Hey while I'm eagerly waiting for my first 5500 to arrive I've been enjoying thinking of ways to use my Z. I've kind of gotten myself confused though and sometimes these answers are right in front of you but you don't see them so I'm grateful for all help.

Firstly if I can get an opinion which environment would you guys/gals suggest most closely resembles a linux desktop. I can see myself wanting to set up some automated tasks (downloading new site info by wget, using a cron script) but I'm not sure what would allow me to do that.

Also is pdaXrom just for the higher end Z's? I couldn't find a definitive list of supported devices. I only ask because it seems like that might be the best environment on a Z

And sorry if I have these mixed up, Cacko & OpenZaurus are like BIOS's? And then OPIE & GPE run on top? Kismet only runs on pdaXrom?

Anyway maybe if I collect enough info I can help out other newbies.

Looking forward to hacking around with my Z.

PDAXROM is just for the SL-C series at present. I don't know if they have plans to support the SL6000 but I'm pretty certain they won't bother with the SL5500.

Cacko distribution is a rework of the Sharp ROM with Qtopia Interface, not X based, uses Trolltechs QT Embedded framework. Most tranditional Zaurus applications use this framework.

OpenZaurus is traditionally OPIE based which is an open source remake of Qtopia, however, latterly you can run GPE on OpenZarus.

GPE is an X based distribution - the GNU Palmtop Environment - check out gpe.handhelds.org for screenshots etc. - I think this is your closest starting point if you want something really like a Linux desktop, however, you may find it lacking a bit in PIM functionality. - GPE includes Calendar and Addressbook stuff that with some fairly serious hacking can be made to synchronise using Multisync on a Linux desktop to something like Ximian Evolution. But you need to download quite a lot of the build framework to build this plugin.

Hope that helps as a starting point.

- Andy

More like this:

OZ is the distribution, Opie/GPE are the GUIs (same as Mandrake with Gnome/KDE/whatever).

Cacko is both the distro and the GUI (which is Qtopia - similar to Opie)

I was under the impression that there were problems with kismet on pdaXrom. It certainly runs on OZ and the Sharp ROMs (this includes Cacko because, as iamasmith said above, it's based on the Sharp ROM).

What you'll generally find is that any command line tool which is available will run on OZ (as most of the people who first compiled them for the Z were running OZ).

If you want the flexibility to hack your Z then go for OZ.


Si

For Qtopia and OPIE there are also frontends for Kismet.

If you want something to toy around with, probably the best bet is OZ. If you want something that's very stable (OZ is stable, but it's still in development, so not as stable), then go for the Sharp ROM or one of the Sharp-based ROMs. Not that you can't play around with the Sharp ROM, but it's not as easy to.

Hmm... so if we stop developing it, it becomes stable?

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

I guess that was a bad way to put that.

The 3.5.x versions are development versions (right?), meaning bugfixes, features, etc. are still being added and fixed. The 3.2 is so old it's not worth it. So once it gets up to 3.6, it'll probably be better (at least on like the 5500) than any other ROM out there.

By the way, whatever happened to 3.4??

Thanks for all the replies, clears up a lot for me. I now have a much better grasp on things. I'll probably end up playing with all of them, but will start with OZ/OPIE. I think GPE might be more what I'm looking for though.

I figure if I put a decent amount of time into a 5500 I'll pick up a 760 or the like later on.

Pretty sych'd about it either way.

One more question,

The software compiled for pdaXrom doesn't work on Cacko?

I'm a 3 day-C860 newbie and I don't know which rom install.

3.4 was skipped due to changing old buildroot to OpenEmbedded. 3.5.1 was done from scratch (not basing on any older OZ releases).