Messages

16

Linux Issues / Ubuntu Will Develop Mobile Linux

« on: May 10, 2007, 07:48:43 am »

adf, why do you need to talk about Windows mobile instability to explain the current situation of the Zaurus distro? Why should I think about Windows synchronization while I only use Linux desktop. Why did you talk about other successful devices and distro instead of the Zaurus ones? Thinks about all this.

I wouldn't use Linux as my only and main desktop if someone used those arguments to explains bugs and instabilities. And yes, I tested them all, as I tested other external synchronization solutions. The facts are there.

Ubuntu? A new hope! This is how I see this. A new hope even if they won't target the Zaurus Line without external contributions.

17

Ubuntu / Ubuntu On My Zaurus?

« on: May 09, 2007, 09:08:55 am »

What is your main interest Da_Blitz? Have something that works out of the box for your Zaurus or just kill a company because it is successful? To have something powerful that works out of the box of course. We agree.
I understand you. We see Ubuntu adds everywhere. Perhaps because of its popularity but certainly because of a good marketing team.

18

Linux Issues / Ubuntu Will Develop Mobile Linux

« on: May 09, 2007, 08:56:49 am »

All those projects around are interesting dhns, but mainly for developers. Where is my great and powerful distribution for my Zaurus SL-C760? Where can I download something really stable from those projects? Something that just works out of the box? Something I haven't noticed? Do even one of those projects have succeeded in the market in open source device? Something stable to work with? Something marvelous? Rock solid? I never see this here, nor on handhelds.org, nor ... Well, couldn't find one good distro for this PDA for years. I just have "hope" but can't see anything. I'm not talking of something that "will be marvelous" or that "will be stable". No, I'm talking about now, today, with all those years behind.

If you just play with ssh and don't bother with PIMs and don't need synchronization and don't want to do things that a real PDA can achieve (things like power off/ power on or playing music without the need to cold reboot your device) than you won't understand what I'm talking about. The expected reply could be: "If you wanted those things, why didn't you invest yourself in those projects". But here is how I see all this: your different "efforts" just killed the Zaurus line and killed my hope to use those device as a simple user. Should I helped to achieve this? No of course. I see them like a a wast of time. I contribute small patches to other FOSS but for those ones my answer is no. They received more power, they had more developers, they had more attention from the community but nothing usable came out. Only frustration (for a few of us perhaps). So no. Sorry no. I see them like some kind of trap. I'm not saying to kill any effort but to let other do what they want and let those who don't need more to continue to play with with what is already there. I prefer collaboration instead of just one big project that don't achieve anything good tor "joe six packs".

I'm so paranoid that I even though that you were just a few guys from companies trying to stop Linux expansion in the mobile/embedded market. Can you imagine this? To much Zaurus are just paperweight at present arround me that I'm disgusted. I'm sure that OE is interesting as a distro builder tool. But as a user, I judge on what have been done and not what it can do. Please, tell me I'm wrong and that what I'm expecting from Linux embedded is already downloadable. Where should I point my ftp client to stop crying about my new paperweight? I will really be happy to be wrong. Really.

19

PocketPenguin / Other Pda/phones To Get Ideas From

« on: July 31, 2006, 03:15:12 pm »

The design can be improved. Mainly the keys on the sides : No easy big keys like "shoot", "play/pause", "back", "forward" and "record".
And of course... a native Linux OS is missing.

This HTC is for me the best ARM PDA/phone hardware at present. Nothing compare to it. First class since the end of 2005 (when they release it).

20

Zaurus - pdaXrom / A Big Problem... (deleted)

« on: July 24, 2006, 10:43:17 am »

https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=3040

Still no go ?

21

General Discussion / What Is Your Best Desktop Environnement For Pda?

« on: July 11, 2006, 06:10:23 am »

Some of the ideas of this thread are coming true. I just read a review of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10:

http://madpenguin.org/cms/index.php/?m=show&id=7150&page=3

22

General Discussion / What Is Your Best Desktop Environnement For Pda?

« on: July 10, 2006, 03:58:11 pm »

Yes, gimmie is an interesting peace of software. I'm curious to see what it will become.

  The answer is Newton!  Yeah,  it may seem like I'm biased looking at the avatar I'm using,  but I speak from the perspective of having used almost every PDA and desktop environment of our days.
  The thing is that Apple actually did what you wanted,  they started from scratch with the pen interface in mind and poured lots of money into it.

