C3000 Os List Request

[IceRazor]

There is a lot of information in these forums, and a lot of really good stuff, but I'm hoping someone here can distill a little of it for me.  I just purchaced a c3000 after having a z5000 for a few years, and I'm finding myself wanting more.  More what you ask?  Well, what I'd like is to figure out which OS is the best for the c3000, whether I have to wait another month for it or not.  It just seems a little messy to have qtopia on there that's still got japanese code in it, no matter how well Dynamism did on the conversion.

I've seen OpenBSD, but I've had problems with porting stuff to that in the past.  I also saw that someone ported Windows 3.1 to the platform.  To that, I give a patented Jon Stewart "Whhhaaaaaaaaaaaa?".  Then there's OpenZaurus, which I think, from the docs, is actually Debian underneath, and somehow OpenEmbedded is what OpenZaurus is derived from?

I was actually hoping to find a disti that would make it easy to install or build standard stuff like Opera and Sun's JDK.  The front end could be qtopia, as it is well suited for the small screen, even if that screen is 640x480.  Front-ends, though, is where I get fuzzy.  What other options are there for the GUI?  Would it be possible to run a pared down version of KDE or GNOME?  I know mem is short, but with a 4GB harddrive....

It would be nice if there were a list somewhere of what the available options were without having to drill down hundreds of posts with search terms you're not even sure will pull up the info you want.

So can anyone help clear all this up for me, and anyone else diving into this amazing little machine?

[gtJormungand]

I would say that something like a merger between Debian and pdaXrom would be best, but the Debian packages would really need to use soft-float.

[AndyTiedye]

There is a lot of information in these forums, and a lot of really good stuff, but I'm hoping someone here can distill a little of it for me.  I just purchaced a c3000 after having a z5000 for a few years, and I'm finding myself wanting more.  More what you ask?  Well, what I'd like is to figure out which OS is the best for the c3000, whether I have to wait another month for it or not.  It just seems a little messy to have qtopia on there that's still got japanese code in it, no matter how well Dynamism did on the conversion.

The only Japanese I see is during bootup and in some of the service menus.
Did you run "reconv"?

A few like "Photo Storage" require you to go into one of the menus and select "Language".

I'm running the stock O/S, with a lot of downloaded apps and some drivers.
I'm running KA/Pi,Om/Pi & KO/Pi for address book, mail, and organizer respectively.
X/Qt for an X server, and a bunch of Debian apps.

I've seen OpenBSD, but I've had problems with porting stuff to that in the past.

They are working on it, but it isn't complete yet.

I also saw that someone ported Windows 3.1 to the platform.  To that, I give a patented Jon Stewart "Whhhaaaaaaaaaaaa?".

Check the date on that post.

Then there's OpenZaurus, which I think, from the docs, is actually Debian underneath, and somehow OpenEmbedded is what OpenZaurus is derived from?
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I don't think that supports the 3000 yet.

[lardman]

Then there's OpenZaurus, which I think, from the docs, is actually Debian underneath, and somehow OpenEmbedded is what OpenZaurus is derived from?

No, it's built from scratch actually. OpenZaurus is build using the OpenEmbedded build system.

See here for work on supporting the C3k (and C1k):

http://openzaurus.org/wordpress/development/c3000-support/


Si

[IceRazor]

The only Japanese I see is during bootup and in some of the service menus.
Did you run "reconv"?

Yep - that little gem of information is all over the place, and Dynamism did a great job with "reconv" considering how hard it must have been.  But... it's not complete.  The networking wizard and several other dialogues for the networking app were not converted - the wizard being the worst with none of the messages being readable.  Then there's the address book.  Sure, the characters are readable, but the tabs are still based on the japanese alpha - not english. Artifacts like that, though not prevalent, are strewn throughout the gui layer.

This is why I wanted to just dust the current installation and flash the whole thing with a clean english-compiled os - one that takes advantage of the 4GB harddrive and maybe has more support for standard Linux.

[AndyTiedye]

The only Japanese I see is during bootup and in some of the service menus.
Did you run "reconv"?

Yep - that little gem of information is all over the place, and Dynamism did a great job with "reconv" considering how hard it must have been.  But... it's not complete.  The networking wizard and several other dialogues for the networking app were not converted - the wizard being the worst with none of the messages being readable.

I forgot about that one.   From what is readable of the networking wizard, it appears to be mostly
for setting up services that are Japan-specific anyway.  That one would want to be not only
translated, but preloaded with services usable here.   I don't think anyone has done that yet.

Then there's the address book.  Sure, the characters are readable, but the tabs are still based on the japanese alpha
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Try KA/Pi.

