Newbie Questions

[malcolmxavier]

I am waiting for my new-to-me 5500 (Collie?) from eBay. I have been wanting a Zaurus for a long time and finally got around to affording one. It is coming with a Wireless card and I bought a Ambicom CF-GPS card.  I am fairly savvy with Linux. one of the main reasons I purchased it was to have something to play with, but also for my upcoming honeymoon trip to Europe.

I plan to upgrade to OpenZaurus as soon as I get the device, but I am not sure where to go from there. I have been looking at both Opie and GPE, and have even been thinking of installing them both at the same time to get maximum flexibility. Is that to ambitious?  

I want to be able to use the GPS (is qpeGPS the way to go?)  while in Europe, surf the web and check mail anywhere I can pick up a good wifi signal (and get in), listen to some music and watch some movies and (if possible) use KPhone and Free World Dialup to make a few calls. If I can get Kismet up and running, bonus. I'd also like to keep some contacts and write some notes on the trip in the device, but that should be easy.

So I am asking for opinions, I don't have a lot of time until we go (3 weeks).

I have been surfing around to try and get a handle on things, some look straight forward, others... not so forward.

Thanks in advance for any help or responses.

-John

[whoisit]

Did you ever find out? If so could you share?

[malcolmxavier]

Did you ever find out? If so could you share?
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Yes, I finnaly got my Zaurus and I flashed it with OZ 3.5.3 and Opie 1.2.0. I am using the 64-0 build and moved everything to a 1 Gig SD card I purchased. I use Coredump's altboot which saved me A LOT of time and effort. He also maintain the Hentges ROMS, which I never couple get to work so I "built" my own.

I then went about trying to find a web browser. I installed Opera with the Sharp Compat and used it for a while, but was not happy with it. I just recently started using Konquorer, which is now my favorite browser. I wish someone would compile the newest version or even better get a working copy of Firefox. Once I get back I might start figuring out how to get an emulator working and compile my own stuff.  

Anywho... I loaded up opie-player2 only to find out that all of my video studdered like mad (make sure you install the lib-xine codecs) but audio worked great. I finnally settled on XMMS. It plays my videos as wellas all my mp3s.  

I use opie-reader for all my eBooks, and I threw in qpegps (make sure you have gpsd) and ran that for good measure. I wish there was a little better program for doing GPS (this prgram is stellar), but something that I could get turn by turn directions on.  I guess I am really asking for Garmin type functionality.  BUt it does work. One tip, patience. I wasn't waiting long enough for it to acquire satellites, so I didn't think it was working, it took me 10 minutes to acquire.

Oh yes, KPhone... I got it working and can do the echo test with FWD, but I get horrible feedback and like a pulsing noise that gets louder until it's unbearable. Unless I can figure this out, it's not usable for me.  Reding the directions in the kPhone help makes all the difference to getting it running.

I will try to find the links and add things to this post as I can find them.  Any specific help you need?

[whoisit]

I will try to find the links and add things to this post as I can find them.  Any specific help you need?
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Thanks. All this is very helpful. I am a complete novice trying to learn.  See my post "Complete Novice Questions, Open Zaurus, Linux, capability, etc.". Love to get answers as well as your links