English/japanese Happy Roms

[Smuffle]

Another day and the beast, that is the C3100, will be in my hands.  You've been warned.

What is the state of play with ROMs out there with Japanese support?  Upgrading to a new ROM is my goal but I really need that input method and dictionary (is it really necessary to have 1000s of charactors in a language???).

Any Japanese friendly English looking ROMs out there?  Even decent betas would be fine.

[Scot]

Personally,
I use the stock ROM and either move the translation file as needed, or change the LANG variable for
English apps.  Works great for me and I really have no desire for other ROMs.

scot

[Meanie]

Another day and the beast, that is the C3100, will be in my hands.  You've been warned.

What is the state of play with ROMs out there with Japanese support?  Upgrading to a new ROM is my goal but I really need that input method and dictionary (is it really necessary to have 1000s of charactors in a language???).

Any Japanese friendly English looking ROMs out there?  Even decent betas would be fine.
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What is wrong with the standard ROM? Why does everyone think they have to flash their Zaurus? Is there something I am missing? I am asking as a newbie since I never had a PDA before my Zaurus. Is this flashing thing a PDA initiation ritual that I don't know about?

[icruise]

I personally don't think there's anything wrong with the standard ROM, especially if you take the time to customize it.  A lot of the ROMs out there are basically just the standard ROM with some extra convenience features added, but much of this can be replicated with the standard ROM. Not to belittle the work that's gone into creating these, mind you. Of course something like pdaXrom is another kettle of fish entirely.

It's certainly not a "PDA initiation ritual" since 90% of PDAs in the world only have one ROM (OS version) that they can use. I think it's probably a Linux thing, since Linux users in general seem to like to customize and tinker with their machines.

[Smuffle]

Speaking as a geek, the "tinker factor" is definetly there but also after delving around on the internet it does seem that ROMs such as Cacko really do offer a decent improvement over the original, although to be fair,  I'm not exactly sure how.  I also like the idea of having a proper windowing environment (like BSD) but they don't seem to run at a usable speed..

I need to do a few command line things like SSH and SFTP and from the little I know, there is no terminal app included with the standard ROM.  Maybe I can just download it seperatly?  pretty new to linux so not really sure.

There also seem to be some nice apps out there don't run on the standard ROM such as firefox (just for testing webpages) and abiword.  Maybe I should just leave things be.. but the screenshots of other ROMS do look pretty cool.  I'll have a play tomorrow and see what I think.

Scot, do you know of a link for "an idiots guide how to do basic Jap to Eng conversion"?  I can't remember where I saw it..

[icruise]

I need to do a few command line things like SSH and SFTP and from the little I know, there is no terminal app included with the standard ROM.  Maybe I can just download it seperatly?  pretty new to linux so not really sure.

A terminal app isn't installed by default with the Sharp ROM, but it's on the CDs that come with the device, and there are other programs you can use as well.

There also seem to be some nice apps out there don't run on the standard ROM such as firefox (just for testing webpages) and abiword.

I don't think firefox and abiword will run directly in most alternative roms, but you can run them on the sharp rom and others by installing XQt.

[elessar]

Flashing the rom is a learning experience, and not for the faint of heart I'd say. There have been many times I thought my Zaurus was totally bricked and I would have to send it back to Japan. However, I've learned that you can totally erase everything, change the disk geometry, overwrite the NAND...and still bring it back to its original state.

For 3000 users one of the minuses is the lack of ram which comes with the 3100. The Cacko rom is significantly faster than the original rom because it makes the full 32mb of flash memory available to the kernel. The original rom uses only 16mb.

However, much as I like the Cacko rom, I am disappointed with the lack of japanese support for the 3000. It is what I use the most on the Z, and not having it makes my PDA an expensive toy, and not something that I really need. (Ever looked up 20 kanji by hand in a kanji dictionary by hand?)

OpenBSD (which I installed) and pdaXRom (which I haven't) are complete systems. They are like having a PC desktop in your pocket. They can be made to support any kind of language input you like.

