Lots Of Questions: Faq, Roms, And More

[byzantium]

Hi everyone

I've been lurking on here for several weeks now; and have got a new 6000L waiting for me to pick up in 3 weeks.  I've never used a Zaurus before, but I'm looking forward to it

I've been reading and absorbing as much as I can from the Forums in the last few weeks.  The enthusiasm here is really infectious, and I can't wait to try out the 6000!

But for all the information that is on here, I've found it pretty tough as a Newbie to the Z to know where to start with hacking...

I've seen the faq at http://www.zaurususergroup.com/FAQ.phtml and it's a good starting point; but when I start to dig deeper into ROMs, I find I'm pretty lost.  For example, if you do a search for OPIE, GPE, X/Qt -- the FAQ returns nothing.

Not to mention it doesn't cover the c860, 6000L, C3000 or any of the more recent machines.

The FAQ looks pretty old actually - alot of stuff dating from 2002.   Well it's almost 2005!

It would be great if we could update the FAQ with more recent information, or have a pinned thread in the newbie forum that we can update as information becomes available / changes.

For example, from my reading in the forums, I've learned there's several main ROMs that people have been using.  But I've not been able to find a single source which tells me what the advantages / disadvantages are of each, nor what machines are supported / unsupported.

Here's what I've found so far:

There's 3 main ROMs:

1. Sharp's default ROMs, or Cacko modified ROMs
2. OpenZaurus ROMs:
    Opie based on Qtopia (from Trolltech) and similiar to KDE
        - binary compatible with Zaurus programs
        - available for cXXX, 6000L on OpenZaurus 3.5.2
    GPE based on GTK, uses X Windows, and similiar to GNOME
        - binary compatible with GTK ?
        - available for cXXX, 6000L on OpenZaurus 3.5.2
3. pdaXrom which is X11 based on what?

Then there are other window servers that can run on the above ROMs:  For example:

X/Qt is a X server that writes to a Qtopia window.  In other words, allows X apps to run on top of Qtopia.

Pocket Workstation which is a Debian environment that includes X11 and can run almost all linux apps (by default uses VNC for drawing windows).  But there's also a thread with X/Qt running on Pocket Workstation?

Then there's listing of Feed directories.

I'm lost!  

A up-to-date FAQ would be really helpful to me, and I hope, many many others.  I would be willing to dedicate time to keeping it up-to-date as I'm sure others would too.

There is so much expertise and experience here among you all, that it would be a shame not to collect that information and present it better.

What do you think?

 - Byzantium

ps.  Sorry for the rambling multi-threaded post.  Just a bunch of thoughts that have been collecting in my head and burst all at once  

[dsavard]

I've seen the faq at http://www.zaurususergroup.com/FAQ.phtml and it's a good starting point; but when I start to dig deeper into ROMs, I find I'm pretty lost.  For example, if you do a search for OPIE, GPE, X/Qt -- the FAQ returns nothing.

Not to mention it doesn't cover the c860, 6000L, C3000 or any of the more recent machines.

The FAQ looks pretty old actually - alot of stuff dating from 2002.   Well it's almost 2005!

It would be great if we could update the FAQ with more recent information, or have a pinned thread in the newbie forum that we can update as information becomes available / changes.

I experienced the same, I even e-mailed to administrators and never got back an acknowledge or a reply. I even contacted the author of the FAQ for DTM, he kindly sent me all the doc, libs and samples and told me he is no longer developing for the Z for over a year. He asked by e-mail the administrators to update the page, he copied me on that page and I proposed to the administrators to maintain the page. Never ever got an reply or acknowledge. So, it seems nobody is reading the e-mails sent there and FAQ are left alone for a long time and nobody is having the rights to modify the administrator's list for the FAQ.

Thats's very unfortunate and redundant topics become to appear on the forum because the FAQ and HOWTOs are completely outdated.

Anybody is listening here?

[stupkid]

offroadgeek runs this forum.  I suggest sending him a Personal Message via the forum to get access to update the FAQ.  He's pretty responsive in my experience.

[dz]

Anybody is listening here?

We're definately listening; it's just we're very busy right now

There is a lot going on in the background of the ZUG right now that you guys aren't aware of and soon we will have one giant announcement letting you all know what we've been up to.  

One of those is definately the FAQs and HOWTOs being revamped.  We are working on a new system for all of that as the current system, as you can tell, isn't exactly the greatest.

If you messaged one of the admins and you didn't get a reply, please don't take it personally.  Most of us have jobs or jobs + school on top of the ZUG and we do our best to get back to all that contact us, but sometimes we miss one or two.

Anyways, please be patient and in time all shall be explained

[soundwave106]

I just got a SL-6000L too, it is tough to disseminate all the vast information in this forum. But I'm working on it.

My understanding (at least at this time) is that there are only two ROM options for the SL-6000L:

(*) The default Sharp ROM (based on QTopia).
(*) OpenZaurus.  OpenZaurus comes in a couple of flavors: G Palmtop Environment and QTopia.

All other ROMs do not have versions for the 6000L yet.

To me, the OpenZaurus ROM is a very good alternative for those who look at the SL-6000L as a mini-Linux computer and really don't care as much about the PDA aspects. It's better for those that like to customize anything and everything. I understand the Sharp ROM is kind of weird in its Linux.

On the other hand, the OZ ROMs appear to require more fiddling, so for us who like a bit of the PDA functionality and prefer not to fiddle I'm not sure it's the best choice. In this article, for instance, it says that browser support is shaky -- especially regarding Opera which I regard as one of the strongest selling points of the 6000L.

There are some other things to consider too. Firstly, OpenZaurus libraries are available for the Sharp environment, from what I gather. This will allow you to run OpenZaurus-compiled applications, though you obviously won't get the customizable benefits.

Secondly, the Pocket Workstation project is now available. This apparantly allows you to install Debian Linux as a shell, while keeping the original Qtopia package. In some ways, I would think this is where I would go if I personally wanted a Linux environment on my 6000L...

So far I haven't run into something which makes me want to leap to even Debian, but it's early in the game.  Right now I plan to use my 6000L for wireless web surfing, away-from-home entertainment (MP3 playing and some games -- hopefully MAME works well on the 6000L), and syncing / editing a few lists (to-dos, address, budget, etc.) -- not exactly rocket science. The Linux aspect will be nice mainly for some things I plan to experiment with (e.g. VNC / terminal server remote diagnostics at work, if they have wi-fi; web page editing), I'll have to see if the Sharp ROM can handle that.

[lardman]

especially regarding Opera which I regard as one of the strongest selling points of the 6000L.

Not sure about the exact version which comes on the SL6000, but afaik Opera works fine on OZ.

There are some other things to consider too. Firstly, OpenZaurus libraries are available for the Sharp environment, from what I gather. This will allow you to run OpenZaurus-compiled applications, though you obviously won't get the customizable benefits.

Sort of; I think this feed is now very old. If someone would like to take over producing and testing Sharp ROM versions then that would obviously give users more apps (though without the speed benefits of -soft-float).


Si