Messages

31

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fluxbox 1.0.0 Ipk Released

« on: July 23, 2009, 06:59:50 pm »

I have also been looking for forums on the N810

You will find that http://talk.maemo.org is a fairly active forum.

I think I have been there before, but I'll check it out again. Thanks!

32

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fluxbox 1.0.0 Ipk Released

« on: July 22, 2009, 06:48:35 pm »

Yeah, I've been using Fluxbox on my N810, and right/middle clicking is a breeze. I should probably give EvilWM a go on it, but the keyboard is crummy enough that I don't really want to.

Fixing things is the easy part. I do it when things annoy me, and sharing how to do it is trivial.

I've been thinking about getting an N810 myself. I love the Zaurus, but I think I got to the party a little late, and the interest has shifted elsewhere. But I get the impression that the N810 is less hackable than the Zaurus. Can you even install Ubuntu or Debian on it? It's a tempting machine, but I would like to actually be able to put on it something else than Maemo/Mer.

I have also been looking for forums on the N810, and there doesn't seem to be anything close to the caliber of this forum. Do you know of any?

33

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fluxbox 1.0.0 Ipk Released

« on: July 19, 2009, 12:16:17 am »

For clarification, it shouldn't matter which kernel is being run. Issues arise with different glibc versions, which also changed between beta3 and beta4/r1xx.

Thanks for clarifying that, Capn.

By the way, I think you had migrated from Fluxbox at some point due to issues with right click on the desktop not working or something like that, didn't you? Maybe there's a way to get you back into the fold.    Right click (root menu) works out of the box. The Workspaces menu (middle click on desktop) is not working, although the middle mouse works (for example when using tabbing), and it is being registered properly by xev. I think something else in the pdaXii13 infrastructure must be interfering with the middle mouse click registering in the root window. The way I have solved the problem is by mapping the Workspaces menu to Ctrl + Mouse1, and it works just as well.

Thanks for putting all the work that you put so far in compiling packages and fixing issues, by the way, all your efforts are much appreciated!

34

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Some Pdaxii13/pdaxrom Fixes

« on: July 17, 2009, 06:11:52 pm »

As a part of my setting up my fluxbox installation on pdaXi13, I'm doing little modifications to enhance functionality or solve small issues. Instead of posting them in my fluxbox thread, I'll post them here.

The first concerns the issue that takes place whenever you are watching a movie in mplayer and rotate the screen. This causes the screen to turn white, and requires a hard reset. I fixed this by making sure that rotation only takes place whenever mplayer is not running. Just add these three lines to the beginning of /usr/bin/rotate.sh

Code: [Select]

if [ "`pidof mplayer`" != "" ] || [ "`pidof mplayer2`" != "" ]; then
  exit 0
fiNow, whenever you are watching a movie in mplayer, you can swivel the screen without problems.

I seem to remember having the same issue in cacko. Maybe the screen rotate logic is shared. In this case, this modification should work equally well.

35

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fluxbox 1.0.0 Ipk Released

« on: July 17, 2009, 04:10:57 pm »

Nice going to try this weekend on my C860, this is going to work on beta 1?

It should work with no problem, yes. Beta 1 has a 2.4 kernel, right?

Let me know if you have any questions or run into any issues when you install it.

36

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fluxbox 1.0.0 Ipk Released

« on: July 16, 2009, 08:36:41 pm »

To simulate the keypress of F11 and F12 (via Alt Home and Alt Menu respectively) add these two lines to your ~/.fluxbox/keys file:

Code: [Select]

Mod1 XF86LaunchD :ExecCommand xvkbd -xsendevent -text '\[F11]'
Mod1 XF86Start :ExecCommand xvkbd -xsendevent -text '\[F12]'
Some applications have shortcuts mapped to F11 or F12 (in particular, F11 is mapped in many applications to "Full Screen", for example kchmviewer. The problem is that if you select "Full Screen" from the menu, then you can't return unless you open a terminal and bring it to the front, and then kill the kchmviewer process. This solves this problem.

37

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Issue Solved: Display Images In Kchmviewer

« on: July 16, 2009, 03:37:51 pm »

I was frustrated because of not being able to display embedded images in kchmviewer (I tried a couple of IPKs, 2.5 and 3.1.2, and it didn't work.) I was getting ready to compile my own, when I realized that there is a wrong setting in qtconfig which was preventing the images from being shown.

In qtconfig, go to Library Paths tab, and remove /usr/bin/qt/lib. Instead, add these two entries:
/usr/lib/qt/lib
/usr/lib/qt/plugins

Now I can read CHM documents with their embedded images, and with the ability to set proper language and character encodings.

38

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fluxbox 1.0.0 Ipk Released

« on: July 15, 2009, 10:28:29 pm »

I finally set up the crosscompilation SDK, and this is my first release. Everything works out of the box. Fluxbox 1-0-0 is even faster than the 0.9 branch, and it loads every possible style, even pixmap styles. And they load faster too.
I have tested this in a SL-C1000 running pdaXii13, but it should work equally well in pdaXrom Beta1 or Beta3. Not sure about other versions, please let me know if you encounter any problems.