Also, the Sharp Rom can easily have many applications added it, but you can't easily change the slowness of the 3000 without flashing the rom. Also, certain kernel features are not enabled in the original Rom (Bluez and iptables comes to mind).

[Meanie]

Flashing the rom is a learning experience, and not for the faint of heart I'd say. There have been many times I thought my Zaurus was totally bricked and I would have to send it back to Japan. However, I've learned that you can totally erase everything, change the disk geometry, overwrite the NAND...and still bring it back to its original state.

For 3000 users one of the minuses is the lack of ram which comes with the 3100. The Cacko rom is significantly faster than the original rom because it makes the full 32mb of flash memory available to the kernel. The original rom uses only 16mb.

However, much as I like the Cacko rom, I am disappointed with the lack of japanese support for the 3000. It is what I use the most on the Z, and not having it makes my PDA an expensive toy, and not something that I really need. (Ever looked up 20 kanji by hand in a kanji dictionary by hand?)

OpenBSD (which I installed) and pdaXRom (which I haven't) are complete systems. They are like having a PC desktop in your pocket. They can be made to support any kind of language input you like.

Also, the Sharp Rom can easily have many applications added it, but you can't easily change the slowness of the 3000 without flashing the rom. Also, certain kernel features are not enabled in the original Rom (Bluez and iptables comes to mind).
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Actually, the slowness of the stock ROM is caused by the applications that it contains. Most of the applications have not been compiled for performance and a lot of applications just run in backward compatability mode.
What really is required is to update the kernel, ie use tetsu's special kernel or build your own, and get a set up optimised applications with iwmmx support. unfortunately not many applications have been built with these yet but mplayer is one of those and you can see the difference.
most modern linux kernels let you easily add things like bluez and iptables as modules. they do not need to be compiled into the kernel directly.
another significant performance improvement can be seen with applications compiled with soft vs hard floats. this can be observed with pdaxrom applications.

[desertrat]

What is wrong with the standard ROM? Why does everyone think they have to flash their Zaurus? Is there something I am missing? I am asking as a newbie since I never had a PDA before my Zaurus. Is this flashing thing a PDA initiation ritual that I don't know about?
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For me the biggest problem with the original rom is that it uses Qtopia. And when you open a file in a Qtopia app it tends to want to scan all your storage area, so in the case of a 3100 (which I have) it's going to go through my 512MB SD, 512MB CF and 4GB HDD. something that takes minutes.

--
cheers - desert rat

[Smuffle]

For me the biggest problem with the original rom is that it uses Qtopia. And when you open a file in a Qtopia app it tends to want to scan all your storage area, so in the case of a 3100 (which I have) it's going to go through my 512MB SD, 512MB CF and 4GB HDD. something that takes minutes.

--
cheers - desert rat
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mmm.. that's odd.  I have almost the same setup as you (2Gb CF, 1Gb SD, 4Gb HD, 3100) but saving files doesn't take longer than a second or two.  Maybe one of the cards has a bad sector?  

In answer to my original post, just installed the cacko ROM with Japanese support along with the full genius dictionary and it works a treat.  Advantages over standard ROM:

1) The system font is a lot easier to read
2) Useful things already installed (decent video player, SSH, console,.. )
3) Battery meter shows REAL capacity percentage (instead of "full", "not full" and "bye bye")
4) Instant overclocking via taskbar
5) Backlight can be turned off from taskbar (save battery)
6) USB seems to support more peripherals as host (external keyboard and mouse work instantly)
7) System information a lot more detailed (such as processor load)
Manage "swapfiles" from the taskbar
9) Memory usage display in taskbar
10) And most importantly.. when it boots up, lots of unix commands fly down the screen so it looks really cool.  Chicks dig this part.

Go flash and multiply.

[Meanie]

I have no delays when saving files, however, when starting certain apps, they go around the whole disk areas, internal disk, cf and sd and locate all the file types they an open which does take a long time to open. I just stopped using those apps  Alternatively, you can just tap on the file you want to open and the associated app will launch and only open the file you selected without going through all the disks.