Zaurus good for "road coders"?

[Anonymous]

I would like opinions from people who done any sort of development work on the Zaurus. Is the device at all suitable for this purpose? I would like a small device for getting work done on the road, and although a small subnotebook (like the Fujitsu Lifebook) is one option, there\'s an appeal to just being able to pull an small, instant-on, Linux device like the Zaurus out of my pocket. Some specific concerns are, 1) is the keyboard useful enough? 2) what about editors in general (I\'m assuming Emacs isn\'t the best choice here?)  3) Can gcc and javac be installed? (C and Java are my most used languages, although I occasionally use others).

I\'m assuming the clamshell models are likely to be a little easier in this regard, due to the larger keyboard, but I just found out about the SL-6000 and having built-in wireless is also tempting.

Anyway, I\'m interesting in hearing any anecdotes and pros/cons about this.

[Anonymous]

gcc and java are doable.  The only negative with gcc is if you are doing a big development with it, you may run out of temp space on a compile.This will cause gcc to fail and you may be forced to reboot.  I have also seen gcc just fail in th emiddle of a compile for no good reason.

On a 6000, I think development would kinda suck.  The thumb keyboard will take some major getting used to.  You would likely be much better off with a clam shell.  For small projects, I would say you would be very successful in the compiling.

[enki]

i agree the Guest\'s post above .. as for editors, speaking from the standpoint of the Cacko-X11 ROM for the SL-C7x0 series ... The default editor is SciTE which is a pretty decent text editor, also has vi in the CLI.

Also, the X11 rom has a GCC 3.3.1 and tons of libs, not to mentioned the newly released (im itchin to test) cross-compile environment

as for java, Cacko X11 doesn\'t have any java implementation at this time, altho the Cacko team has been VERY receptive to requests for software/libs from the community.

While it may not be perfect, and perhaps poorly suited at this time to larger projects (i think the internal compile errors will be worked out in time, and a swapfile always helps too), I feel the 7x0 series w/ the X11 ROM is prolly the best choice for a linux developer on the road.

(sharp/qtopia is lame in comparison IMO  )

[ScottYelich]

I dev on the Z, but only for short periods... I feel the screen is too small for any long term dev.
I use vnc from a laptop when at home, etc.

Scott
ps: I program in python/perl.

[Anonymous]

I was wrestling with the same exact question... first looked at lifebooks, then the sony u101... hoped for an oqo release... etc...

and recently got a 760. I think it\'s pretty decent, at least for writing code... but my requirements are low -- editor of choice is vim and I wasn\'t planning on trying to compile anything on the z.

the 760 has been pretty neat but not without it\'s frustrations. It\'s super-portable but the screen is small. I think the keyboard is pretty decent for what it is... but i don\'t touchtype anyhow. It _is_ much slower but, i\'m hoping i\'ll get more facility with it. The whole rom flashing thing is pretty new to me, which mostly reflects my ignorance of embeded systems in general, but... it can be pretty frustrating -- I flashed with a corrupted rom (bad download) the first day I had it and had to run out for a cf reader to fix it :-).

None of the roms i\'ve tried are quite perfect for me. I think, eventually, the x11 rom will be what I want, but... i\'ll probably end up cross-compiling ratpoision or something for it -- i really don\'t want separate windows on such a tiny screen.

All in all, it\'s not a perfect solution, but I think it\'s one of the best things out there. The biggest problem I\'ve had really is that there are so many options for how to set it up that I haven\'t actually gotten any real work done on it yet...

The real question is: do you want more portability or more power? for me, I went with portability. It *is* groovy to have a pocket sized computer with linux.

[ScottYelich]

portability ...

[Anonymous]

Another idea is an SL-6000, in landscape mode, with one of those new-fangled folding bluetooth keyboards.  I\'ts kind of the best of both worlds, I get the small-form factor PDA, with the thumb board for quick things, and I can pull out and unfold the full-size keyboard for extended use.