What do you prefer...

[Zazz]

... I am complete linux-newbee but I am highly interested to give something from me to zaurus community but in that case I would be capable , probably after many mistakes to compile programs for zaurus.

It would be much more helpful if people (and complete newbies in particular) would spend their efforts to exhaustively test and validate applications, not to blindly compile new ones and making them available untested. After all, an application that can be compiled by a newbie can be compiled by anyone in a matter of minutes so what\'s the point? It is not helpful to clutter the distributions with loads of untested packages that may or may not work, and stripping essential documentation, man pages, configure options and other information to rebuild the package does not help either. It is nice and appreciated that people want to give something back to the zaurus community, but submitting your own untested compilations is not the best way to do it.

[lardman]

I\'ve been playing with pdaXrom 1.0.5 this arvo.

If you do nothing else, update your version of ipkg. It\'s crap. Try the one on the latest OZ (3.3.6pre1) for example, it\'s not only more robust in terms of its input arguments, but it also doesn\'t mess up the status files after a failed install (and why do I get so many failed installs with the pdaXrom version?).

One more thing, I\'ve been having serious issues with not only the wanting to install -- app (from some previous failed install), but also running out of space on /home/tmp when I try to install things. This really annoys me and I almost know what I\'m doing. I hate to think what those with less experience would think.

Rant over.

I look forward to trying out the new version.


Si

[utna]

Zazz - we are planing on making two different \"rom\" downloads:
1. Normal ROM with matchbox and some usefull preinstalled util (all installed as IPKs so they can be removed if you don\'t wan\'t some or all of them). This is thought for normal users
2. Expert ROM with only kernel/term and no GUI and preinstalled IPKs

Sweet!

[boosalis]

I think QT/Qtopia or some derivative like Opie is the  way to go.
Why ?

Mature  - QT2.3 has had many releases and hopefully Qtopia will finially be made compatable with QT 4.0 when it comes out.

Commerical Support - Has backing of a (Trolltech) company with professional developers. And Trolltech has been a very good citizen to the open community as well as the commercial.

Portable - Apps and libraries can easily be made suitable for the Linux and even Windows desktop as QT is the basis of KDE, and is also available for all other OS\'es.  I like the fact that my shared data library is the same on the Zaurus as it is on the server as it really lets me reuse code, and provides more harmony from a developers perspective as I only have to have one API for handheld and server with respect to how the data gets sent and stored.

More then just widgets- QT has plenty of other nice tools that a new widget set may not even consider, like data serialization, and supports an external data format perfect for networks that PDA \'sa re now apart of.  This means if you send a floating point you don\'t have to worry if the receiving machine is little endian or bigendia, QT does it for you.

Other tools, database hooks, File classes, FTP, HTML classes.  and the list goes on and on. All of these let the user write one api regardless of the OS. And who knows perhaps QT will someday run on Windows CE or even Palm


I just don\'t see the reason for reinvent the wheel, when QT and Qtopia have a rather large critical mass in the Linux world.  Why not just make it better by adding more funtionaily to Qtopia, and QT, much like what KDE has done. Like a better PIM or a embedded database.

Those are my thoughts.  Hope my zeal for QT did not offend anyone.  

By the way I love QT and Qtopia, but I hate the way Sharp has handled their libraries. and kept their code so static

-David

[whit]

I think QT/Qtopia or some derivative like Opie is the  way to go.

Nothing against QT - been using KDE for years and it\'s in front of me now - but on the Z we\'re looking at the question of how to best use limited resources for advanced tasks. What matters most for that is the applications, not the desktop. And the advanced applications aren\'t currently written in QT.

For instance, KDE\'s word processor is a joke compared to AbiWord or Open Office - almost as bad as Hancom Word. That it\'s written in QT gives it enough widgets to look like the real thing, but it doesn\'t have the quality of coding under them to really make it such.

And it\'s also important to some of us to run text-based applications well - again by being sure that the window manager gets out of the way. So until a QT-based system can run as leanly as some of the leanest X window managers, it\'s perfectly appropriate for those who want to only run a Z with PDA-oriented apps, but for those of us who want something easily carried that runs the same front-line apps that we use on much bigger systems and screens, it seems entirely the wrong way to go unless it can be used to construct a very minimal window manager, as compared to the bells-and-whistles one the Z comes with - pretty, but so as to make it more of a toy and less of a real machine that is it\'s potential.

Again, probably PDAs should be toys, and if you\'re developing specifically PDA apps for it QT is a proper means and target - but PDAs should also (and do) cost about half the Z\'s price, whereas when viewed as a miniature laptop its price point is quite the deal. So pdaX development might actually sell a lot more Z\'s than the QT-centric marketing strategy Sharp has embraced. At the least it opens up a different market.

Which is why probably both development directions make plenty of sense, with zeal appropriate to all.

[ChrisEBoy]

add to that, the qt libraries (x and embedded) are already available for the pdaxrom.  What would be most usefull, something I tried to get working (but I was trying from a sparc machine to an arm and all the tools are for x86 to arm), was to run qtopia from within X, so if you wanted it it was there.  Thing is that with applications like kopi and soon kapi, it makes little sense to run qtopia, when the qt libraries will do.  There are very few of the apps for qtopia that weren\'t origninally straight X/QT apps anyway.

[scoutme]

my suggestions (more or less direct)


1) I noticed that XFCE is extremely fast and light, and comes with a nice panel and other promising tools.

2) I REALLY like Cacko handwriting software, it's almost perfect and really usefull

3) on a pda/minilaptop like zaurus, it would be precious to let users easily configure file browser and the interface to automatically open files and documents with their own software - with a pda using the terminal - holy terminal - can be not that fast

4) THE BATTERY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please try to use Xscale power saving features, or discover why pdaxrom eats so much battery, whilst QTopia just sniff it

5) include lynx o links in the "large rom" edition

[ThC]

2) I REALLY like Cacko handwriting software, it's almost perfect and really usefull

what ? did I missed something there ? is there an handwriting software for pdaXrom ? please let me know and give the url

edit : just noticed it was a wish ... seem I smoked too much yesterday lol ... btw you can try xstroke for that even if less efficient than cacko's (sharp) one

[scoutme]

2) I REALLY like Cacko handwriting software, it's almost perfect and really usefull

what ? did I missed something there ? is there an handwriting software for pdaXrom ? please let me know and give the url

edit : just noticed it was a wish ... seem I smoked too much yesterday lol ... btw you can try xstroke for that even if less efficient than cacko's (sharp) one

holy weed..

I'll try xstroke... but I really hope to find a port of qtopia handwriting software for pdaxrom... it would be sooooooo nice

[scoutme]

what about including in the distro the optional "just root partition" setup file?
It's a nice option

[alan]

yes  please !!!!!!

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I did'nt install it on my 1.0.5 just because i did'nt want to reconfigure everything i had set up, but the new... egh, what version will it be by the way ? 1.1 ? 1.0.6 ? Anyway this new install will be the occasion for it.

On a c750, you definitly don't have enough space and i don't use the /home : my cf is larger and i can access it even if my z is out of power...

[x273]

the battery!!!!

i think that is the most important thing!!!

[patrickq]

Surely the only shell any self-respecting Zaurus user should use is <drumroll> zsh! </drumroll>    

More powerful than bash and only 2/3 the size!

Patrick.

[alan]

that is definitely sooooo true...