right i bought a SL-C3100 on impulse as it looked sooooo damn good.

I've been a bit to busy with work to do a lot of the background reading so I'm starting a bit on the backfoot. So I have a few questions for hardcore Zaurus users. And I hope you can answer them

1. Is it worth installing a different O/S - OpenZaurus / OpenBSD , I've read one thread that suggests that OpenZaurus isn't stable enough to bother installing and as for the BSD port I'm unsure of its usefulness. So Advice etc welcome.

2. Wheres the best place to find english support, my PDA was converted to english for me but from what i've seen already theres not much support after that. So wheres the best place to find ROMS patches etc.

2. Whats the best GUI frontend for the Zaurus? I've seen 2 that work with OpenZaurus but can you change the default QT one as its a bit naff.

3. Wheres the best place to find compilers, network tools and the like? I'm hoping to find at least a C/C++ compiler , hopefully perl , not essential but java would be useful and any serious networking tools would be useful as well.

All help and pointers are greatly recieved.

Thanks in advance

xfx

stay with the stock rom for now. the cacko rom that is getting close to completion is a fully english and polished version of the stock rom.

oz and pdaxrom are works in progress, but they are stable for some and not for others.

There are two related repositories for software elsix.org and the zaurus software index.

actually, im thinking of more along the lines of pdaxrom But we shall see, I will wait for both

stay with the default.
why?
-THere is alot more programs that can run on it than any other rom image
-It is more stable and it can be used for what was intended for
-more people run it.
-More people develop for it.
-alot more possibilities.
-and best for newbies.

Pdaxrom and open zaurus is good but not great. Both are amazing and until they are polished, they should remain as something to look forward to. I on occasions back up my stuff, flash the pdaxrom or open zaurus just to see where it is at. Since i run alot more applications here than most people, i find them to be useless for what i really need it for.

I am still looking forward to them. Keep an eye out for them and don't disregard them

But i do recommend you stay with the stock rom for now so you can get familiar with the zaurususer environment.

our devices are too new to run on them. the c3000 runs other rom images fine. our new units will soon run them fine in the near future. One example is cacko updated. It will be released soon and will run fine on a c1000 or c3100.

yee haww, for cacko, hopefully itll ba all english:)

so, any idea when SL-C3100/Cacko will be available?

Why couldn't someone simply hack the C860 (or C1000) install to recognize the "SL-C3100" model string and proceed with the install? C1000 is essentially same as C3100 w/o the hard disk, right?

(I did boot the C860 installer on my 3100, and it got far enough to the the model string, then refused to proceed...)

there is no official cacko rom for the 1k as of yet. It will be coming soon and the 3.1K will be soon after that. You probably cannot use the 860 cacko because they have different cpus (pxa255 vs pxa270) amount other things like usb host.

But, I bet there is very little difference between the pxa255 and pxa270 except for the speed bump (400MHz and 416MHz respectively). Even if there are differences between the two chips (say there are extra/new instructions on the 270), I doubt any of the builds are optimised to use such special instructions.

If I didn't care about USB-host support (just want to see what Cacko looks like, play around, etc.) I bet a quickly hacked 860 ROM would run mostly OK.

I looked thru the install binaries/scripts to see if I could find and change a "SL-C860" model string; I found nothing...

I just ordered a C3100 from Dynamism.com. They list the price at $899, but I got them to come down to $729 + $10 shipping. I should have it by Friday.

Dynamism is more expensive than pricejapan, conics, etc. but if you can bargain them down, the reduced ship time and better warranty responsiveness is worth it for US customers (they are based on Chicago and ship from Chicago, not Japan).

Anyways, I plan on doing the "dual boot" thing with the base Rom and OpenBSD. offroadgeek was kind enough to give us an OpenBSD forum, and it's been quite active with folks who are loving OpenBSD on their zaurus! There are kinks to work out but it seems pretty useful and is apparently easy to dual boot.

I love Cacko and will probably try that out as a replacement for the stock rom when it's released. Never tried pdaXrom.

Oh, I just wanted to add that OpenBSD has a million networking tools (many network security related) available. Also, the zaurus port is an official project, and thus has the backing of the OpenBSD project, so it's likely to be supported until the main developers become disenchanted of the zaurus platform (like that would ever happen).

I ordered my 3100 from PriceJapan on late Monday night and it arrived early on Wednesday morning . I agree the Dynamism would be better for support issues though. Did you just ask them for a cheaper price?

Wow, that's a pretty good ship time!

I told them about the prices on pricejapan, conics, etc. Another sales rep took over and offered the lower price.

TIP: I got the last one they had in stock so it might be a couple of weeks until they restock.

Go to http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/ you could find all you want

http://s91215199.onlinehome.us/zaurus/ => C/C++ and Java compiler
for Java you have to install J2ME or any jre
read this http://www.oesf.org/index.php?title=Zaurus_Java_FAQ

This is one of the most useful sites I've found for adding software. It doesn't necessarily have links to all the sites, but lists the versions that work and the nit picky details to avoid running of disk space on /dev/hda1, etc.

http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/custom.html

ah well...... i just got my 3100 from conics.net ... the sum total price (including monetary conversion fees on my credit card, shipping, lord knows what else...) was $744. there were about 2 days from placing the order til they charged my credit card and 5 days til it arrived.

i like the unit and am having the usual issues with trying to install 'useful' software -- like kde-pim, firefox and, next up, thunderbird. ultimately, i'd like to get my email/calendars/etc on the CF or SD card and be able to stop hauling around a laptop (or two...).

i suppose i'm learning...