Messages

1

General Discussion / I Sinned....no More Z For The Moment

« on: December 28, 2005, 03:42:49 pm »

OK, I have to admit it, I have sinned.

I have bought a Palm T|X for Christmas (which in itself is not the worst as I don't feed Billy's abomination of a mobile OS), for various reasons. And it's not that I'm a hardcore Windows user, it's more that happen to use that OS since there's isn't much on the market that will support all these LOB applications I have to support for a living.

It's not that I'm lacking a terminal services client, or even applications, or that I want a smart phone. Or that I have problems in Japan with my then-useless phone. My decision was driven by a few points:

- my Z was up for replacement, or at least it's battery is
- my Z has a rather bad uptime, especially with WiFi, although that's probably more a hardware problem (ie ineffecient WLAN chipsets of the time
- even if the kernel is progressing, I still had various problems with the Z not turning off, freezing, or just plain running out of juice during daily usage
- included WiFi
- included Bluetooth
- support of major OSes (which includes, for me, Linux)
- useful webbrowser
- useful handwriting recognition
- size (put a 5500 side-to-side with a T|X, you'll see what I mean)
- synchronization (and no, that Ko* stuff isn't good enough, it's a kludge by another name, at most); it kinda works, but then not completely, and sometimes, the results are unexpected.
- quite a few Linux applications were ported to the Z without rethinking ergonomics
- price of replacement hardware
- handwriting recognition

When counting in some 50 Euros for the battery alone, plus the permanent re-installing, I decided to get that Palm.

As usual, where there is light, there must be shadow:

- no more Wellenreiter. Having this on Palm would make me shelve out 10-20 US-$.
- byebye, free terminal services client. All the ones currently available cost money
- no more phyiscal on-device keyboard. That's probably the price to have a smaller PDA, I guess. Not too much of a problem as I'm fairly fluent at Graffiti, and that's what I didn't like too much about the Z
- no more XMMS

But there's hope. A few enterprising hackers have made Linux run on a Palm LiveDrive, and on a Tungsten T3, so I suspect it's possible to have Linux on a T|X as well. But at least on the PDA sector, it seems I'm lost for Linux this time.

2

5x00 General discussions / Sync 5500 To Linux

« on: May 15, 2005, 01:12:29 pm »

I have basically used Mandriva 2005 Limited edition, which ships with KDE 3.3 and a usable Kitchensync that will correctly synchronize Kontact with the Opie PIMs.

Always remember a few things:

a) networking Linux with a Opie Z: http://snoop.alphanet.ch/?q=users/mussi/za...networking.html is the reference I use, but I'll update it soon with regard to Mandriva 2005
 Networking on the Z: The weak and the inept buy a USB card solely for this, the real hardcore Zaurii fans simply configure usbd0 with 3.5.3 and set the DNS servers (as the DHCP on the Z will not 'see' them through NAT)

And voila, most stuff works dandy. Synchronizing may require you to acknowledge a few changes in the address book, but else, there's little extra work required now.

3

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / New Hentges Rom With Oz 3.5.3 / Opie 1.2.0

« on: May 14, 2005, 03:16:16 pm »

So far, at least I haven't been able to do so. However, opie-mail has become much better in the 3.5.2 release, and thus tkcmail is almost useless now (at least for me).

4

General Discussion / More Choice In Linux Based Pdas And Smartphones

« on: May 01, 2005, 07:28:44 am »

I've been following this thread and the discussion around it and I'm not entirely convinced this stuff is the right thing, especially a cell phone with a real keyboard.

Actually, what I want is something like the QDA 700 from Qoollabs, which does away with all these funky buttons execpt the few ones for apps like calendar, addresses (coupled with the phone app) etc.

5

General Discussion / Zaurus Replacement?

« on: April 24, 2005, 06:15:16 pm »

What do you think about this piece of hardware?

[img]http://www.akihabaranews.com/news_pics/9485/1.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

To me it looks pretty nice, although I could do away with the keyboard and have a bigger screen instead. Could this be a killer for bigger Zaurii?

6

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Possible New Zaurus Kernel For Oe

« on: March 29, 2005, 07:20:43 pm »

And what about SD support for the 6000 and the clamshell Zaurii in that case? I'd hate not to be able to use that 'slower' (but perfectly usable) storage.

7

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Usb Broken Sl5500 With Oz 3.5.2

« on: January 15, 2005, 03:50:49 pm »

Actually pretty simple.

