OESF Portables Forum

General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: darac on May 24, 2004, 06:03:44 am

Title: ROM Comparison?
Post by: darac on May 24, 2004, 06:03:44 am
I\'ve noticed several posts asking \"What\'s the best ROM for my Zaurus?\" and, as far as I can see, most of the advice is based purely on personal experience.

Has anyone actually done a comparison between all the various ROMs available (or at least, the more popular ones)? I think it would be nice to see that ROM A comes with built in bluetooth and MP3 player, but doesn\'t yet support a calendar but ROM B supports a full PIM suite, but runs your battery down too quickly.

By listing the pros and cons of each ROM, we\'d be able to make an informed decision one which ROMs best. Does such a thing exist?

-- Darac
Title: ROM Comparison?
Post by: ScottYelich on May 24, 2004, 09:11:11 am
pdaxrom comes with minimal installed -- but then you can add that you want -- it\'s pretty much painless.
There\'s also less lib/gcc incompat with pdaxrom -- I feel.   You can also get various gcc access such as
via cramfs or cross compiling via SDKs, etc.

What\'s the best ROM?!  It *is* (probably purely) personal preference.

I\'ll say it again -- for me, pdaXrom is the *only* way to go -- I want a mini laptop, not a PDA.  I also don\'t PIM.

Scott
Title: ROM Comparison?
Post by: Snooby on May 24, 2004, 06:40:01 pm
It\'s also based on which PDA you have - pdaXrom might be the best ROM ever, but as a 5500 owner I\'ll never know :/

Also, some ROMs are perfect, until one day you come across one little niggly \"feature\" that renders it almost useless, e.g.  one ROM (i forget which but it had qtopia 1.6.2) did everything i asked of it..until i got a WiFi card and found out that the network applet insisted i use WEP, ruling out the use of public access points...totally useless, so i had to go for my 2nd choice ROM which DOES allow me to use WEP-disabled AP\'s.

In short, i\'m thinking of buying another 5500 so i can have a dedicated WiFi PDA and a seperate data/apps PDA.....maybe i can even find 2 ROMs that will talk to each other over irda
Title: ROM Comparison?
Post by: Snooby on May 24, 2004, 06:51:25 pm
As an afterthought - any ROM-gurus out there fancy building a bare-bones ROM so that we can put only what we want on it and not have to put up with a lot of apps/games we never use & can\'t uninstall ??
Title: ROM Comparison?
Post by: DrWowe on May 24, 2004, 07:04:16 pm
Snooby:  The only problem with that is that it\'s difficult to change the flash partitioning.  So you would have a lot of wasted space.

Does someone know how to do this?  If so, lay it on me!
Title: ROM Comparison?
Post by: freckface on May 24, 2004, 08:16:44 pm
a bare-bones ROM would be very useful if we wanted to create our own custom ROM.  In other words, very little ourside the workings of the OS (hardware support and useful software like fdisk, samba, etc.
Title: ROM Comparison?
Post by: lardman on May 25, 2004, 07:27:08 am
What about OZ -] you can get rid (uninstall) Opie if you so desire and are left with a barebones system. The ROM is writable so this is possible.

PdaXrom is similar as its ROM is also writable.


Simon