Please Help Me To Decide Which Rom To Use

[daniel3000]

Hello,

I have my SL-C3000 for 3 weeks now and still trying ROMs.
Have tried: Sharp ROM, Trisoft ROM, Cacko ROM.
Now stumbling across pdaXrom and it looks good.

I need a ROM I can use as a basis to build up a powerful and effective system to replace my old HP 200LX DOS palmtop.
But I also need and like to be able to configure as much as possible myself.
I am also highly interested in software development on the Zaurus.

So what ROM should I use?

Which ROM is the most stable one?

Which ROM has the largest pool of available software?

Can I use IPKs for Qtopia ROMs on pdaXrom? Which ones? What are the differences?

What changes are necessary for i386 Linux X appliactoins if I want to compile them on the Zaurus?

I have seen the screenshots of KDE 3.4 in the new pdaXrom. When will this ROM be available?

Do I actually need pdaXrom, or should I rather install X/QT on Qtopia to use X applications?

Do current versions of the excellent Pi-Sync PIMs run on pdaXrom? The feed shows an old version (1.6.x?) of PO/PI.

I'd appreciate any input, opinions as well as facts.

Thanks
daniel

[Omicron]

Hello,

I have my SL-C3000 for 3 weeks now and still trying ROMs.
Have tried: Sharp ROM, Trisoft ROM, Cacko ROM.
Now stumbling across pdaXrom and it looks good.

I need a ROM I can use as a basis to build up a powerful and effective system to replace my old HP 200LX DOS palmtop.
But I also need and like to be able to configure as much as possible myself.
I am also highly interested in software development on the Zaurus.

So what ROM should I use?

Which ROM is the most stable one?

Which ROM has the largest pool of available software?

Can I use IPKs for Qtopia ROMs on pdaXrom? Which ones? What are the differences?

What changes are necessary for i386 Linux X appliactoins if I want to compile them on the Zaurus?

I have seen the screenshots of KDE 3.4 in the new pdaXrom. When will this ROM be available?

Do I actually need pdaXrom, or should I rather install X/QT on Qtopia to use X applications?

Do current versions of the excellent Pi-Sync PIMs run on pdaXrom? The feed shows an old version (1.6.x?) of PO/PI.

I'd appreciate any input, opinions as well as facts.

Thanks
daniel
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I HAVE SAME QUESTION !

ANYONE?

THANKS !

[pgas]

I am also highly interested in software development on the Zaurus.

native gcc compiler is easy to install on pdaxrom.

So what ROM should I use?

It depends on what you want

Which ROM is the most stable one?

Probably the sharp rom...other roms are quite stable I think

Which ROM has the largest pool of available software?

using debian in a chrooted environement is probably what will give you the
biggest number of application readily compiled. (search the forum for debian)
Of course having a lot of application is not relevant if the one you want is no there.

Can I use IPKs for Qtopia ROMs on pdaXrom? Which ones? What are the differences?

In general you can't. qtopia is not X. different libc version. different way to emulate floating point.

What changes are necessary for i386 Linux X appliactoins if I want to compile them on the Zaurus?

It depends. some just need a recompile. some needs some tweaking in the makefiles . some needs porting (for instance if they use some assembly code..or rely on the processor architecture).
You'll be able to compile lots of application if you know a thing or two about makefiles gcc and shell script

I have seen the screenshots of KDE 3.4 in the new pdaXrom. When will this ROM be available?

kde is available now for pdaxrom. some people manage to runn kde inside debian.
pdaxrom is not available on the c3000, though there is a guy who made a tarball targeted for the C3000. no date available for "official" pdaxrom on c3000

Do I actually need pdaXrom, or should I rather install X/QT on Qtopia to use X applications?

It depends X/qt works well. There is also intstruction for running X without qtopia with a debian system on c3000. search the c3000/c1000 forums.

Do current versions of the excellent Pi-Sync PIMs run on pdaXrom? The feed shows an old version (1.6.x?) of PO/PI.

yes there is a newer version in the "unstable" feed. step by step instruction to cross compile it are in this forum

I HAVE SAME QUESTION !

there was a lot of question there. and uppercase is generally considered as impolite.

[daniel3000]

I HAVE SAME QUESTION !

ANYONE?

