Which Rom To Use? Which Is Best? Why?

I'm thinking of making the big switch from my QTopia ROM to another ROM (possibly pdaXrom) so that I can run Thunderbird, Firefox, etc...

But this isn't a decision to be made casually, especially I thought I've heard of people making bricks out of their Zaurii by performing the ROM installation incorrectly.

So, what ROM is the best and why?

Which ROM offers the most Linux capability and looks and behaves the most like a full Linux desktop counterpart? KDE looks pretty cool, but I'm guessing they don't have that for the Zaurus yet...

Do any of the ROMs run OpenOffice? Which ones can run Mozilla's Thunderbird and Firefox?

Let the battle begin!

Mozilla Thunderbird, Firebird, And Sunbird For Z?

This may be a stupid question, but why don't we have a build of Mozilla Firefox (Browser), Thunderbird (E-Mail) and Sunbird (Calendar) for the Zaurus (or do we and I just missed it?)? These products look set to overtake Internet Explorer (IE), Outlook Express (OE) and possibly even Outlook & Outlook Calendar in an event that only happens once every decade!

Has this subject already been discussed elsewhere? Does the Zuarus have enough power (400+ MHz), memory (64 MB Ram), disk capacity (4+ GB and up), and display resolution (640x480 VGA) to handle these? If so, wouldn't that give the Zuarus the kind of software that would make them almost supperior to their Windows desktop counterparts?

Maybe the Zaurus could then stand on its own as a computer and not just a cool-looking appendage of a desktop computer.

What are your thoughts? What are some of the facts on this matter?

Is the Mozilla Suite's source code available? Are they open source? Do we have the power and ability to compile them for the Zaurus?

This may turn into an exciting topic!

Zaurus Linux Shell Scripting Questions

I'm a UNIX/Linux shell scripting newbie. I've seen a few Zaurus User Group How-To pages on some script examples and I think I unterstood 85% of what I saw...

• How many different kinds of shell script (.sh... are there other extensions too?) languages are supported under Linux in the Zaurus?
• What are the differences between them?
• Why use one over the other?
• Where can I find "Shell Scripting For Dummies" kind of resource/page/site?

Thanks!

All Audio Codecs That Play On Zaurus?

What are all of the audio codecs that are supported under Zaurus?

So far I know of:

• MP3 (MPEG-Layer 3) - plays on default audio player and most (all?) audio players
• WAV (Uncompressed) - *gag*
• OGG (Ogg Vorbis) - plays on "MediaPlayer" after installing special plugin

OGG is roughly twice as good as MP3, but neither of them are very good at doing what I need. I have many audio books I want to listen to on my Zaurus. Previous to my Zaurus I used 5 kbps RealAudio and/or 5 kbps Windows Audio. MP3s can only go down to 16 kbps (and most encoders can only go down to 32 kbps). Ogg Vorbis can only go down to 9 kbps (and forces the file to remain stereo), and even this is only possible if I encode the audio file to an 8 KHz uncompressed WAV file and then encode OGG using the lowest audio quality (this is the solution I'm currently using and the quality is fine for audio books... but it is a waste since it requires stereo even though the source is in mono).

Are there other audio codecs that are supported under the Zaurus through any means, hacks, installations, etc?

OR...

Is there a way to encode MONO OGG files (so I can get down to 4-5 kbps?)

Kdeveloper On Zaurus. Other Options?

I'm still very new to the whole open source / Zaurus / Linux world. A few days ago I stumbled across KDeveloper (on my Knoppix CD ... really cool, by the way ). KDeveloper looks really cool and it says it can work with any existing compilers... so...

Could KDeveloper work with VGA Zauri? (It would be a little bit tight, but it should still fit on the screen) Have anyone tried it?

If so, which compilers are the best for:
C++?
Java?
etc...?