[piku]

There is a lot of information in these forums, and a lot of really good stuff, but I'm hoping someone here can distill a little of it for me.  I just purchaced a c3000 after having a z5000 for a few years, and I'm finding myself wanting more.  More what you ask?  Well, what I'd like is to figure out which OS is the best for the c3000, whether I have to wait another month for it or not.  It just seems a little messy to have qtopia on there that's still got japanese code in it, no matter how well Dynamism did on the conversion.

Well to start, you're in a better position than I am.  I own a C3000 for the last couple weeks now and I never had a Zaurus before.  I am however a Linux sysadmin so it makes things easier ;-).  As far as the Japanese code is concerned, as they discussed, the network wizard is more or less irrelevant to our country.  The bootup screen is not important, and bunkoviewer really looks like it sucks ;-)

I've seen OpenBSD, but I've had problems with porting stuff to that in the past.  I also saw that someone ported Windows 3.1 to the platform.  To that, I give a patented Jon Stewart "Whhhaaaaaaaaaaaa?".  Then there's OpenZaurus, which I think, from the docs, is actually Debian underneath, and somehow OpenEmbedded is what OpenZaurus is derived from?

To be honest, my opinion on this matter is that the zaurus is already lacking in support.  Why install a BSD distro and get even less device specific support.  There's probably 3 other guys running OpenBSD on a zaurus and probably 1 total running it on an SL-C3000.

I was actually hoping to find a disti that would make it easy to install or build standard stuff like Opera and Sun's JDK.  The front end could be qtopia, as it is well suited for the small screen, even if that screen is 640x480.  Front-ends, though, is where I get fuzzy.  What other options are there for the GUI?  Would it be possible to run a pared down version of KDE or GNOME?  I know mem is short, but with a 4GB harddrive....

I've learned a lot over hte last couple weeks. Let me get started.  This should offer a bit of insight.

There's several systems out there:
PdaXrom: as far as I know, not done and not tested on SL-C3000
Cacko: They're working on it, but not done - but looks pretty cool.
Openzaurus.. or opie:  This is quite different, it's not directly sharprom compatible so you have to make sure to use special opie packages.  They're working on C3000 support right now but it's just not there at all.  I've been following the mailing lists for a little while now and even on the other models it would seem it's riddled with bugs and the install documentation is poor.  Not good for new zaurus owners yet.  Keep in mind that when you flash these devices they could never boot up again..  Makes you want to tread lightly.
And then we have sharprom......  discussed below.

Regarding your questions about the front-end...
qpe is what your sharp rom has.  QT Palm envrionment.  It's a direct framebuffer environment with no X server.  Most of the stuff for zaurus is designed for QPE.  QPE is analagous to a mini-KDE.  KDE for Linux is one of the popular desktop environments.
gpe is the gtk embedded environment.  It features a lot less support and I believe it requires an X server but I'm not sure.  It's analogous to a mini-gnome.  You can't (yet) run this I don't think.
packages that start with opie-* are for the openzaurus rom for other zauruses.  Unless they are old enough they don't work with the sharprom.

It would be nice if there were a list somewhere of what the available options were without having to drill down hundreds of posts with search terms you're not even sure will pull up the info you want.
So can anyone help clear all this up for me, and anyone else diving into this amazing little machine?
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So that's where we're at.  There's in fact currently NO options besides a full blown Debian distribtuion for the SL-C3000.  Cacko rom is in testing but to be honest, cacko is just a modified sharprom as far as I can tell - so we're not missing THAT much.

So the first thing is first, read:
[a href=\"http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/]http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/[/url]

I pretty much owe my sanity to this guy.  He really helped out.  First, there's a new music player that seems a lot better..  He has the filename on his page, you can google for it.

Second, a lot of the free games and such are SDL.  There's a special libSDL for SL-C3000.  It's available here:
http://atty.jp/?plugin=attach&refer=Zaurus...0050410_arm.ipk
This one works the best, it rotates the screen right and the controls are right.  Make sure not to install any other libSDL over top.  The libs for SDL are under /home/QtPalmtop/lib/

So once you have that done you can install snes9x to play snes games, znester to play nes games, scummvm, etc.  All of this stuff will have to be used under "magnified mode".  I prefer to get there by setting the console app to magnified mode and launching stuff from there via command line.  You can set it by tapping an icon and holding it in.  You get a small preferences dialog.  

So you got games, well based on the instructions of that zaurus site above (mainly just for the filenames to google for them), I got Jeode java installed and that works well.  I'm not botherwith with a full Java but he goes into how to do it.  I got quake installed.. it runs like crapola.  I got prboom installed (Doom), it runs flawlessly.  If you look, there's also a version of X for QPE on there.  I installed that and now I can run X apps.  With this you can run firefox or minimo though I haven't been able to get firefox running. There's also a copy of opera on there that works pretty well great for the SL-C3000.  Mplayer was a royal pain to get setup.  If you want some insight into getting it working properly, let me know.  

