maemo Downloads - for community-developed apps
* Ovi Store - for commercially-developed apps