THANKS !
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Hi Omicron,

nice to meet you here. ;-)

The reply from pgas sounds if we should have a look at debian.
I'll look into this today or tomorrow. There must be a way to turn the C3000 into a suitable 200LX successor! The more I think about it the more I dislike QT.

Am I right if I assume it will be easier to write a new application on X than on QT, if I intend to compile this application on other systems running X (Linux PC) as well?

Also, since X is probably the more common enviroment compared to QT, there will be more help available in forums and on the internet to develop for X than for QT. I have never developed for one of them, only for DOS / PAL with C.

daniel

[daniel3000]

using debian in a chrooted environement is probably what will give you the
biggest number of application readily compiled. (search the forum for debian)
Of course having a lot of application is not relevant if the one you want is no there.

You are right. But the chance that the application I need is there is higher with a bigger pool ;-)
So I'll look into debian now. Didn't know that a debian system exists for the Zaurus. It sounds interesting, especially because debian is a well-known system for which I expect to find much ressources on the internet.

It depends. some just need a recompile. some needs some tweaking in the makefiles . some needs porting (for instance if they use some assembly code..or rely on the processor architecture).
You'll be able to compile lots of application if you know a thing or two about makefiles gcc and shell script

Do you know a good ressource for tips and tricks regarding makefile / script modifications in that case? I have used makefiles and scripts (scripts more than makefiles though), but I doubt that I know enough to make the correct changes for compiling on the zaurus.

It depends X/qt works well. There is also intstruction for running X without qtopia with a debian system on c3000. search the c3000/c1000 forums.

I'll do! Thanks!

Well, I forgot one important question:
What are the most important downsides of pdaXrom?

Thanks

daniel

[pgas]

m I right if I assume it will be easier to write a new application on X than on QT, if I intend to compile this application on other systems running X (Linux PC) as well?

Well not necesserally...if think it is rather easy to develop with qt and some developper makes applications that runs both in qtopia and X (portabase kopi opi reader...)
There are some threads about porting between qtopia and qt in these forums I think. I might not be as difficult as it seems

Do you know a good ressource for tips and tricks regarding makefile / script modifications in that case? I have used makefiles and scripts (scripts more than makefiles though), but I doubt that I know enough to make the correct changes for compiling on the zaurus.

You don't need extensive knowledge (especially if you compile natively).
The problems are different from one build to the other....search the forum for compile problems....

Didn't know that a debian system exists for the Zaurus.

The downside here is that debian is not really zaurus specific.

What are the most important downsides of pdaXrom?

no alarm wakeup as in qtopia. not veru. no synch with outlook.
For a lot of people opera not running is a major downside. (firefox runs slow and needs a lot of memory)

[daniel3000]

Thanks..
Well, so another thing comes to my mind:
 
Is it possible to use a QT-based ROM (Im currently using the Cacko 1.23 beta1), install X/QT and load and use debian binary packages for ARM (the same ones which are loaded with debian's apt-get install [package])?

So one could combine the advantages of the special ROMs (hardware support, Outlook sync...) with the advantages of X/Debian (large software base, same software as on a desktop PC).

Would this work?

[pgas]

yes it works and has been done.. search the forums

[Chero]

Did you look on Meanie's site , which is quite a good help for installing things on a 3000 (included : pocketworkstation (read "debian")).

Also take a look over here (go to post 12)., it looks like it is possible to run pdaxrom from a chrooted system on a C3000.

Chero

[xatax]

The fact that pdaxrom needs an SD card formatted to ext2 is a mayor disadvantage to the common Windows user (yup, like me) who wants to transfer files from and to a Windows based PC. Not every user with a Z uses Linux (in fact, I think Windows is the OS that most Z users use out there...)

[danr]

The fact that pdaxrom needs an SD card formatted to ext2 is a mayor disadvantage to the common Windows user (yup, like me) who wants to transfer files from and to a Windows based PC. Not every user with a Z uses Linux (in fact, I think Windows is the OS that most Z users use out there...)
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I connect my Zaurus to a Windows PC.  I've formatted my SD card as [a href=\"https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=11747&hl=umsdos]umsdos[/url] and it can be accessed by a Windows machine.  I don't generally use this method though, but instead copy files via an SMB mount on the PC.

Dan