There's a lot of gotchas with this thing...

PS: I live in Philly too ;-)  We should start a local zaurus user group.

Hope that helps
Thanks,
Mark

[lardman]

I've been following the mailing lists for a little while now and even on the other models it would seem it's riddled with bugs and the install documentation is poor.

Hmm.

Right, well I don't know which mailing list you've been following.

My C750 and sl5500 work fine with OpenZaurus, certainly no bug-riddling going on. Be careful of your sources, especially if you've not tried it yourself. OZ is certainly more stable, faster, and more useful (more software for example) for me than the Sharp-based ROMs ever were.

There is something to be said for poor installation documentation, however this is now fixed afaik - if you spot any errors let me know and I'll fix them (I only own a 5500 and a 750 so I can't test anything else, etc.).

Not good for new zaurus owners yet. Keep in mind that when you flash these devices they could never boot up again.. Makes you want to tread lightly.

Assuming you're talking about OZ I disagree on both points. Obviously you don't think OZ is there yet, I disagree, that's life. With regard to stopping your Z from ever booting up again, you are simply wrong. The OZ flashing methods do not overwrite the flash software and bootloader in the ROM, therefore you should always be able to flash to another ROM, even if your current flash goes wrong. This is in contrast to the Sharp ROM OSPACK (and probably the NAND backups, but I'm not sure about them) which overwrite the whole lot and would therefore stop you flashing anything if they failed half way.

gpe is the gtk embedded environment. It features a lot less support and I believe it requires an X server but I'm not sure. It's analogous to a mini-gnome. You can't (yet) run this I don't think.

GPE is X based, and uses an X server. I don't think it's less well supported than Opie (the other OpenZaurus GUI) - the two just have varying levels of support for different features. I'm running GPE atm and it works well. When the OpenZaurus port is running on the C3000 you should be able to run either.

Cheers,


Si

[piku]

I've been following the mailing lists for a little while now and even on the other models it would seem it's riddled with bugs and the install documentation is poor.

Hmm.

Right, well I don't know which mailing list you've been following.

My C750 and sl5500 work fine with OpenZaurus, certainly no bug-riddling going on. Be careful of your sources, especially if you've not tried it yourself. OZ is certainly more stable, faster, and more useful (more software for example) for me than the Sharp-based ROMs ever were.

Some guy was just on the list whining his life away about how poor the installation documentation was and saying that stuff didn't work out of the box like a web browser.  I believe he was told to piss off because OZ is right for the dev's and that's all that matter.  I agree with that, but if you're going to have that attitude, spray it on the web pages so people know what kind of project it is   If you're not going to have that attitude, you have to foster new users a bit better.  I'm speaking somewhat out of my rear because I have not yet run OZ.  Despite the problems, if there was a C3000 specific installation, I would indeed install it.  OZ looks better.. Simple.

There is something to be said for poor installation documentation, however this is now fixed afaik - if you spot any errors let me know and I'll fix them (I only own a 5500 and a 750 so I can't test anything else, etc.).

Not good for new zaurus owners yet. Keep in mind that when you flash these devices they could never boot up again.. Makes you want to tread lightly.

Assuming you're talking about OZ I disagree on both points. Obviously you don't think OZ is there yet, I disagree, that's life. With regard to stopping your Z from ever booting up again, you are simply wrong. The OZ flashing methods do not overwrite the flash software and bootloader in the ROM, therefore you should always be able to flash to another ROM, even if your current flash goes wrong. This is in contrast to the Sharp ROM OSPACK (and probably the NAND backups, but I'm not sure about them) which overwrite the whole lot and would therefore stop you flashing anything if they failed half way.

I've just been put off a bit by some stuff that I read on the mailing list.  I've paid too much for this tool.  Further when I asked for help about something on irc, I was promptly told that sharprom sucks and I should install OZ.  Bear in mind there is NO oz port for SL-C3000 yet.  Beautiful.  Nevermind the fact that there seems to be very little that I CANNOT do on sharprom, even if it is a little slower or not quite as pretty.  Based on what you said then, there should be no way that OZ bricks the zaurus then.  But I would love someone to kind of diagram a bit the SL-C3000 and contrast it to the SL-C760.  For instance, there's /dev/hda1 which seems to hold rom content, /dev/hda2 which seems to hold system applications and /dev/hda3 which is purely for user data.  But how much is in nand flash?  How much is in flash rom?  Where does hte kernel lie.  What can you break and recover from, and how can you very completely backup your whole system ;-)  Stuff like this just isn't quite out yet for the C3000, so that's kind of why I said to tread lightly.

gpe is the gtk embedded environment. It features a lot less support and I believe it requires an X server but I'm not sure. It's analogous to a mini-gnome. You can't (yet) run this I don't think.