I missed the Newton  . It wasn't a success in Europe because of the already top selling device: The Psion Series 3 Classic (1991). When people begun to talk about it, Palm device were already there. Now I've begun to understand why people are crying against Apple to release a new PDA. They didn't really started it from scratch thought. They took a lot of ideas from the competition (keyboard based) and added marvelous ideas to have a touchscreen driven interface. As PalmOS, they did a great job. Too late to prevent Palm to win the market (well, they wasn't called "Palm" at that time)

  It is not easy to explain the user experience you get when using a newton,  take a few minutes to watch this video.  It is the first newton model (launched at 1992!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64QuJdJmCbA...related&search=

  That's "whole-screen" handwriting recognition,  printing to hundreds of printers out-of-the-box,  application inter-operation, etc.  Look at the way you select text!

  These are the user interface guidelines published by apple,  there's some philosopy in it!:UserInterfaceGuidelinesOS2.0.pdf

   Read at least the first pages of chapter 1,  and I'm sure that the next time you're developing a program you will remember it.

Amazing demo! It was made so much years ago but it's still amazing. The UserInterfaceGuidelinesOS2.0.pdf is very interesting too. I found that most enterprise of this period shared there GUI ideas without knowing it. Psion has the same ideas in there C SDK for Sibo device for exemple (1991).

It's like reading "How do palmOS and other touchscreen based PDA has born".

I found a lot of great website arroung application and OS screenshots but nothing like this demo. There's so much thing on the web:

http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots
http://lowendmac.com/orchard/06/0207.html

23

General Discussion / What Is Your Best Desktop Environnement For Pda?

« on: July 10, 2006, 07:18:25 am »

To start the real discussion, here his what I was thinking about. I won't talk about the base system, nor about the libraries, nor build system but about the Graphical User Interface, the shell to launch the applications and access files. Here is my first brain storming made a few months ago:

Mozilla/Qtopia/Symbian have the good idea to use tabulation. Palm use simple access bar at the bottom but could be on top too. Psion Epoc doesn't show the application menu nor does PamOS and there's a lot of space on the screen. The bottom bar could even been merged with the application menu if using a simple menu button as on Psion device. Sharp Zaurus has one on the left side of the screen but doen't realy use it. Last Windows Mobile device use a quick menu access on bottom (and Sharp have.. as I said, 5 tactiles buttons on the left of the screen). Psion 5mx/revo/netBook do use simple shortcut to switch between applications view mode (from day view to week view for example) and to control the wall application. They also use shortcuts to zoom in/out in any application and been ale to beam data. Psion revo and WindowsCE use a Today view for quick notifications and quick access to most used applications. Konqueror uses multiple browsing configuration and can show the directories content as icons or tree (...), with windows splitting, files ordering with different attributes (...). iceWM and Psion 5Mx have quick access to running applications and show them in a list with the current opened file. Today view, applications views, documents views, configuration view... all need to be customizable and structured to be really usable and user friendly, as it is on PalmOS. Mandrivalinux menu application structure is the best I know so far.

The main idea: the user is free and he can play with directories or quick access list as much as he wants. Power user yes! I let "simple ideas" and "all in a virtual directory" or other simplistic ideas to those who want to create GUI for dummies and don't know how to teach users how to use powerful tools.

With this list, you should now have an idea of what I was thinking about a few months ago before I get into my "garage" as steel Job . Have you got any other ideas to add to this list? Good or bad ideas, I'm listening. We all know that it's easy to have bad ideas. Have you got good ones? Mine are frozen.

Many thanks in advance.

24

General Discussion / What Is Your Best Desktop Environnement For Pda?

« on: July 10, 2006, 04:55:46 am »

I already know about this project dhns ;-)

25

General Discussion / Strong Zaurus Contender From Korea

« on: July 07, 2006, 06:44:55 pm »

Most PDA have thier screen without protection and you have to use other solutions to protect them, from palm to sharp, from hp to qtek.... As you said, there's a big lack of imagination.

This device is a bit too sharp.

26

General Discussion / Strong Zaurus Contender From Korea

« on: July 07, 2006, 04:17:20 pm »

its crap.  How can I stick that in my pocket without worrying about the screen getting hosed.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=134096\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

You mean like the Zaurus SL-5600?

Their design is interesting but this is too big for a pocket.

27

General Discussion / What Is Your Best Desktop Environnement For Pda?

« on: July 07, 2006, 04:13:06 pm »

Hi amrein, long time no see!