To enable autorotate when the screen is twisted, just add this line to ~/.fluxbox/keys:

Code: [Select]

None XF86RotateWindows :ExecCommand rotate.shThis works with the rotate.sh script in pdaXii13, I don't know if pdaXrom has that same script. If you have problems, again let me know. I can post the contents of the rotate.sh script if necessary (it's just about 10 lines of code.)

Enjoy!

39

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fluxbox 1.0.0 New Package

« on: July 14, 2009, 06:24:59 pm »

EDIT: I just realized while testing that autorotate on screen twisting is not working. This is probably an easy change, I'll investigate.

EDIT2: It was simple enough (just adding a handler for the event in the keys config file.)

EDIT3: I was going to repackage so that the files are stored in /usr instead of /usr/local, but in order to avoid missing any references to the old path, I'm simply going to recompile. Since native compilation took a long time (4 hours) I'm going to try and find how to cross-compile. I think I'm going to look into doing it using the VMWare image. If anybody has experience that cares to share about this, please do it. In the meantime, if anyone wants the beta version IPK (which installs to /usr/local) let me know. It works just fine. I think fbsession needs to be edited to change the path though.

40

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fixed Bug In Kopi-apm

« on: July 14, 2009, 06:19:29 pm »

I note your interest, and I will guys let you know when I have an IPK ready. This will be for a 2.4 kernel, by the way (I will be using pdaXii13 to compile this, but fortunately I think there are no binaries in this package, so it should be actually compatible with any kernel   ) I am working on finishing the Fluxbox 1.0.0 package (tracking how to provide for auto-rotate at the moment,) and when I get done with that I'll look into IPK control file syntax, because this package will replace some startup scripts in the system.

As a form of informal documentation, I'm going to provide a little overview on this issue, which has a couple of different facets:
Naturally, KO/PI needs to rely on the OS itself to wake up the device before KO/PI can issue an alarm. Originally (and I'm talking in the Sharp ROM versions,) I believe KO/PI used the atd/at infrastructure, and that worked perfectly fine. In pdaXrom I'm not aware of the original situation, but at some point one of the users in the forum (caitlin, I believe) provided a solution using apm instead. This solution was a step in the right direction, but due to some bugs pertaining to apm (namely, the inability of apm to schedule wakeups wrapping around midnight) it showed some problems. Then, another user (I think zumi) came up with a solution using atd/at, and that worked mostly to perfection.

I say mostly, because there was a conflict with one of the suspend scripts that Meanie had implemented in order to preserve the integrity of the system clock on suspend/resume. That script needed to use hwclock, and because hwclock can't run while atd is running, it thus shut down atd when the Zaurus was suspended, and woke it up again on resume. This obviously made atd incapable of waking up the Zaurus to respond to the KOPI alarm. Not only that, but due to some implementation details, it caused the Zaurus to not be able to wake up in some situations, which made it necessary to perform a hard reset. I have solved this problem by stopping atd just before invoking hwclock, and waking it up right after that, both in the suspend and resume scripts.

The other issue that I found (which I referred to in this thread) has to do with a bug in the script that decides which of the KO/PI alarms to use (the pending alarm or the suspended alarm.) When the Zaurus is going into a suspend, a script looks into both of these alarms, and due to a bug in the script, suspended alarms were not being chosen if there existed a pending alarm, even if the pending alarm had expired.

Sorry if I have gotten any names or details wrong, but this is a basic outline of the problem.

My solution is quite simple (about 3 lines added/modified in a few different scripts.) But I will release an IPK, because it's good practice to do so, plus it will give me a good chance to look into how the control script in IPKs is coded.

41

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Is Pdaxrom Alive?

« on: July 14, 2009, 06:04:15 pm »

I use my z everyday for my work (science). I mostly use maxima for symbolic cal, emacs for latexing, djview for reading ebooks, xpdf, kopi etc. The z is so small that I can carry it around with me and use it whenever it is needed, and pdaxrom is powerful and stable. Thanks to all of you who has made such a wonderful os on the z.

It is very encouraging to hear that you rely on your Zaurus to provide a dependable and powerful portable platform for your work. I am actually very interested in about all the applications that you mention (except kopi and xpdf, which I am already familiar with.) If you wouldn't mind, could you elaborate on your use of emacs for latexing? I assume you are just using it to produce latex scripts, without having a TeX engine in the Zaurus itself capable of producing output, correct? Even so, I'm very interested in your setup. I think it's the first instance I have heard of someone using emacs in their Zaurus.

