Which Rom Is Your Favorite And Why?, Post the Pros and Cons of ROM that you use. Options

[the_oak]

After reading some really old threads, I am left confused as to the usefulness of some ROMs. It seems that some hardware such as suspend, WIFI, and sound don't work (or don't work well) in pdaXrom, Angstrom, and Debian. Some have complained that Debian is slow. But maybe that information is outdated, and those problems are fixed. Does all hardware work now in these distros? Do these distros support larger than 1 GB SD cards out of the box? What do you wish your distro would support that it doesn't yet support?

I'll start off with my observations on the Pros and Cons of Cacko 1.23 (on my C1000):

Pros:
1.) Stable
2.) All hardware works, supports a lot of add-on cards as well
3.) Relatively good browsers (Netfront & Opera) render pages pretty quickly
4.) GUI network setup (no command line needed, except for WPA)
5.) Built-in overclocking (although I rarely use it)
6.) Quite a bit of software available (though mostly older versions)


Cons:
1.) Backlight bug (cannot set backlight on lowest setting)
2.) Need to rotate screen before using Portrait only apps (otherwise Zaurus may hang)
3.) Browsers although pretty good, do not support plugins such as flash
4.) No WPA setup in GUI network app
5.) Not very many newer apps
6.) No built-in large SD card support (but can be added easily with ipk)
7.) No full featured GPS app (you know, with voice turn by turn directions)
8.) Non-standard file structure for Linux

[Capn_Fish]

I'll give my rundowns on the distros I've used (all on a C3100 except Sharp/Cacko). I'll probably leave a bunch out, but here goes:

pdaXrom
Pros:
-Built-in right click system
-relatively fast
-designed for the Z
-easy on-board compiling and development

Cons:
-Moving target
-Incompatabilities between the many flavors
-sporadic development****
-default install eats RAM like there's no tomorrow
-unique/broken/painful build system
-many outdated parts
-Unstable/buggy/"quirky" in many cases*****


Debian
Pros:
-Abundance of web browsers
-DEBIAN! (feels the same as the desktop)
-Constant updates
-large number of packages ready to go
-Easy dev setup
-"Standard" Linux feel
-Works with many things out-of-the-box (everything I have, at least)
-OpenOffice (SLOW boot, works OK after that)
-FF3 RC1 (in some obscere repo)

Cons:
-Sluggish, especially after coming from pdaX/Angstrom, but tolerable
-Install can be...interesting (maybe I just didn't think it through)
-No central, up-to-date, easy-to-use place with links to files, directions, etc (must dig through thread somewhat)
-Many different flavors (EABI, OABE, Andro-whatever the new one is)***
-not optimized as much as is possible
-apt is painfully slow on the Z


Sharp/Cacko
Pros:
-Stable
-Syncing capabilities**
-Opera
-GUIs
-Comes ready for many things out-of-the-box
-Supports BVDD
-Relatively quick

Cons:
-Difficult to make packages for
-Old
-No active development
-Covers up the Linux (IMO)
-Building custom modules is a PAIN (eg, kernel is a pain to get set up/configured, IMO)
-No updates


Angstrom
Pros:
-Up-to-date
-actively developed
-large-ish number of packages available
-easy to set up a dev environment
-much hardware works
-suspend/boot/etc works
-Mostly stable
-Native development/compiling is easy
-Easy to get kernel dev stuff for compiling modules

Cons:
-default images are lousy
-No real support on the forums; must use the mailing list
-Broken things (installing ipks to places other than /, for instance)*

*May be outdated info
**Not confirmed by me
***How about a new, barebones tarball, and people just make custom packages that install the tweaks and stuff instead?
****It appears that is changing, but still
*****Most bugs take only a minute or so to fix, but the fixes never made it upstream

This post has been edited by Capn_Fish: Jun 25 2008, 05:39 PM

[the_oak]

So all ROMs that you have tried support all built-in hardware (sound, suspend, touchscreen, keyboard, both card slots) "out of the box"?

[Capn_Fish]

Actually...yes, as far as I know. I din't think I've tested everything under every distro (sound under Cacko, for instance, or bluetooth under Angstrom).

I wouldn't put up with a distro if something major didn't work.