GPE is X based, and uses an X server. I don't think it's less well supported than Opie (the other OpenZaurus GUI) - the two just have varying levels of support for different features. I'm running GPE atm and it works well. When the OpenZaurus port is running on the C3000 you should be able to run either.

I thought GPE used X.  Anyway, I feel like I might have pinched a nerve, if I did sorry.  I think OZ is a fine choice for other Zauruses but there's no option yet for SL-C3000.  Some dev reaction that I got from #openembedded on freenode when asking a question about sharprom has really turned me off to the whole idea.  I say screw it if people are going to be like that.  Like the channel has so much traffic that people can't answer an occaisional support question.  LOL.  Oh well.  And people wonder why there's a lack of developers.

At any rate I've decided I want to help out at least beta testing OZ on the SL-C3k but I'm not going to bother trying to build OE myself for it.  I maintain almost singlehandedly what is essentially OE for Atari computers already.  I don't need to do work.. for free..  for unfriendly people.

Cheers,


Si
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[Mickeyl]

I don't need to do work.. for free.. for unfriendly people.

Amen to that.

[adf]

don't go to the oe irc.

there will be a 1k/3k oz-- that is the idea behind oe, lots of platforms.

wait for an official release that supports your hardware, you'll be much happier.

There is an oe forum here that is mellower than the irc, if you want ask questions about oe.

and keep in mind that the roadmap says 3.6 will be the FIRST stable OZ built from OE.

Personally, I still depend on sharprom. I'd rather not.  There are 3 (five depending on how you count it) other roms I'd rather use, both of OZ being among them  But, I have a nice sharp setup.  I flash to oz, tinker a  little, and when it is time for work or generally putting the z in the case, I flash back.  On my 6k I might not ever end up on OZ full time,who knows. But my 6k has a bleaker future than OE, I think.

[lardman]

Some guy was just on the list whining his life away about how poor the installation documentation was and saying that stuff didn't work out of the box like a web browser. I believe he was told to piss off because OZ is right for the dev's and that's all that matter. I agree with that, but if you're going to have that attitude, spray it on the web pages so people know what kind of project it is wink.gif If you're not going to have that attitude, you have to foster new users a bit better. I'm speaking somewhat out of my rear because I have not yet run OZ. Despite the problems, if there was a C3000 specific installation, I would indeed install it. OZ looks better.. Simple.

Yes, I saw this guy moaning, and yes he was told to piss off, but I think there is definitely room for newer users to use the ROM and help update the docs, highlight usability issues, etc. - it is very hard to put yourself in the place of new users when you've been doing this stuff for a while - however it all depends on people making 'constructive criticism' and then helping out to alter docs, submit bug reports, submit patches, etc. His criticism was neither constructive, nor did he look like he was wanting to help - just to benefit and then when something went wrong he wanted someone to blame.

I was promptly told that sharprom sucks and I should install OZ

Well it's true

Bear in mind there is NO oz port for SL-C3000 yet.

I know, but work is underway to produce one. I don't have a C3000/C1000 nor do many people. The more who help-out with the port, the faster it will appear and become stable and usable.

Further when I asked for help about something on irc

Which channel did you ask on? This might explain why you got this response.

But I would love someone to kind of diagram a bit the SL-C3000 and contrast it to the SL-C760. For instance, there's /dev/hda1 which seems to hold rom content, /dev/hda2 which seems to hold system applications and /dev/hda3 which is purely for user data. But how much is in nand flash? How much is in flash rom?

I'd be interested to see this too (this is a new machine and I don't know much about it). Bear in mind that the setup may well change between how the Sharp ROM handles the storage media and how OZ will handle them, depending on what people want.

I thought GPE used X. Anyway, I feel like I might have pinched a nerve, if I did sorry.

 No, don't worry - it's just that in the old days GPE was less usable on the Zaurii than Opie, however nowadays it's getting to the point where it's pretty much there. Personally I use it as I like some of the apps which are available.

At any rate I've decided I want to help out at least beta testing OZ on the SL-C3k but I'm not going to bother trying to build OE myself for it.

That's great news - the more people who can help out the faster it will become usable and better it will become. On the not building OE point, it's not very difficult (I'm quite happy to walk you through it), and it will make your life easier testing alterations (and having the latest builds available to you).


Si