I would also like to thank all the people that have put so much work into the Zaurus platform and pdaXrom. The pdaXrom developers, and Meanie (the pdaXii13 developer.) Also, countless other users that have put their effort into different fronts, whether it be tracking problems, developing applications, compiling, or documenting (and I'm including in this last category all the incredibly useful discussions which this forum contains.)

There have been some very interesting developments (zubuntu for example, and kexec as a multibooting solution,) so I hope interest in the Zaurus somehow experiences a revival, because the platform and the community deserves it.

42

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fluxbox 1.0.0 New Package

« on: July 14, 2009, 02:13:59 pm »

OK, here are some screenshots. I was running an mp3 in XMMS in the background, thus the high CPU. The baseline for Fluxbox 1.0 plus gkrellm is around 12%. I am showing here a single fluxbox style, but it hasn't failed to work with any styles I had thrown at it, and styles load very fast.

Notice the transparency in aterm and gkrellm.  

http://s762.photobucket.com/albums/xx266/S...-Screencap1.jpg

http://s762.photobucket.com/albums/xx266/S...-Screencap2.jpg

http://s762.photobucket.com/albums/xx266/S...-Screencap3.jpg

(Note: Apparently, you can't embed images from photobucket in the forum, sorry for the inconvenience.)

I'll be working on repackaging the IPK, but first I got to get some sleep.  

I might include some 3rd party styles/backgrounds, with proper attribution (of course.) Any thoughts for or against this idea? Any other suggestions?

43

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fluxbox 1.0.0 New Package

« on: July 14, 2009, 12:23:47 pm »

I needed to teach myself how to compile, and it paid off. I have Fluxbox 1.0.0 running perfectly on my Akita pdaXii13 Zaurus. This version of fluxbox is apparently faster than the 0.9 branch. Window move via ALT-LMB and window resize via ALT-RMB (that is, ALT-FN-LMB) works flawlessly.

Pixmap styles can be loaded. Also, styles seem to load much faster than for Fluxbox 0.9.1.2, which is what I was using until now.
This WM is extremely efficient and stable, plus a pleasure to look at and work with in the Zaurus. It will make your Zaurus run faster, and probably will also make you more productive (this is just a subjective opinion, though.)

The release will come later today. This is for a 2.4.20 kernel, so it should be fine for pdaXrom 1.1 Beta1, Beta3, and pdaXii13 (what I got running now.)

I got gkrellm running with full transparency (0.9.1.2. had an issue which caused a 1 pixel frame to be rendered around it.) This setup looks great. I will post some screenshots later, and will tidy up the IPK and get it ready for distribution later today as well (made a mistake and installed to /usr/local/ instead of /usr/, so I need to repackage.)

44

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Fixed Bug In Kopi-apm

« on: July 14, 2009, 11:18:47 am »

Sure I'm interested in. If you could package this it would be easier for others to apply this patch :-)

Many thanks in advance!

climber

Climber,

I will be doing that in a couple of days. I just learned how to compile natively, and my first release is going to be Fluxbox 1.0.0, and I will be starting a thread for that probably later today (just dealing with a minimal issue at the moment.)

I don't know if there is any place to upload new ipk releases or not, but we'll deal with that when the time comes.  

I'm having a lot of fun setting things up and learning how to do new things, I hope my efforts can benefit other people as well!

45

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Is Pdaxrom Alive?

« on: July 12, 2009, 09:56:55 pm »

I still check back every month or two for interest's sake, but I haven't posted in almost two and a half years. I probably haven't touched my Zaurus in just as long.

pdaXrom was the closest I ever got to making it a useful device, but never quite got there (the 6000 seemed to miss out on a lot of the good stuff). Doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon, but I might get it out and play with it again one day. It's amazing to think that it's still quite a powerful device by today's standards even though its four years old!

Welcome back!

Yes, it's amazing how powerful these devices are. Have you thought about selling your 6000 and getting one of the clamshell models? SL-C1000 would be good enough unless you want to install OpenBSD on it, which AFAIK is not possible.

I have an SL-C1000 and it is literally like a miniaturized laptop. I'm running pdaXii13 on it at the moment with Fluxbox, ROX, etc. I can watch movies (mplayer), listen to music (XMMS), write documents and export to different formats including .DOC and .PDF (Abiword), read PDF (xpdf) and CHM (xchm) files, keep an agenda, addresses, passwords (KDE PIM suite,) play arcade games (pdaXmame, although I still haven't figured out how to run them at fullscreen), and about any other thing you can imagine, including browsing the web (Dillo, very fast and acceptable for most sites, or Mozilla, which is slower but more compatible with newer sites.)

You can also find IPK packages for about any application you might imagine, and if you can't find something specific, you can compile your own (I'm in the process of learning how to do this, trying to compile Fluxbox 1.0.0.)

Then you have the newer distros like Debian and Zubuntu, the possibility of installing several ROMS in a SD card and running the system from there without touching NAND, etc.

Frankly it's too bad popularity has faded for these extraordinary devices. Shame on Sharp for dropping the Zaurus.