Guylhem Rom: First Qtopia 1.5 Release Options

[guylhem]

Hello

The first "end user ready" release is being uploaded. It features a nice GUI and should work out of the box (no command line special knowledge should be necessary)

Get it on: http://externe.net/zaurus/guylhem-rom/

The only bugs I could find (and honnestly, they are not serious drawbacks) are:
- some remaining keyboard remapping (power/record are used like a jogdial, but should also be able to start applications - they can't yet)
- the network application refuses to add new interfaces. So I replaced the usual netsetup by a different one I compiled and I created a "Get online" icon, which can be used to create a new connection, before using the network application (that's the only if you really want to use the old one called netsetup.old). I have no idea why it doesn't work :-( Trolltech version works fine, Sharp doesn't. Any help would be welcome

If you feel like giving a try, your feedback would be very welcome. What you get :
- a polished qtopia 1.5 rom loaded with applications
- a cleaned filesystem (no symlinks everywhere)
- 24 Mb free to add your own applications (I doubt you'll need them - it's *loaded* with applications, basically every app I use is there, PIM, Hancom, Opera, etc etc.)

What's new since last version :
- added qtopia 1.5 interface
- made sure it worked well
- fixed the zoom/systemtime bugs reported in the standalone qtopia packages.

What's missing :
- special modules used by special card. If you have such a card, please tell me or adf so we can compile your missing module for you

To install it, simply restore the nandbackup. That's all. On reboot, you may see jffs2 errors - that's normal. It's just very verbose. You are presented with a login: if you log in, qtopia won't start. Press home twice to open another console. Press userkey/light to move between consoles. You must log out of every shell so Qtopia may start 30 seconds later. However the keyboard may not be usable if you didn't return to the first console. So if you want to use qtopia, simply don't log in.

Anyway, let's start the beta test ! I'm also preparing a dedicated feed for the ROM. If you have a .ipk that works fine and you think should be interesting to other people, please send me a URL where I can download it and add it to the feed.

If you think some application should be included by default, please tell me too. I'd like to create a "different" rom, very user oriented. Everything should be simple and work out of the box - the apps. I did choose tend to do that.

Guylhem

[guylhem]

Please do ! That's the purpose of the wiki

I suggest the following pages:
- installation notes
- bugs
- features suggestions

Maybe a sum up of this thread would be good

Guylhem

[hbo]

Please do ! That's the purpose of the wiki

I suggest the following pages:
- installation notes
- bugs
- features suggestions

Maybe a sum up of this thread would be good

Guylhem

Great!

I created a guylhem ROM development section at http://externe.net/zaurus/faq with links to the three pages you suggested above. I created the InstallationNotes page with a description of my hack to make /tmp on CF work. The other two pages still haven't been created. I'll look at them later today.

I think that I will "cherry pick" items from this thread to include. If anyone would like to add to, subtract from or reformat what's there, or create more content, please do!

Edited to correct broken link pointed out in the third following post.

[ken]

I created a guylhem ROM development section at http://externe.net/faq with links to the three pages you suggested above. I created

I'm sure you mean http://externe.net/zaurus/faq

[adf]

ultimately, I agree. a choice of guis, and the flexibilty created byt a system done that way would be best overall.

as a personal bit of madness, though i really like using the ram w/ qt onboard anpocketworkstaion on my sd, I could see shrinking my qt setup some and making a "huge" base install sytem with a ton o moduls and libs.

[hbo]

ultimately, I agree. a choice of guis, and the flexibilty created byt a system done that way would be best overall.

as a personal bit of madness, though i really like using the ram w/ qt onboard anpocketworkstaion on my sd, I could see shrinking my qt setup some and making a "huge" base install sytem with a ton o moduls and libs.

My tastes run that way too.

But, the point is, those are my tastes, which aren't identical to yours, which..

If we put some thought now into what it would take to layer a personality on top of a minimal core, I think it would lead to a more flexible and useful system later. Since Gutylhem has been doing a lot of the work on this project, (it is named after him 8) I think we should start with his choice of apps as the "standard" install. As things stand, I think you can rip and replace just about anything in the system, since you can write to all the (visible) filesystems. But wouldn't it be nice to define a set of tasks to make it a QT/X-Qt/PW/GPE/Whatever system or all of the above? We don't have to write this all at once. We just have to avoid dependencies between the layers so that such a system is possible. And to do that, we need to define the layers, at least to some level of detail, if not fully specify them.

Thoughts? Are we reinventing part of the OE wheel?

[ken]

ultimately, I agree. a choice of guis, and the flexibilty created byt a system done that way would be best overall.

I've tried OZ and it's flavors. To be honest with you, gpe is a bit sterile, but stable. Opie is nice but a bit buggy at the edges. If you want a choice of GUIs, then wouldn't that be what OZ is about? I can pretty much live with how he has things set up. He has a point about certain apps can always be updated with later versions (as long as this keeps moving).

What I think is more important, is making sure the most used of apps is there. Which means things like a good media player of some sort that can play tons of things. zbedic is nice of course - I was surprised that OE is still on 0.9.4 rather than 0.9.5. And so forth - cover the basics of what people need and would use.

The image program would be a problem though - photostorage does large images, which I haven't seen others do.

As for however he wants it released is fine by me --- using nand restore is fine. That certainly simplifies things. Maybe later that could be tuned to whatever.

For me, I'm hoping at some point we could have a cvs type of system, so we can participate in the debugging of things.

[hbo]

ultimately, I agree. a choice of guis, and the flexibilty created byt a system done that way would be best overall.

I've tried OZ and it's flavors. To be honest with you, gpe is a bit sterile, but stable. Opie is nice but a bit buggy at the edges. If you want a choice of GUIs, then wouldn't that be what OZ is about? I can pretty much live with how he has things set up. He has a point about certain apps can always be updated with later versions (as long as this keeps moving).

That was the sense of my question about reinventing the wheel. OE builds Familiar and OZ already, so they should have the business of integrating different systems from parts down cold. I agree with your assessment of OZ/Opie.

What I think is more important, is making sure the most used of apps is there.  Which means things like a good media player of some sort that can play tons of things. zbedic is nice of course - I was surprised that OE is still on 0.9.4 rather than 0.9.5.  And so forth - cover the basics of what people need and would use.

The image program would be a problem though - photostorage does large images, which I haven't seen others do.

All well and good. But what if you're tone deaf? A media player might not fit what you want to do with the Z. What about an X server running alongside a QT environment? Most people wouldn't want that, but I do.

The list is actually endless. I have no use for Portabase or several others of the apps in 0.9. I can't live without Perl on the Qtopia side. (If that were in the base, I could write some killer integration software! 8) Other people will have a completely different list. I can hear all the Python devotees yelping with alarm at the mention of Perl, for instance.

I'm not suggesting that there shouldn't be a default set of apps that reflect someone's idea of what the perfect mix is. I'd just like to see some thought given to decoupling the base OS from the GUI and applications layer. That would make it easier to rip and replace, at the very least.

As for however he wants it released is fine by me --- using nand restore is fine.  That certainly simplifies things.  Maybe later that could be tuned to whatever.

The only objection I can see is that the entire flash gets written to, and there are a limited (though large) number of writes the flash can take. It occurs to me that this may not be a real big concern for the average user, however. I'm not positive, but I'll bet most Z users don't reflash that often. OTOH, there's a high proportion of hackers and tinkerers in the Z community, so maybe it is an issue.

For me, I'm hoping at some point we could have a cvs type of system, so we can participate in the debugging of things.

That would be nice. If I had access to Guylhem's keyboard patch, then I could patch fbvncserver to match it.