How's RPM doing?

I'm still building and playing with rpm for Mandrivalinux

I'd like to see a small-systems environment tailored for screens from 320x240 to 800x600 recreated from scratch with the needs of embedded computing in mind. It should contain a set of convincing stock applications (PIM, Multimedia, Networking) that fit nicely into a no-less-but-astonishing UI, but should also contain a way to run "plain" X applications (for those geeks).

It should be using modern Linux technologies (like dbus, sysfs, udev) under the hood to create a snappy event based system with low power requirement. No polling is allowed in any case!

It should be fast.

It should be extensible -- but not too much. Since I'm the one preaching the choice-is-not-freedom-when-you-can-only-choose-from-insufficient-alternatives, I rather have a couple of killer apps than hundreds or thousands of sucky ones. Same goes for distributions btw and UI environments, btw.

Having to edit configuration files or dropping to the console must be a NO. NO! I mean it, really. NO NO NEVER!

Last but not least you need to make a comprehensive set of guidelines and a strong framework available in an SDK. To make it fun developing for the framework. Encourage multiple languages, but focus on one.

Agreed. And this is so much work for one man. I can tell you. There is always something wrong in what already exist. Always the need to reenvent the wheel... for fun.

If I were given the option to design and develop such a thing from scratch, I would most likely go the EFL way. The Enlightenment Foundation Libraries just rock and you can create very good looking and user friendly UIs. Perhaps something like EEM Demo on Motorola A780.

Sure. To use something that already exist. Mixing all open source toolkit to have a few ultra powerful light and fast LGPL libraries is like a silly man project... A new thesis to work on    ?

Currently, the idea for the PDA Desktop Environnement could be to merge all the ideas, from all PDA Desktop environnement to PC desktop ones... Thinking "fast, easy, powerful, user friendly, easy to program, small memory footprint". E DR17 is really interesting.

To get back to the Desktop Environnement design, I have already worked on a draft with a few ideas of what the UI could look like. I still think I'm missing something and it's not easy to keep it simple when you like customizable UI. Sometimes, very good ideas emerge from the community but today the only answers I've got arround are : "'I'm already happy with what I have even if I dream about something better but I still have no idea of what it could be sorry.".

So I ask here to see if people have ideas or screenshots  

28

General Discussion / What Is Your Best Desktop Environnement For Pda?

« on: July 05, 2006, 06:38:01 pm »

Hi

When I run all those Desktop Environnement, from Gnome to KDE, from QTopia to GPE... I found that all of them are not completely usable. A lot of thing is missing and there is a long road before having a very good and usable Desktop Environnement for PDAs. What are your expectations? Have you got screenshots of what you would like (or love) to see running on your Zaurus? Something already alive?

I ask because... well... there are people who listen... and sometimes...

Any good solutions from other device? Good ideas?
I only got questions and no real answer.

29

New products and alternatives / Isn't This What Sharp Should Be Doing?

« on: June 27, 2006, 11:43:14 am »

Do you realize that this Sony UPC has enough ram to run pdaXrom in ram with a ramdisk like the old Psion Series 5mx pro? What is the battery life of this device if you don't use nor the flash nor the harddrive? Does it support hibernation and fast wake up?

With the same specification but with the Zaurus or HTC universal design it will be a real killer. It's my dream  since 1991, after my firstt purchase of a Psion Series 3. At last, I will perhaps see this coming true in a few months or a few years.

Anecdote : A wall life with PDA. I like pda... because the first time a saw an Amstrad CPC, I asked : "Isn't there a portable version running with battery?" and everybody had fun with me. Well

I'm ready for a HTC universal with the Sony specification. Are you listening Sharp? Sony? HTC?

30

General Discussion / Htc Universal Vs. Zaurus C3100

« on: June 24, 2006, 05:01:12 am »

Well, perhaps there is hope. The wzero03 is made by HTC, isn't it? The design is a bit "Sharp" but... it's HTC. Why couldn't they use HTC again and build a Linux universal device? Nothing prevent them from that. SL-X5000 turbo fuel injection ;-)

So my dream machine : HTC Universal hardware + Inbuild 4 Go CF + Linux. I don't need more really. In fact, as I already own a QTEK 9000 since 2005, I won't upgrade, but there is so much people in US dreaming about the HTC Universal hardware + GNU/Linux as native OS.

... in fact, I would think twice... and would jump to the first store I think.