- modprobe usbnet (or insert it into /etc/modprobe.preload)
- copy the following scrip into the file /etc/hotplug/usb/usbnet t:

#!/bin/bash

zIface=usb0

zIfaceIP=192.168.129.1

zIP=192.168.129.201

zHOST=10.100.1.3

/sbin/ifconfig $zIface $zIfaceIP netmask 255.255.255.0 up

/sbin/route add -host $zIP $zIface

iptables -t nat -F

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -j SNAT -o eth0 --to $zHOST

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

#########################################

- make sure iptables is installed
- plug Z into cradle that is attached to computer
- enter the 192.168.129.201 address into /etc/hosts
- run aforementioned script
- ping zaurus

8

Linux Issues / Syncing With Kitchensync On Kde 3.3.1

« on: January 15, 2005, 02:13:56 pm »

I've finally compiled Kitchensync 0.0.8 against KDE 3.3.1, and nada, it doesn't work yet.

However, I've fed all the data into http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=97092

Maybe if some other folks could try to replicate my problems?

9

Linux Issues / Syncing With Kitchensync On Kde 3.3.1

« on: January 13, 2005, 05:58:57 pm »

I've been fighting to sync with kitchensync on KDE 3.3.1.

Basic assumptions: I can happily ping the Z, ssh into it etc.

The addressbook synchronization works fine.

However, not so with the more important thing - the calendar.

To recapitulate, I have following ks config for the resources:

konnector: A qtopia connector, pointing to my Z attached via USB.

korganizer: a file pointing to /home/mussi/.kde/share/apps/korganizer/default.ics

kaddressbook: a file pointing to /home/mussi/.kde/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf

If I add the calendar into the konnector resource list, it suddently multiplies itself (if I add it to the konnector resource, I can reliably close kitchensync and then when I restart it, I have between 3 and 5 extra instances of the kalendar resource appearing in the list of the konnector resoure - and ontop of it, syncing goes into some sort of endless look, only to be broken when I stop ks). However, if there's only the qtopia resource, the address book gets happily synced as it should.

Any ideas? Zync isn't in a workable state yet, and I actually don't dislike the Kontact pim suite, it's just that kitchensync isn't on par with the rest of it.

10

General Discussion / Differences Between Z Sl-6000 L & W

« on: January 11, 2005, 07:49:46 pm »

The machine at StreamLineCPUs.com is 585 US-$, Trisoft sells a 6000 for 849 Euros.

Just - the SL6000 is HUGE, compared to the 5500. I'll probably go for a 860 sooner or later, due to this....

11

5x00 General discussions / Soft For A-300

« on: January 09, 2005, 12:31:21 pm »

No, unless we get Opie and OpenZaurus running on the A-300.

12

General Discussion / Zaurus As A Laptop/desktop

« on: January 09, 2005, 12:25:18 pm »

The OQO is a good, but pricey option.

Maybe a Psion NetBook-like device would be much better, if it ran on somewhat more powerful hardware and had USB as well as WiFi.

13

General Discussion / Sharp Leaves Pda Market In USA

« on: January 09, 2005, 11:53:13 am »

But only in Japan, if we look at the Z.

If I can get something that looks like a Treo, with a 320x320 resolution, inbuilt SD, Wifi and Bluetooth, and runs Linux and has an Opie release, we could have a real winner.

14

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Keyring From Feed Doesn't Work In 3.5.2

« on: January 09, 2005, 10:11:35 am »

Is the package and all dependenices to it correctly linked?

else try

> ipkg-link mount /mnt/<whatevermediaexceptroot>

15

General Discussion / Who's Got To Go? Qtopia, Opie?

« on: December 30, 2004, 09:57:54 am »

And that's exactly the reason why we have to take the decision for Sharp, how much Sharp might like or not like it. The world has to go on.

There might be a way that Sharp starts using Qtopia 2.1/Opie2 - and that's when OZ does it, and did all the work for it. I suspect that Sharp might sleep in a 'made' bed, and have us develop most of the kernel and the widget toolset, and just supply hardware and some applications that can't easily be created by opensource developpers (like Japanese-English dictionaries with copyrighted information).

Or we simply improve on apps. But that wouldn't make the problem MickeyL pointed out smaller, since we'd always run after a moving target, and that's the Qtopia x.y version. If we had a commitment from TrollTech that any future Qtopia/Opie app that compiles on 2.1 also compiles without modification on x.y, there could be a point to move to Qtopia. However, this seems unlikely to me. OTOH, moving to Enlightenement is also highly risky as we would lose most of our codebase (75% if MickeyLs worst prognostics come true) if we changed. So maybe keeping Opie and just going for the applications is the best we can currently do. Since Qtopia 1.7 won't evolve, keeping Opie at this point and enhancing on Opie is probably the best thing we can do.

Maybe somebody who has a much better command of the Japanese language than me could explain that in a Japanese Zaurus forum?